warmed with humming ale, and told tales of highwaymen, and lonely roads, and dark nights, and bales of silks stolen, worth so much an ell, and where they concealed their money, and what struggles they had had with footpads. A rare paper will we write some day on these matters ere long. Then there was the old postman in war time, who used to blow his horn as proudly as an ancient herald, and enter the town with a long sword by his side and a brace of loaded pistols in his holsters. A great man was the old postman, thus mounted on his raw-boned steed, in former days, and many a poor horseman was glad to travel in his wake to the distant market-town. And, oh! to see him do his sword-exercise in the Blackhead parlour with the poker on an evening! Few, I deem, who heard him talk, would like to make an attack on him in the day-time when armed and mounted. What sturdy fellows were the old wagoners ! men who never travelled more than two miles an hour, and halted either to bait themselves or their horses at every road-side inn. How the heavy wheels of their ponderous wains ground down the ridges of the ruts; and with what difficulty did they travel when the roads were bad! How the heart of the foot-beaten traveller was overjoyed when he saw one of these huge vehicles approach! What a time he might ride for a shilling; and what a comfortable nap he might enjoy on the straw! Then what pretty faces might be seen sometimes peeping out from between the tilt!-a mother and her children journeying to some distant town, where her husband had found employment. Even the husband himself, when seeking work, had begged a ride of the old wagoner; perhaps he had then no money to pay his fare. But when he got employment he went to the inn where the old wagoner put up-where he had halted for many years-the inn itself perhaps called the Wagon and Horses-and there they drank their cup of ale and smoked their pipes together. And the poor father sent money to his family every week by the old wagoner, and he would charge nothing for his trouble, but take part of a cup of ale now and then. I wish I could paint the old man the first time he sought out the poor mechanic's wife, and counted out the few shillings from his old yellow bag, and gave the children a penny each out of his own pocket, and told them that some day he should take them all to see their father. Well, they are on their way now, and every time the old man stops to have his pint of ale, he asks the poor mother to drink, and cuts off a large piece of his bread and cheese for the children. God bless him for it! Who that has read "Roderick Random" can forget the scene in the wagon, where Joey grumbles at Captain Weazel because "he won't suffer the poor wagoner to make a penny ;" and where poor Strap pitches upon the stomach of the captain, and the lady regrets "that they did not wait for the chariot ;" and the old usurer chuckles at Jenny until he brings on a fit of coughing. Rare fun, I doubt not, might be found in these rude conveyances in the olden time. Then what important men the wagoners themselves must have been before stage-coaches became common. We read We read in Roderick Random of the dinner being prepared for the wagon people just as it awaits the coming in of the coach in the present day. Joey would not be one to hurry off his passengers in a quarter of an hour, as they do now; no horn to sound then just as the best dishes appeared. But the system has beaten itself; not half the people stay to dine now that did formerly: you are scarcely seated before you hear the announcement, "coach ready." They cannot let well alone. Next come the old carriers' carts-rickety vehicles, that poke their way from village to town about twice a week; sometimes carrying two or three passengers, and giving some old woman or other a help on the road with her butter-basket. Oh! how I love to see these old-fashioned conveyances winding along the green lanes of merry England-their gray, rent, and weatherbeaten tilts, rocking above the tops of the hawthorn hedges, the crack of the whip, and the "gee whoa" of the drivers ringing over the quiet fields. But they are daily dwindling away, and I am (perhaps foolishly) regretting the change. To me, however, they are fraught with pleasant reminiscences, little simple adventures, and boyish incidents, that are perchance, after all, only sweet because they are gone. Well, I have journeyed by them all, have floated drowsily along in the slow-moving market-boat, or little packet drawn by its single horse, been in the ponderous wagon, slept all night on the straw, and eaten my breakfast with "Joey." I have rode home by the village carrier in the sweet mornings of summer, when I could alight and gather a handful of flowers, and overtake him again without hurrying, or stop and look for birds' nests in the hedges that were white and fragrant with the blossoming hawthorn; I have rolled along the rapid and almost breathless railways, shot up the rivers in the swift steamers, and been tossed all night on the stormy sea, sat behind four good horses on the stage-coach, and after all must confess, that I dearly love the old Customs of Travelling. 47 RAILWAY TRAVELLING. "Now there is nothing gives a man such spirits, And merely for the sake of its own merits; At the great end of travel-which is driving." Byron's Don Juan. ASSUREDLY we cannot now complain of the flight of Time, since we have so many inventions for treading hard upon his heels. The genius of man has, in many instances, gained the mastery over the elements: we no longer hear that "The king said sail, and the wind said no;" for now thump goes the steam-engine, and away glides the ponderous vessel, with the wind and tide waging war in her teeth. Ariel need no longer sing "Full fathom five thy father lies ;" for the diving-bell would speedily reach him, and all the sooner if his bones were made of coral. Where only the eagle once soared, Monk Mason now studies, he being one of the few authors who "Into the heaven of heavens has presumed, (An earthly guest) and drawn empyreal air." What would our forefathers have thought had they been told that, within a few years, we should be dragged at the tail of an engine at the rate of thirty miles an hour?-that we should be hurried through the very bowels of the hills up which they have so often panted, and led on only by fire and water-clear a deep darkness at which they would have quaked—a cavern that extended for a mile or two under the earth, and would be passed in twice the number of minutes? What would the highwayman of the olden time think now, could he arise and view that street of carriages, bearing inhabitants who would out-number the population of many an English village? Turpin and his Black Bess would stand aghast his "deliver or die," would be lost amid the rumbling of the wheels, and his favourite steed deadbeaten ere he could get alongside to vent a volley of oaths. Even fearful old ladies would shake their silk purses at him in triumph, and children point their popguns at the grim old robber with a malicious grin. The old market-boats and creaking stage-wagons that we now pass on the road, seem to move like tortoises, compared with the mad gallop of the railway-carriages. The engine appears like some unearthly monster, that never once breathes during his journey, but is ready to burst at the end of the race, and upheaves the pent steam from his iron nostrils with louder roarings than the fabled dragons of old. He is fed on fire, and shod with iron, and death is the doom of all he tramples upon. The poetry of travelling is gone-the romance of road-side adventure is at an end: in vain will the modern novelist attempt to distinguish his heroine in the passing train-forms and faces glide by like the mingled colours on a school-boy's whipping-top-an amalgamated mass of hues which the rapid motion seems to blend into one. Elopements may now be made in safety, if the lovers can only secure the first train; asthmatical old guardians can never give chase-the rapidity with |