and down; the smoking horses are unharnessed; fresh ones put to, all in less time than it takes to tell it. Off again! We sweep at speed past the village green, dogs barking, pigs squealing, geese hissing, children shouting, men huzzaing, women smiling. Through the winding pleasant lanes we go, with their lovely hedgerows on either side, the spire in the distance, the mansion in the park, the glorious old trees, the noble woods, the delicious lakes, the sparkling streams, altogether a landscape of sweetness and beauty which no country but merry England can set before the traveller’s eye. All this, however, was lost to us when the last of the coaches disappeared from the road. We now fly, but we do not see. We are, as it were, shot forth from station to station at a speed becoming the spirit of the age. But one consequence of all this is, that the rising generation know nothing of the old high-ways and by-ways of their country, its many beauties, its shady lanes, its lovely nooks and corners, the sudden turns in our old lines of road which used unexpectedly to open to us the most charming prospect, and then as suddenly to hide it, only to reveal to us some other vision of beauty on the fair face of nature spread before us. These were exquisite treats to us old travellers. We miss them, but we are not regretting. We like to keep up with the pace of the age. And what early hours our grandfathers and grandmothers used to keep! What an anarchical, chaotical, daring, radical innovator, the very _æs triplex circum pectus_ man of old Horace, was that bold spirit considered to be amongst them who first wrote four o’clock, instead of mid-day, upon his “ticket for soup.” Then came dinner at five, at six, and all hours, until day and night changed places, and late hours and indigestion became triumphant, until wise people learned that the best plan was to lay in a stock of solids at lunch, and then only trifle and coquet with the grand banquet of the evening.