ing letter-bags at every gentleman's lodge as we pass, with a due
proportion of fish-baskets and other diminutive parcels. Hedges, row
after row, dance past us with all their leaves and blossoms--milestone
after milestone is merrily left behind--we have crossed the Maran, the
Joel; the sluggish Ouse, trotted gaily on under the shadow of the
episcopal towers of Buckden, and perform wonders with a knife and fork, in
the short space of twenty minutes, in the comfortable hotel at Stamford.
Refreshed and invigorated with a couple of ducks and a vast goblet of
home-brewed--for it is well known we and all other good subjects are rigid
anti-Mathewsians--we continue our course through unnumbered villages and
market towns, Coltersworth, Spittlegate, Ponton, Grantham, till Newark
opens her hospitable gates; and finally, as "the shades of eve begin to
fall," we descend from our proud eminence and commit ourselves to the
tender attentions of a civil landlord, two waiters, and a stout
chambermaid, in the chief inn of the good town of Lincoln.

Many coaches followed our track. Like the waves of the summer, as one
rolled away, another as bright and as shining, came on. Every lane formed
a "terminus," where a motion of the hand gave notice to the coachman that
a passenger wished to get in; and it is impossible to doubt that the
traffic along that smooth and wide highway was a source of prosperity to
the whole neighbourhood.

The coaches are now off the road--the letters are carried by a mail train,
and forwarded across in a high gig with red wheels, and the liveliness and
bustle of all the villages and country towns are gone--a few more years,
and the ruin of every turnpike trust in England will be another proof of
the irresistible power of steam.

It is not contended that rapid intercommunication is an evil; or even that
the towns we have mentioned, and hundreds of others, in all parts of the
country, do not participate in the advantage, to the extent of being
within a shorter distance of London than they were before; for it is
evident, that to go to Lincoln would occupy less time if you went to
Leicester by the railroad, and travelled the remaining miles by coach. But
this is what we maintain--that towns or lines of road through which the
railway runs, have an undue advantage--and that the prosperity so
acquired, is at the expense of the towns which are not only at a distance
from the new mode of communication, but are deprived of th