But what has probably fixed all this in my mind during nearly three quarters of a century was my father’s pat application of one of our lines to the difficulties of those peripatetic poetizings. “_Muse and sound of wheel do not well agree_,” read the cunningly prepared original, which the _alumnus_ with wonderful sagacity was to turn into, “_Non bene conveniunt Musa rotæque sonus_.” “That,” said my father, as he turned sharp round the corner into the comparative quiet of Featherstone Buildings, “is exactly why I turned out of Holborn!” I do not know whether children of eight years old, or thereabouts, would at the present day be allowed to range London so freely as we were. But our great amusement and delight was to take long exploring walks in as distant parts of the huge (though then comparatively small) city as could be compassed within the time at our disposition. One especially favourite excursion, I well remember, was to the White Horse Cellar in Piccadilly to see the coaches start or arrive. I knew all their names, and their supposed comparative speed. By this means, indeed, came my first introduction to English geography. Formal lessons on such a thoroughly “commercial academy” subject were not, of course, thought of for an aspiring Wykehamist. But for the due enjoyment of the White Horse Cellar spectacle it was necessary to know the whereabouts of the cities, their distance from London, and the routes by which they were reached. It thus came to pass that our geographical notions were of a curiously partial description--tolerably copious and accurate as regards the south and west of England, far less so as regards the north. For the north country coaches did not start from Piccadilly. On the opposite side of the way to the White Horse Cellar there was another coaching inn, the White Bear, on which I remember we used to look with much contempt, from the belief, whether in any degree well founded I know not, that the coaches which stopped there on their way out of town, or arrived there, were mainly slow coaches.