In the country, many thousands of square miles, now enclosed and cultivated, were marsh, forest, and heath. The peasant kept a flock of geese on what is now an orchard rich with apple blossoms. He snared wild fowl on the fen which has long since been drained, and divided into corn and turnip fields. He cut turf among the furze bushes on the moor, which is now a meadow, bright with clover, and renowned for its butter and its cheese. The market-place, which the rustic can now reach with his cart in an hour, was then a day’s journey from his home. On the best lines of communication, the ruts of the roads were deep, the descents precipitous, and the way often such as it was hardly possible to distinguish, in the dusk, from the unenclosed heath and fen which lay on both sides. It was only in fine weather that the whole breadth of the road was available; for, in wet, the mud lay deep both on the right and the left, and only a narrow track of firm ground rose above the quagmire on each hand. Almost every day coaches stuck fast, until teams of cattle could be procured from some neighbouring farm, to tug them out of the slough in which they were imbedded. On the best highways, heavy goods were generally conveyed by stage waggons, in the straw of which nestled a crowd of passengers, who were not able to ride on horseback, and could not afford to indulge in the luxury of a coach. The expense of transmitting heavy goods was enormous. From London to Birmingham, the charge was £7 a ton; and from London to Exeter it was £12. The cost of conveyance amounted to a prohibitory tax on many useful articles; and coal, in particular, was never seen except in the districts where it was produced, or in the districts to which it was conveyed by water. On by-roads, and generally throughout the country north of York and west of Exeter, goods were carried by long trains of pack-horses; and a traveller of humble condition often found it convenient to perform a journey, mounted on a pack-saddle, and seated between two baskets. The rich commonly travelled in their own carriages, drawn by at least four horses, and often by six, because, with a less number, there was great danger of sticking fast. Flying coaches ran thrice a week from London to the chief towns; but no stage-coach, indeed no stage-waggon, appears to have proceeded further north than York, or further west than Exeter. The ordinary day’s journey of a _flying_ coach was about fifty miles in summer; and in winter, when the roads were bad and the nights were long, a little more than thirty. In Cornwall, in the fens of Lincolnshire, and among the hills and lakes of Cumberland, letters were received only once a-week; the letter-bags being carried on horseback, day and night, at the rate of about five miles an hour. Travellers, unless they were numerous and well armed, ran considerable risk of being stopped and plundered; for the mounted highwayman was to be found on every main