Dean Swift is the great classic figure on the Holyhead Road at this period; although, to be sure, a very elusive and shadowy one, so far as records of his journeys are concerned. He, too, like Pennant’s hardy single gentlemen, commonly rode horseback, and has left traces of his presence here and there along the road, generally in witty and biting epigrams, written with a diamond ring on the windows of wayside inns. There could scarce, at this time, be anything more naïvely amusing than the pleased surprise he exhibits in a letter written to Pope in 1726, at “the quick change” he made in seven days from London to Dublin “through many nations and languages unknown to the civilised world,” when he had expected the enterprise, “with moderate fortune,” to occupy ten or eleven. “I have often reflected,” he adds, “in how few hours with a swift horse or a strong gale, a man may come among a people as unknown to him as the antipodes.” II The question, “How far to Holyhead?” had in old days been a difficult one to answer. It was not only in the uncertainty and variety of routes that the difficulty of accurately measuring the number of miles lay, but in the wild and conflicting ideas as to what really constituted a mile. This uncertainty lasted until the middle of the eighteenth century, when the first milestones since the days of the Romans were erected. It was, in fact, not before 1750, when, as part of their statutory obligations, the numerous Turnpike Trusts began to erect their milestones, that distances began to be publicly and correctly measured. It had already long been known that the mileages computed by the Post Office, in dealing with postmasters and the mails, were very inaccurate throughout the country, and for many years previously compilers of road-books had been accustomed to print two tables of distances; one the “computed” and Post Office mile, and the other the measured mile.