es which have taken place, in manners,
morals, feelings, arts, sciences, produce, manufactures, and
government--which has undergone so great a change, as the high roads of
the empire during the last hundred and fifty years. No one can now tell,
where the roads which lay between this place and that then ran. They
have been dug into, ploughed up, turned hither and thither, changed into
canals, or swallowed up in railroads. The face of the country, too, has
been altered, by many a village built, and many an old mansion pulled
down, long tracts of country brought into cultivation, and deep
plantations of old trees shadowing that ground which in those days was
unwholesome marsh, or barren moor. Even Hounslow Heath, beloved by many
of the frequenters of the King's Highway, has disappeared under the
spirit of cultivation, and left no trace of places where many a daring
deed was clone.
However that may be, the road which the young traveller was following,
lay not at all in the direction taken by either of the present roads to
Oxford; but at a short distance from High Wycombe turned off to the
right--that is, supposing the traveller to be going towards London--and
approached the banks of the Thames not far from Marlow. In so doing, it
passed over a long range of high hills, and a wide extent of flat,
common ground upon the top, which was precisely the point whereat Wilton
Brown had arrived, at the very moment we began this digression upon the
state of the King's Highways in those times.
This common ground of which we speak was as bleak as well might be, for
the winds of heaven had certainly room to visit it as roughly as they
chose; it was also uncultivated, and yet it cannot be said to have been
unproductive; for, probably, there never was a space of ground of equal
size, unless it were Maidenhead Thicket, which could show so rich and
luxuriant a crop of gorse, heath, and fern. For a shelter to the latter,
appeared scattered at unequal distances over the ground a few stunted
trees--hawthorns, beeches, and oaks. The beech, however, predominated,
in honour of the county in which the common was situated; for though,
probably, if we knew the origin of the name bestowed on each county in
England, we should find them all significant, yet none, I believe, would
be found more picturesque or appropriate than that given by our good
Saxon ancestors to the county in question--being Buchen-heim, or
Buckingham: the home or land of the beeches.
The gorse, fern, and heath, bes