S8 THE COACHING AGE. 



fair, all their houses being full, and also the inn- 

 keepers along the road, together with the coach 

 and mail proprietors, turnpike lessees, and others 

 connected with the road tralfic, not forgetting the 

 neighbouring farmers, as the droves of cattle all 

 walked up from Scotlgind and Wales, and fields were 

 required to turn them into during their journey, 

 which from the more distant parts of the country 

 occupied a period of a month or six weeks. A 

 few days' rest, moreover, was required before the 

 first day of the fair ; and for some days previously the 

 fields round Barnet, which is in what is called ' the 

 grass country,' used to be black with the Scotch and 

 Welsh cattle. After the railways were made they 

 were all brought up by them, and the mode of 

 transacting business changed entirely. A man travel- 

 ling up by the coach two or three hundred miles 

 required some rest before returning, and necessarily 

 stayed a night or two in the town; but when he 

 could come up from Scotland in ten or eleven hours, 

 sitting quietly all night in a railway carriage, or 

 perhaps in a sleeping-car, he could drop down to 

 Barnet by eleven o'clock, go through the whole fair, 

 buy all he wanted, leave the town again at one 

 or two o'clock, and start for Scotland the same 

 night. 



In nothing, perhaps, has so great a revolution ever 



