projector of the
scheme, which he has told me many of the wisest heads of England have
been dreaming of during a period of six hundred years, and which it seems
was alluded to by a certain Brazen Head in the story-book of Friar Bacon,
who is generally supposed to have been a wizard, but in reality was a
great philosopher. Young man, in less than twenty years, by which time I
shall be dead and gone, England will be surrounded with roads of metal,
on which armies may travel with mighty velocity, and of which the walls
of brass and iron by which the friar proposed to defend his native land
are the types." He then, shaking me by the hand, proceeded on his way,
whilst I returned to the inn.

CHAPTER XXVII

Francis Ardry--His Misfortunes--Dog and Lion Fight--Great Men of the
World.

A few days after the circumstance which I have last commemorated, it
chanced that, as I was standing at the door of the inn, one of the
numerous stage-coaches which were in the habit of stopping there, drove
up, and several passengers got down. I had assisted a woman with a
couple of children to dismount, and had just delivered to her a band-box,
which appeared to be her only property, which she had begged me to fetch
down from the roof, when I felt a hand laid upon my shoulder, and heard a
voice exclaim, "Is it possible, old fellow, that I find you in this
place?" I turned round, and, wrapped in a large blue cloak, I beheld my
good friend Francis Ardry. I shook him most warmly by the hand, and
said, "If you are surprised to see me, I am no less so to see you; where
are you bound to?"

"I am bound for L-; at any rate, I am booked for that sea-port," said my
friend in reply.

"I am sorry for it," said I, "for in that case we shall have to part in a
quarter of an hour, the coach by which you came stopping no longer."

"And whither are you bound?" demanded my friend.

"I am stopping at present in this house, quite undetermined as to what to
do."

"Then come along with me," said Francis Ardry.

"That I can scarcely do," said I; "I have a horse in the stall which I
cannot afford to ruin by racing to L--- by the side of your coach."

My friend mused for a moment: "I have no particular business at L---,"
said he; "I was merely going thither to pass a day or two, till an
affair, in which I am deeply interested, at C--- shall come off. I think
I shall stay with you for four-and-twenty hours at least; I have been
rather melancholy