90 HIGHWAYS AND HORSES. 



Grace the Duke of Wellington arrived at Marlborough? 

 on Monday evening in his travelling carriage-and- 

 four, with outriders. It was understood His Grace 

 was journeying to the mansion of the Duke of Beau- 

 fort to attend at the marriage ceremony to give away 

 the daughter of the late Duke of Beaufort to Mr. 

 Codrington, son of Sir Bethel. His Grace was anxious 

 to pass onward from Marlborough directly ; but, learn- 

 ing the roads were impassable, he stopped for the 

 night at the 'Castle Inn' (kept by Thomas Cooper, 

 a well-known coach proprietor and post-master on the 

 Bath road), but now the site of Marlborough College. 

 The next morning his Grace started ; but the carriage 

 got fixed in a wheat-field between Marlborough and 

 Badminton. Fortunately, the surveyor of that line 

 of roads, Mr. Merrifield, was not far distant, being 

 in charge of a body of labourers ; and one of the 

 outriders coming to him, he readily offered to go to 

 the assistance of the Duke, whom he piloted across 

 the country till they came to a sound-bottomed road. 



" The Bath and Bristol mails due on Tuesday morn- 

 ing, were abandoned eighty miles from London, and 

 the mail-bags were brought up in a post-chaise-and- 

 four by the two guards, who reached London at six 

 o'clock on Wednesday morning. For seventeen miles 

 of the distance they had come across fields. The 

 Manchester clown mail reached St. Albans, and getting 

 off the road into a hollow was upset. The guard 

 returned to London in a post-chaise and four horses 

 with the bags and passengers. They reached the 

 ' Swan with Two Necks' about noon. 



" About a mile from St. Albans, on the London 

 side, a chariot without horses was seen on Tuesday 

 nearly buried in snow. There were two ladies inside: 



