It may be well to give a few particulars of the ‘Telegraph’ here before proceeding. It was started in 1826 by Mrs. Nelson, of the ‘Bull,’ Aldgate, and originally took seventeen hours between Piccadilly and the ‘Half Moon,’ Exeter. It left Piccadilly at 5.30 A.M., and arrived at Exeter at 10.30 P.M. Twenty minutes allowed for breakfast at Bagshot, and thirty minutes for dinner at Deptford Inn. The ‘Telegraph,’ be it said, was put on the road as a rival to the ‘Quicksilver’ Devonport mail, which, leaving Piccadilly at 8 P.M., arrived at Exeter at 12.34 next day; time, sixteen hours, thirty-four minutes. Going on to Devonport, it arrived at that place at 5.14 P.M., or twenty-one hours, fourteen minutes from London. There were no fewer than twenty-three changes in the 216 miles. II But those travellers who, in the early days of coaching, a century and a half ago, desired the safest, speediest, and most comfortable journey to Exeter, went by a very much longer route than any of those already named. They went, in fact, by the Bath Road and thence through Somerset. The Exeter Road beyond Basingstoke was at that period a miserable waggon-track, without a single turnpike; while the road to Bath had, under the management of numerous turnpike-trusts, already become a comparatively fine highway. The Somersetshire squires were also bestirring themselves to improve their roads, despite the strenuous opposition encountered from the peasantry and others on the score of their rights being invaded, and the anticipated ruin of local trade. A writer of that period, advocating the setting up of turnpikes on the direct road to Exeter, anticipated little trouble in converting that ‘waggon-track’ into a first-class highway. Four turnpikes, he considered, would suffice very well from Salisbury to Exeter; nor would the improvement of the way over the Downs demand much labour, for the bottom was solid, and one general expense for pickaxe and spade work, for levelling, and for widening at the approaches to the villages would last a long while; experience proving so much, since those portions of the road remained pretty much the same as they had been in the days of Julius Cæsar. ‘It may be objected,’ continues this reformer, ‘that the peasantry will demolish these turnpikes so soon as they are erected, but we will not suppose this is in a well-governed happy state like ours. _Lex non supponet odiosa._ If such terrors were to take place, the great legislative power would lie at the mercy of the rabble. If the mob will not hear reason they must be taught it. [Sidenote: _A PLEA FOR GOOD ROADS_]