Produced by Richard Tonsing, Chris Curnow and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive) THE HOLYHEAD ROAD [Illustration: THE “WONDER,” LONDON AND SHREWSBURY COACH. _From a Print after J. Pollard._] THE HOLYHEAD ROAD:/ THE MAIL-COACH ROAD TO DUBLIN By CHARLES G. HARPER Author of “_The Brighton Road_,” “_The Portsmouth Road_,” “_The Dover Road_,” “_The Bath Road_,” “_The Exeter Road_,” “_The Great North Road_,” and “_The Norwich Road_” [Illustration] _Illustrated by the Author, and from Old-Time Prints and Pictures_ _Vol. I. LONDON TO BIRMINGHAM_ LONDON: CHAPMAN & HALL LTD. 1902 [_All rights reserved_] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [Illustration: PREFACE] _“The olden days of travelling, now to return no more, in which distance could not be vanquished without toil_”—_those are the days mourned by Ruskin, who had little better acquaintance with them than afforded by his childish journeys, when his father, a prosperous wine-merchant, travelled the country in a carriage with a certain degree of style. Regrets are, under such circumstances, easily to be understood, just as were those of the old coach-proprietors, innkeepers, coachmen, postboys, and all who depended upon road-travel for their existence; but few among travellers who lived in the days when the change was made from road to rail had feelings of that kind, else railways would not have proved so immediately successful. It has been left for a later era to discover the charm and rosy glamour of old road-faring days, a charm not greatly insisted upon in the literature of those times, which, instead of being rich in praise of the road, is fruitful in accounts of the miseries of travel. Pepys, on the Portsmouth Road in 1668, fearful of losing his way at night, as had often happened to him before; Thoresby, in 1714 and later years, on the Great North Road, thanking God that he had reached home safely; Horace Walpole, on the Brighton Road in 1749, finding the roads almost impassable, therefore, and reasonably enough, “a great damper of curiosity”; Arthur Young for years exhausting the vocabulary of abuse on roads in general; and Jeffrey in 1831, at Grantham, looking dismally forward to being snowed up at Alconbury Hill—these are a few instances, among many, which go to prove, if proof were necessary, that travelling was regarded then as a wholly unmitigated evil._