*[2] We may incidentally mention three other journeys south by future Lords Chancellors. Mansfield rode up from Scotland to London when a boy, taking two months to make the journey on his pony. Wedderburn's journey by coach from Edinburgh to London, in 1757, occupied him six days. "When I first reached London," said the late Lord Campbell, "I performed the same journey in three nights and two days, Mr. Palmer's mail-coaches being then established; but this swift travelling was considered dangerous as well as wonderful, and I was gravely advised to stay a day at York, as several passengers who had gone through without stopping had died of apoplexy from the rapidity of the motion!" *[3] C. H. Moritz: 'Reise eines Deutschen in England im Jahre 1782.' Berlin, 1783. *[4] Arthur Young's 'Six Weeks' Tour in the Southern Counties of England and Wales,' 2nd ed., 1769, pp. 88-9. *[5] 'Six Weeks Tour' in the Southern Counties of England and Wales,' pp. 153-5. The roads all over South Wales were equally bad down to the beginning of the present century. At Halfway, near Trecastle, in Breconshire, South Wales, a small obelisk is still to be seen, which was erected to commemorate the turn over and destruction of the mail coach over a steep of l30 feet; the driver and passengers escaping unhurt. *[6] 'A Six Months' Tour through the North of England,' vol. iv., p. 431. *[7] Letter to Wyatt, October 5th, 1787, MS. *[8] Act 15 Car. II., c. 1. *[9] The preamble of the Act recites that "The ancient highway and post-road leading from London to York, and so into Scotland, and likewise from London into Lincolnshire, lieth for many miles in the counties of Hertford, Cambridge, and Huntingdon, in many of which places the road, by reason of the great and many loads which are weekly drawn in waggons through the said places, as well as by reason of the great trade of barley and malt that cometh to Ware, and so is conveyed by water to the city of London, as well as other carriages, both from the north parts as also from the city of Norwich, St. Edmondsbury, and the town of Cambridge, to London, is very ruinous, and become almost impassable, insomuch that it is become very dangerous to all his Majesty's liege people that pass that way," &c. *[10] Down to the year 1756, Newcastle and Carlisle were only connected by a bridle way. In that year, Marshal Wade employed his army to construct a road by way of Harlaw and Cholterford, following for thirty miles the line of the old Roman Wall, the materials of which he used to construct his "agger" and culverts. This was long after known as "the military road." *[11] The Blandford waggoner said, "Roads had but one object--for waggon-driving. He required but four-foot width in a lane, and all the rest might go to the devil." He added, "The gentry ought to stay at home, and be d----d, and not run gossiping up and down the country."--Roberts's 'Social History of the Southern Counties.'