Jane did not expect to be able to return to Steventon until about the middle of October, but it was necessary to lay plans long before so as to arrange if possible for the escort of one of her brothers, as it was not thought at all the proper thing for a young lady to go by herself on a journey, and considering the changes at inn-yards and many stoppages, this is not to be wondered at. Just at this time Frank Austen received a naval appointment, and had to be up in town the next day, September 21, so Jane seized the opportunity to go with him. “As to the mode of our travelling to town, I want to go in a stage coach, but Frank will not let me.” This means of course that they would have to travel post, a much more expensive performance. The whole subject of travelling is one of the things that bring more vividly before us than any other the difference of the then and the now. In 1755 an Act was passed compelling districts all over the country to make turnpike roads and charge toll accordingly; before this date the state of the roads had been too terrible for description, and even after it road-making progressed but slowly, for it was not until the beginning of the nineteenth century that Macadam’s improvements were adopted. Up to 1755 roads had been made certainly after a fashion, and many Acts had been passed with the object of improving them, but these had not had much effect. Even the great Act of 1755 seemed to be of little practical efficacy, for between 1760 and 1764 inclusive, upwards of four hundred and fifty Acts of Parliament were passed in order to effect the formation of new, and the repair and alteration of old, highways throughout the country, so Parliament certainly cannot be accused of regarding the matter with indifference. Many are the complaints of travellers. Arthur Young in his well-known _Tour_ mentions the roads frequently: “Much more to be condemned is the execrable muddy road from Bury to Sudbury in Suffolk, in which I was forced to move as slow as in any unmended lane in Wales. For ponds of liquid dirt and a scattering of loose flints just sufficient to lame every horse that moves near them, with the addition of cutting vile grips across the road, under pretence of letting water off, but without the effect, altogether render at least twelve of these sixteen miles as infamous a turnpike as ever was travelled. Their method of mending the last mentioned road I found excessively absurd, for in parts of it the sides are higher than the middle, and the gravel they bring in is nothing more but a yellow loam with a few stones in it, through which the wheels of a light chaise cut as easily as in sand, with the addition of such floods of watery mud as renders the road, on the whole, inferior to nothing but an unmended Welsh lane. From Chepstow to the half way house between Newport and Cardiff they continue mere rocky lanes, full of hugeous stones as big as one’s horse, and abominable holes.”