On it, if horses had been in the habit of going as fast as they do now, a carriage might have been drawn at any given rate of velocity, till after the road had passed through two or three small villages and towns, and a space of about twenty miles, when it again got into the sand, and then plunged like an eel--which it very much resembled in some other respects--into a deep mud. This state, however, lasted not long; but, issuing like a bittern from the morass, the road took its flight over the hills, which were low wooded and well cultivated for about twenty miles further, and then began to assume a wilder and more barren aspect, till at length, when their summits were crossed, and at the distance of about sixty miles from Moorhurst, they presented on their northern side a wide range of rough, chill, rocky country, covered only by short brown turf from which the sheep had much ado to nibble a scanty subsistence, and decorated alone by fine hawthorns and hanging birches, except where, in the deeper dells, the oak and elm had sought and found a friendly shelter. Forges and foundries, and manufactories of various kinds, have since blackened and enlivened that part of the country; but at the period which I speak of, the great demon of civilization had not gone forth, with a smoky chimney in one hand, and a steaming kettle in the other, equalizing and vulgarizing the whole earth; and a tract of about forty miles in length, and from ten to fifteen in breadth, was left upon the side of those hills, if not without any sign of man's habitation, at least without any sign of his arts, except, indeed, the patriarchal one of sheep-feeding. Here and there, in the nooks and dells, indeed, an old farm-house, which perhaps might boast a few acres of corn land around it, showed the dwelling-place of the great sheep farmer, who, riding over the hills adjacent, might generally say, "I am monarch of all I survey." But these had never been many; and the loneliness of the situation, an increasing taste for towns and luxuries, and various changes in the state of society, on which it is not worth while to dwell, had diminished the amount of inhabitants to even a smaller number than it had once contained. Two farms had often been joined in one; some of them were untenanted, and encroached upon by their neighbours; some of the few-houses that did exist were vacant, and some were tumbling down.