252 HIGHWAYS AND HORSES. 



was manifested by Dr. Johnson's long attendance on 

 Lord Chesterfield, but this was very early in the 

 century. 



The condition of the Universities was most de- 

 plorable. Wilberforce, who in after years advocated 

 so strenuously the abolition of the slave trade, was 

 entered at St. John's, Cambridge, in 1776, at the age 

 of seventeen. He says that, on his arrival at Cam- 

 bridge, he found that the undergraduates drank hard, 

 and that their conversation was even worse than their 

 lives. As for work, they did none at all, but passed 

 their time in cock-fighting, drinking, and creating dis- 

 turbances. Corruption reigned in all the public offices. 

 The medical profession was distracted by jealousies, 

 rivalries, and ignorance. The law was made ridiculous 

 by the absurd technicalities of the courts, and the 

 ignorance manifested by barristers in the laws and 

 constitution of their own country. As for members 

 of the mercantile class, some years before, when Dr. 

 Johnson was told that the society of Twickenham 

 chiefly consisted of opulent traders retired from busi- 

 ness, he replied : " Sir, I never much like that class 

 of people, for they have generally lost the civility of 

 tradesmen without acquiring the manners and habits 

 of gentlemen." 



Smollett, in his novel " Roderick Random," has 

 very well described the journey undertaken by Random 

 and his faithful follower Strap in a road waggon which 

 they ascend by a ladder, and tumbling into the straw 

 discover that they have for fellow-passengers several 

 persons whom it would be difficult to imagine riding in 

 a waggon at the present day, but to whom a journey 

 on a coach would have been too expensive. The 

 great dread of all persons travelling on the road in 



