een, no, not ten, in vour-and-twenty days!
There was the duik--not this 'un; he be'ant no gude; but this 'un's
vather--why, when he'd come down the road, the cattle did be a-going,
vour days an eend. Here'd be the tooter and the young gen'lmen, and
the governess and the young leddies, and then the servants--they'd
be al'ays the grandest folk of all--and then the duik and the
doochess--Lord love 'ee, zur; the money did fly in them days! But
now--" and the feeling of scorn and contempt which the lame ostler
was enabled by his native talent to throw into the word "now," was
quite as eloquent against the power of steam as anything that has
been spoken at dinners, or written in pamphlets by the keenest
admirers of latter-day lights.

"Why, luke at this 'ere town," continued he of the sieve, "the grass
be a-growing in the very streets;--that can't be no gude. Why, luke
'ee here, zur; I do be a-standing at this 'ere gateway, just this
way, hour arter hour, and my heyes is hopen mostly;--I zees who's
a-coming and who's a-going. Nobody's a-coming and nobody's a-going;
that can't be no gude. Luke at that there homnibus; why, darn me--"
and now, in his eloquence at this peculiar point, my friend became
more loud and powerful than ever--"why, darn me, if maister harns
enough with that there bus to put hiron on them 'osses' feet,
I'll--be--blowed!" And as he uttered this hypothetical denunciation
on himself he spoke very slowly, bringing out every word as it were
separately, and lowering himself at his knees at every sound, moving
at the same time his right hand up and down. When he had finished,
he fixed his eyes upon the ground, pointing downwards, as if there
was to be the site of his doom if the curse that he had called down
upon himself should ever come to pass; and then, waiting no further
converse, he hobbled away, melancholy, to his deserted stables.

Oh, my friend! my poor lame friend! it will avail nothing to tell
thee of Liverpool and Manchester; of the glories of Glasgow, with her
flourishing banks; of London, with its third millions of inhabitants;
of the great things which commerce is doing for this nation of thine!
What is commerce to thee, unless it be commerce in posting on that
worn-out, all but useless great western turnpike-road? There is
nothing left for thee but to be carted away as rubbish--for thee
and for many of us in these now prosperous days; oh, my melancholy,
care-ridden friend!

Courcy Castle was c