kfast,
and must have travelled by the same coach as Mr. Pickwick had done, and
reached Bury just in time for dinner, or in six or seven hours. Now it
will not be said that he would not be a whole day going four-and-twenty
miles.

A fair answer to these pleas might be that Boz was not too scrupulous as
to times or distances when he was contriving incidents or events; and
numberless specimens could be given of his inaccuracies. Here, "panting
time toiled after him in vain." It was enough to talk of breakfast and
dinner without accurately computing the space between. But a close
admeasurement of the distance will disprove the Norwich theory. Bury was
twenty-four miles from Ipswich, and Ipswich forty miles from Norwich--a
total of seventy-four miles, to accomplish which would have taken ten,
eleven or twelve hours, to say nothing of the chance of missing the
"correspondance" with the Northern Norwich coach. Then again, Boz is
careful to state that Eatanswill was "one of the smaller towns." In this
class we would not place Norwich, a large Cathedral City, with its
innumerable churches, and population, even then, of over 60,000, whereas
Ipswich was certainly one of these "smaller towns," having only 20,000.
It must be also considered, too, that this was a cross road, when the
pace would be slower than on the great main lines, say, at five miles an
hour, which, with stoppages, &c., would occupy a period for the twenty-
four miles of some four hours, that is, say, from two to six o'clock.
Boz, by his arrangement of the traffic, would seem to assume that a
conveyance could be secured at any time of the day, for Mr. Pickwick
conveniently found one the instant he so abruptly quitted Mrs. Leo
Hunter's, while Winkle and his friends just as conveniently found one
immediately after breakfast. He appears to have been seven hours on the
road. But the strong point on which all Ipswichians may rest secure is
Mr. Pickwick's statement to Mrs. Leo Hunter that Bury was "not many miles
from here."

But an even more convincing proof can be found in Jingle's relation to
Eatanswill. He came over from Bury to Mrs. Leo Hunter's party, leaving
his servant there, at the Hotel, and returned the same evening. The
place must have been but a short way off, when he could go and return in
the same day. Then what brought him to Eatanswill? We are told that at
the time he was courting Miss Nupkins, the Mayor's daughter; of course,
he rushed ov