Let us see what kind of entrance to London this was in olden times. In Queen Mary's day the idea of a road leading so far as Bath seems to have been considered too fantastic for common use, and this was accordingly known as the "waye to Reading." In that reign, which was so reactionary that many were discontented with it, and roused up armed rebellions, the rebel Sir Thomas Wyatt brought his men thus far, having crossed the Thames at Kingston and struggled through the awful sloughs between that place and Knightsbridge. It seems quite likely that, but for the mud of those miscalled "roads," the rebellion would have been successful, and the course of history changed. But Wyatt's soldiers were utterly exhausted with the march; and when the Londoners saw them, plastered with mud from head to foot, they forgot their own discontent, and laughed at their would-be deliverers, calling them "draggle-tails." So, dispirited and contemned, they were easily disposed of by the Queen's troops, who, secure behind their girdle of muck, had only to wait and slay them at leisure. [Illustration: HYDE PARK CORNER, 1792.] The lesson seems not to have been lost upon the authorities, and accordingly we find this defence of dirt in existence up to the year 1842. For nearly three hundred years this "splendid isolation" set an almost impassable gulf between those who wished to get out of London and those who wanted to come in; for in the year just mentioned we learn that Knightsbridge was in so deplorable a state of neglect that it was perfectly impassable for persons possessing a common regard for cleanliness or comfort. Ankle-deep in mud and water, the pavement was rendered additionally dangerous by two steps, forming a sudden descent, so that those who were rash enough to attempt to pass that way in the dark generally bruised themselves severely at the best of it; or, at the worst, broke a leg or an arm. But this was nothing compared with a former age, when Lord Hervey, writing from Kensington, said the road was so infamously bad that he lived there in a solitude like that of a sailor cast away upon a lonely rock in mid-ocean. The only people who enjoyed this condition of affairs appear to have been the footpads and the highwaymen, who had the very best of times, until they were caught. Indeed, in the days when the stage-coaches performed the then marvellous feats of travelling at anything from three to five miles an hour, under favourable circumstances, the road could not be considered safe after Hyde Park Corner was left behind; and records tell of highway robberies, with the romantic accessories of blunderbusses and horse-pistols, at Knightsbridge so late as 1799. [Sidenote: _THE "HALFWAY HOUSE"_] [Illustration: HYDE PARK CORNER, 1797.]