The roads are all so good that it is not as easy as one would suppose to keep to the great highway. There are no "mud roads" branching from the pike, as in Pennsylvania, where the difference is evident at a glance. So, when I had overcome the first nervousness and begun to take notice of the country, glancing first to the right to watch the cattle feeding in the deep meadow, and then to the left where the wheat was almost ready for the harvest, and speculating on the yield as compared with the new land at home, it is not strange that I should have diverged from the right way. Indeed it was not alone "the things which are seen" which caused me to err, there was also the "unseen" which filled the mind's eye. For this was not the first time by any means that I had travelled the Great North Road! I had trod it on foot with dear Jeanie Deans, thankful for an occasional "cast in a cart," and by coach with Mr. Squeers, and in the pleasant company of Mr. Pickwick also, if I am not mistaken. Well, the result of all this contemplation of things, "visible and invisible," was that when I finally inquired the way, I found I was more than twenty miles too far to the eastward--not far, indeed, from Cambridge. I found, moreover, that human nature is the same on the country roads of England as at home! For the laborer to whom I spoke showed the same superiority that one notices in those foolish people who get up early in the morning as they greet the late riser! He told me I must retrace my road for some miles to get again on the North road. But as this is a thing I detest, I insisted that by keeping on I should ultimately regain the road I had lost. He reluctantly admitted this might be done, if I kept on as far as Royston. As all places were now the same to me, this is what I decided to do, much to his disappointment I am sure, for he would have liked to see me pay the penalty of my folly. As you have no doubt mentioned in more than one of your sermons, "Disappointments are often blessings in disguise." This proved to be one of them, for it led me back into an England older than that of Scott or Dickens--even to the England of Fielding! VII THE ENGLAND OF FIELDING