8o THE COACHING AGE. 



several persons supposed to have very extensive 

 knowledge of the subject actually contemplated the 

 possibility of railways eventually failing, and the 

 roads then being found to have got out of condition, 

 and perhaps into an almost useless state. It is scarcely 

 necessary to point out the utter groundlessness of 

 their apprehensions. 



Nearly allied to the pikes were the old milestones 

 which you used to meet with as you travelled along 

 the road, but on the turnpike-roads only ; measuring 

 the roads in order to ascertain where milestones 

 ought to be placed, and providing and keeping them 

 in repair, I suppose made them too expensive to be 

 erected on highways or parish roads. Hence their 

 absence, greatly to the inconvenience of travellers, as 

 those who had to traverse by-roads much must often 

 have experienced. 



The ideas of the rural mind as to distance are 

 something extraordinary. It is by no means an 

 unusual thing when you inquire of a rustic mjlle ot 

 female how far it is to a given place, to be told the 

 time it takes to walk there, in spite of entire ignorance 

 as to whether your pedestrian capabilities may be 

 those of a Weston able to do some six or seven miles 

 an hour, or of a less expeditious character, compassing 

 only three miles in the same ,period. 



It is rather amusing if you chance to be walking on 



