's, but deep enough for
mischief; and having, probably, no similar excuse. And thus at last, about
ten miles from Preston, I found myself left in charge of his Majesty's
London and Glasgow mail, then running about eleven miles an hour.

What made this negligence less criminal than else it must have been
thought, was the condition of the roads at night during the assizes. At
that time all the law business of populous Liverpool, and of populous
Manchester, with its vast cincture of populous rural districts, was called
up by ancient usage to the tribunal of Lilliputian Lancaster. To break up
this old traditional usage required a conflict with powerful established
interests, a large system of new arrangements, and a new parliamentary
statute. As things were at present, twice in the year so vast a body of
business rolled northwards, from the southern quarter of the county, that
a fortnight at least occupied the severe exertions of two judges for its
dispatch. The consequence of this was--that every horse available for such
a service, along the whole line of road, was exhausted in carrying down the
multitudes of people who were parties to the different suits. By sunset,
therefore, it usually happened that, through utter exhaustion amongst
men and horses, the roads were all silent. Except exhaustion in the vast
adjacent county of York from a contested election, nothing like it was
ordinarily witnessed in England.

On this occasion, the usual silence and solitude prevailed along the road.
Not a hoof nor a wheel was to be heard. And to strengthen this false
luxurious confidence in the noiseless roads, it happened also that the
night was one of peculiar solemnity and peace. I myself, though slightly
alive to the possibilities of peril, had so far yielded to the influence of
the mighty calm as to sink into a profound reverie. The month was August,
in which lay my own birth-day; a festival to every thoughtful man
suggesting solemn and often sigh-born thoughts.[1] The county was my own
native county--upon which, in its southern section, more than upon any
equal area known to man past or present, had descended the original curse
of labour in its heaviest form, not mastering the bodies of men only as of
slaves, or criminals in mines, but working through the fiery will. Upon no
equal space of earth, was, or ever had been, the same energy of human
power put forth daily. At this particular season also of the assizes, that
dreadful hurric