OLD-TIME TRAVELLERS 199 



And after the romantic times of that unfortunate 

 family come the stohd annals of Dutch William, 

 Anne, and the unimaginative Georges — a line of 

 sovereigns for whom enthusiasm Avas impossible. 

 Mean in their vices and contemptible in their virtues, 

 they lived their lives and reigned over England, and 

 posted along the Dover Road on their way to or from 

 beloved Hanover ; and no man's heart beat the faster 

 for their coming, and none sorrowed overmuch for 

 their going. All the Georges, and William the Fourth, 

 too, were here, I believe, and in their train came the 

 lean Keilmanseggs, the fleshly Schwellenbergs, and a 

 variety of greasy Germans, fresh from the terrible 

 voyage over sea ; but no one cares in the least either 

 where they went or whither they did not go. 



But they all travelled with what we must now 

 consider a snail's pace. The wealthiest, the most 

 powerful, could go no faster than horses managed to 

 drag them. When Sir Robert Peel was summoned in 

 haste from Rome by William the Fourth to form a 

 Ministry in 1834, he travelled full speed to London, and 

 the journey took him just within a fortnight. He noted 

 in his journal that he accomplished it in exactly the 

 same time as the Emperor Hadrian had done seventeen 

 hundred years before him. The means of travel at the 

 disposal of both statesmen were identical — post 

 horses. 



Another Royal visitor (of a much later date indeed) 

 discovered the " chops of the Channel " to be no 

 respectors of personages. In fact. His Serene Highness 

 Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, who was come 

 across the water to wed his Cousin, Queen Victoria of 

 Great Britain and Ireland (" Empress of India " was 

 yet in the loom of the future), found his serenity as 

 much disturbed by the roughness of his passage as 

 falls to the lot of most bad sailors, of whatever social 

 stratum. He was, in short, very ill, and unable to 

 proceed any farther that day. On the morrow, Friday, 

 February 7, 1840, he resumed his journey to London, 



