A PLEA FOR GOOD ROADS 5 



such people of fashion and fortune as make various 

 tours in England for pleasure, health, and curiosity. 

 In picturesque counties, like Cornwall and Devon, 

 where the natural curiosities are innumerable, many 

 gentlemen of taste would be fond of making purchases, 

 and spending their fortunes, if with common ease 

 they could readily go to and return from their en- 

 chanted castles. Whereas, a family, as things now 

 stand, or a party of gentlemen and ladies, would 

 sooner travel to the South of France and back asrain 

 than down to Falmouth or the Land's End. And 'tis 

 easier and pleasanter — so that all beyond Sarum or 

 Dorchester is to us terra incognita, and the map- 

 makers might, if they pleased, fill the vacuities of 

 Devon and Cornwall with forests, sands, elephants, 

 savages, or what they please. Travellers of every 

 denomination — the wealthy, the man of taste, the 

 idle, the valetudinary — would all, if the roads were 

 good, visit once at least the western parts of this 

 island. Whereas, every man and woman that has an 

 hundred superfluous guineas must now turn bird of 

 passage, flit away across the ocean, and expose them- 

 selves to the ridicule of the French. Now, what but 

 the goodness of the roads can tempt people to make 

 such expensive and foolish excursions, since, out of 

 fifty knight- and lady-errants, not two, perhaps, can 

 enounce half a dozen French words. Their inns are 

 infinitely worse than ours, the aspect of the country 

 less pleasing ; men, manners, customs, laws are no 

 objects with these itinerants, since they can neither 

 speak nor read the language. I have known twelve 

 at a time ready to starve at Paris and lie in the 



