d travels not, but runs a race.

From Paris gazette a-la-main,
This day arrived, without his train,
Mordanto in a week from Spain.

A messenger comes all a-reek,
Mordanto at Madrid to seek;
He left the town above a week.

Next day the post-boy winds his horn,
And rides through Dover in the morn;
Mordanto's landed from Leghorn.

Mordanto gallops on alone;
The roads are with his followers strown;
This breaks a girth and that a bone.

His body active as his mind,
Returning sound in limb and wind,
Except some leather lost behind.

A skeleton in outward figure,
His meagre corpse, though full of vigour,
Would halt behind him, were it bigger.

So wonderful his expedition,
When you have not the least suspicion
He's with you like an apparition."

The badness of the roads and the rude forms of wheel-carriages added to
the expense of travelling. A canon of Salisbury Cathedral may now travel
to London at a cost which is scarcely felt by his prebendal income: but
in the days of Peter of Blois the whole proceeds of a stall were
inadequate to the expenses of such a journey. In the thirteenth century
a bishop of Hereford was detained at Wantling by lack of money for
post-horses, and but for the aid of some pious monastery or peccant baron
in the neighbourhood, who seized the opportunity of compounding for his
sins, the successor of the apostles must, like the apostles, have
completed his journey on foot.

In the fourteenth century roads were so far improved, that jobbing horses
became a regular business, and the licenses for hackneys and guides added
to the returns of the exchequer. A fare of twelvepence was paid for
horse-hire from Southwark to Rochester; and sixpence was the charge of
conveyance from Canterbury to Dover. We do not know the rate at which
the equestrians travelled. Ancient Pistol informs us that "the
hollow-pampered jades of Asia could go but thirty miles a-day." But
these cattle seem to have been like Jeshurun, fat and perchance kicking,
and accustomed to the tardy pace of Asiatic pomp.

Shakspeare and Steele both expatiate on the casualties incident to riding
upon hired horses. Petruchio and Catherine, like Dr. Samuel Johnson and
Hetty, made their wedding tour on horseback; and each trip ended with a
similar result--the temporary obedience of the fair brides to the marital
yokes. After this fashion Grumio tel