It matters little what road we take, but as Mr. Murray came to town from Newcastle, we may as well pay a return visit along that same highway--the Great North Road. He does not explain how he came through Highgate, but for our part, the first sixty miles or so go along the Old North Road, and we do not touch Highgate at all. Now, since we are setting out merely for the purpose of seeing something of what life is like on a great highway, there is no need to mortify the flesh by arising early in the blushing hours of dawn, to the tune of the watchman’s cry of “five o’clock and a fine morning!” and so we will e’en, like Christians and Britons able to call their souls their own, go by the afternoon coach. Let the “Lord Nelson” in this year 1830 go if it will from the “Saracen’s Head,” Snow Hill, at half-past six in the morning. For ourselves, we will wait until a quarter to three in the afternoon, and take the “Lord Wellington” from the “Bull and Mouth.” We can do no better, for the “Lord Wellington” goes the 274 miles in 30 hours, which a simple calculation resolves into 9 miles an hour, including stops. The fare to Newcastle is £5 15s. inside, or about 5d. a mile. Outside, it is £3 10s., or a fraction over 3d. a mile. As our trip is taken in summer-time, we will go outside; and so, although a good deal of the journey will have to be through the night, we, at least, shall not have the disadvantage of being stewed during the daytime in the intolerable atmosphere of the inside of a stage-coach on a July day. Why, indeed, coach-proprietors do not themselves observe that in summer-time the outside is the most desirable place, and charge accordingly, is not easily understood; nor, indeed, to be understood at all. That clever fellow De Quincey notices this, and points out that, although the roof is generally regarded by passengers and everyone else connected with coaching as the attic, and the inside as the drawing-room, only to be tenanted by gentlefolk, the inside is really the coal-cellar in disguise. We recollect, being old travellers, that the fares to Newcastle used to be much cheaper. Time was when they were only four guineas inside and £2 10s. outside, but prices went up during the late wars with France, and they have stayed up ever since. The travelling, however, is better by some five hours than it was fifteen years ago. Here we are at the “Bull and Mouth,” in St. Martin’s-le-Grand, now newly rebuilt by Sherman, and named the “Queen’s.” It is a handsome building of red brick, with Portland stone dressings, but the old stables are still to be seen at the side, in Bull-and-Mouth Street. A strong and penetrating aroma of horses and straw pervades the neighbourhood.