[Sidenote: _ST. ALBANS_] In 1826, seventy-two coaches passed through St. Albans every twenty-four hours, and it was calculated that the travellers passing through in the same time numbered no fewer than 1,000, of whom the coaches conveyed 600. The rest were those at the extremes of poverty and wealth, who rode in the waggons or walked; or sped by swiftly and luxuriously, in post-chaises or in their own private chariots. How many, one wonders, are the motor-cars that now daily speed, in clouds of dust, up Ridge Hill and so through London Colney and St. Albans to North Wales, or to Manchester and then, across the Border, into Scotland? The streets of St. Albans are by no means adapted for the hurrying methods of to-day; and although the town or the city, as we must now style it—is but twenty-one miles from the centre of London, it is even yet a place of narrow and winding ways. There is, indeed, to this day a certain savour of monasticism about St. Albans, largely though the place has grown of late years. The Abbey, on its crowning ridge, of course dominates everything; but, apart from that chief feature, you have old churches, old houses of every degree of antiquity down to the time of George the Third (after which period houses cease to be antique), and old inns. And with all these evidences of a venerable age there is yet a lively air, a bustling cheeriness, about St. Albans that render it really lovable. Much might be said of St. Albans: of the ruins of Sopwell nunnery, down in the quelchy water-meadows as you come in from London; of St. Stephen’s, the tiny village on its height, looking down upon the city; of the ancient Abbey Gatehouse, proudly known as “the oldest school in England.” Indeed, something must needs be said of this last. It stands immediately by the West Front of the Abbey, and is the last relic of the vanished monastery. [Sidenote: _ARISTOCRATIC CHURCHMEN_]