''Nimrod ' 



if his taste for them outHves the first heyday of youth, 

 among the scenes, however comparatively rude, in which 

 his natural place has been appointed. 



THE ROAD 



* Sunt quos curriculo,' etc. — Horace. 



Even at the present wonder-working period, few greater 

 improvements have been made in any of the useful arts, 

 than in those applied to the system of travelling by land. 

 Projectors and projects have multiplied with our years ; and 

 the fairy-petted princes of the '' Arabian Nights' Entertain- 

 ments ' were scarcely transported from place to place with 

 more facility or despatch, than Englishmen are at the present 

 moment. From Liverpool to Manchester, thirty-six miles, 

 in an hour and a half ! — surely Daedalus is come amongst 

 us again ; but we will, for the present, confine our observa- 

 tions to the road ; to coaches, coach-horses, coachmen, and 

 coach-masters. We are not thinking of the travelling 

 chariot and four — though, to be sure, the report given us of 

 Lord Londonderry's speaking in the House of Peers one 

 night, and being at his own house in Durham the next 

 (two hundred and fifty miles off), is astonishing, and was 

 a performance that no other country under the sun could 

 accomplish ; yet bribes to postilions and extra relays of 

 horses might have been called in aid here. We shall, there- 



i8i 



