of gravel and morass. Had he been a young man he might have
walked safely and speedily under the guidance of some frugal swain or
tripping dairymaid returning from market. Had he been a wise man he
would have hired a nag, and trotted soberly along such bridle-roads as he
found. But he was neither a young nor a wise man. His better years had
been passed in the counting-houses of Santarem, and his bodily activity
was impaired by long and copious infusions of generous old port. So, as
he could neither walk nor ride, he deposited his portly and withal
somewhat gouty person in a coach-and-six, and set forth upon his
fraternal quest. He had little reason to plume himself upon the pomp and
circumstance of his equipage. The six hired coach-horses, albeit of the
strong Flanders breed, were in a few hours engulfed in a black pool; his
coach, or rather his travelling mansion, was inextricably sunk in the
same slimy hollow; and the merchant himself, whose journeys had hitherto
been made on the sober back of a Lusitanian mule, was ignominiously
dragged by two cowherds through his coach-windows,--and mounted on one of
the wheelers, he was brought back, drenched and weary, to the place
whence he set out. In high dudgeon, the purveyor of Bacchus returned to
London, and could never be induced to resume the search of his "Anna
soror."

Such imperfect means of transit materially affected both the manners and
the intelligence of the age. Postal arrangements indeed existed, but of
the rudest kind. It was common for letters to be left at the principal
inns on the main road, to be delivered when called for. They remained
often in the bar until the address was illegible, or smoke had dyed the
paper a saffron-yellow. Special announcements of deaths and births or
urgent business were necessarily entrusted to special messengers; and the
title and superscription of these privately-sent letters generally
contain very minute and even peremptory injunctions of a certain and
swift delivery. But for such cautions, a rich uncle might have been
quietly inurned without his expectant nephews hearing of his decease; and
a whole college kept waiting, till the year of grace had passed, for the
news of a fat rector's much-desired apoplexy. The death of good Queen
Bess was not known in some of the remoter parishes of Devonshire until
the courtiers of James had ceased to wear mourning for her. The Hebrews
of York heard with quivering lips and ashe