In the vanished era, only those who could afford it travelled; in the present, only those who _cannot_ afford it go “first.” Jack is as good as his master—“and a d—d sight better,” as the Radical orator said. Caste, happily, is breaking down, and their privileges are being stripped from the governing cliques who for centuries have battened on the public purse. Perhaps it was because they had a prophetic fore-knowledge of all this that the titled and other landowners so strenuously withstood railways at their beginning. They sometimes opposed railways so successfully that great trunk routes, planned to go as direct as possible between two points, were diverted and made circuitous. When the Great Northern Railway was projected it was proposed to follow the highway to the North as nearly as possible, and to go through Stamford; but the Marquis of Exeter opposed the Bill as far as it concerned his own property, and procured a deviation which sent the main line through Grantham, with the results that Stamford languishes while Grantham is made to flourish, and that the short-sightedness of the then Marquis has wofully affected the value of his successor’s property. If the thing were to do again, how eagerly would the Company be invited to take the route it was once forbidden! XXVI WE, none of us, who read the story of the roads, or who make holiday along them, would really like those old times back, when railways were undreamt of, and travelling for the pleasure of it was unknown. It is sufficient to read the old travellers’ tales, to realise what discouragements from leaving one’s own fireside existed then. There was, for instance, toward the close of the seventeenth century, and well on into the eighteenth, an antiquary of repute who lived at Leeds, and journeyed very frequently in the Midlands, Ralph Thoresby was his name. He travelled much, and in all weathers, and knew the Great North Road well. In his day the coaches were often, through the combined badness of the roads and the severity of the weather, obliged to lay up in the winter, like ships in Arctic seas. Like his much more illustrious contemporary, Pepys, he not infrequently lost his way, owing to the roads at that period having no boundary, and once, he tells us, he missed the road between York and Doncaster, fervently thanking God for having found it again. Indeed, all his journeys end with more or less hearty thanksgivings for a safe return. On one occasion we find him missing his pistols at an inn, and darkly suspecting the landlord to be in league with thieves and murderers; but he finds them, after a nerve-shaking search, and proceeds, thanking the Lord for all his mercies. At another time, journeying to London, he passes, and notes the circumstance, “the great common where Sir Ralph Wharton slew the highwayman.” This was doubtless Witham Common, but, although he alludes to the subject as though it were in his time a matter of great notoriety, all details of