EAST AND SOUTH-EAST 79 



foe had got his shaving- water in front of him every 

 measurement was made. 



Then did the Parhamentary bar reap golden 

 harvests, and contests before Lords and Commons 

 suggest the legends, more or less well founded, of 

 a railway company which spent a million sterling 

 before it got its Bill ; and of an eminent counsel 

 whose ' retainers ' were so numerous that his habit 

 was to stroll in the Park while Select Committees 

 were sitting at Westminster, so that he might not, by 

 bestowing his talents on the brief of one client, give 

 him a preference to the prejudice of others. 



There was no opposition to the Ipswich extension lint; 

 to Lowestoft, and the railway now runs over the lengths 

 which my brother and I surveyed and staked out. 



It was not so, however, in the district traversed ])y 

 the Dover mail. There, as is well known, local 

 opponents drove the trunk-line of the South-E astern 

 Piailway Company out of the true direction, forcing- 

 it to make an elbow at Piedhill. Ultimately the 

 company had to reduce the distance at great cost, by 

 constructing a new main-line from London, through 

 Sevenoaks, to Tunbridge. 



All unconscious, however, of any approaching 

 check to their prosperity, the coach and the post- 

 chaise rattled along the Dover road, as though it 

 were, in truth, what the complacent Briton perhaps 

 deemed it to be — a permanent highway of the nations. 



It is an undeniable fact that (as Mr. F.'s aunt 

 insisted) there are milestones on the Dover road, but 



