chairman of the committee, tendering himself for examination, in order to enlighten them on the subject of their deliberations, and that the committee had unanimously declined the favour, on the ground that it was not at all probable his lordship could offer any suggestion or communicate any information of the slightest value.' Lord Brougham has been always a stanch advocate for the dignity and pre-eminence of law courts and judges; he holds, spite of the general experience of this as well as other countries, that the liberties of the subject are safer under the ægis of legal tribunals than of parliaments. This notion or prejudice it was which governed his conduct on the 'privilege' question-a notion or prejudice which out of Westminster Hall is not happily very widely entertained.

Lord Brougham was married in 1819 to the widow of John Spalding, Esq., and the niece of the Lords Auckland and Henley. Two children, daughters, have been born to him: the first, Eleanor Sarah, died in infancy; the second, Eleanor Louisa, died on the 30th of November 1839. His lordship's mother died on the last day of the same year, the 31st of December 1839.

His lordship, except during the sitting of parliament, resides chiefly at Cannes, in the south of France, where he has built a château, embedded in orange-groves, and led to by a long avenue of fruit-trees. His residence and expenditure have, according to Mr Baillie Cochrane, greatly benefited the neighbourhood, where he is much liked and respected. This choice of a residence abroad, this 'foreign phantasy,' to quote his lordship's words, has, there can be no doubt, increased the disfavour with which he has been of late years regarded. This disfavour is said to have been painfully manifested by the want of public sympathy on a recent occasion when Lord Brougham announced that the state of his health rendered it probable that he was then in his place in the House of Lords for the last time. But Lord Brougham could not expect to fill the mind of the nation for so long a period to the exclusion of every other subject. Men's thoughts were at the time concentrated on other topics, and there was nothing practical or urgent enough in the misgivings of an invalid to recall them. Such was not the case when it was reported some years before that he was dead. Then was political enmity disarmed; then were even cliques forgotten; then was the Man judged of apart from the turmoil of polemics that had so long hissed around him; and then did the press and the people declare with one voice that a noble and mighty spirit had departed from among us. It is now said that Lord Brougham's health is improving; and we may fairly indulge a hope, that a long, calm evening may yet remain to him which, if wanting the fervid brilliancy of his day of life, may glow with a more equable and genial light, and be rendered subservient to the unselfish aims of a wise and pure ambition.

END OF VOL. XI.

BEFORE

EFORE the days of Semiramis, whose highways are among the first mentioned in history, or the times when Roman way-wrights constructed thoroughfares as durable as their language, or Onund of Norway earned his title of 'road-maker,' or Macadam proved the virtue of broken granite, mankind could not have failed to perceive that in proportion to the smoothness and levelness of the ground over which they journeyed, so was the speed, ease, and comfort of travelling. 'Make the paths straight,' must have been a precept of peculiar significance in an age when paths were the only routes; and we can easily imagine that the maker of a road would be regarded with not less of reverent gratitude than he who 'digged a well.' Such insight as we get into remote antiquity shews us that the earliest nations in the 'far east,' and in the countries bordering the Mediterranean-had mastered the rudiments of road-making, and shaped them into a completeness not far removed from science. The Romans, borrowing the idea of paved roads from the Carthaginians, set to work with that practical common sense which characterised them, and constructed roads from their capital city to every quarter of their mighty empire. With them a chief point was to have the roads straight and level; they understood too well the importance and advantage of facile means of transit and communication, and with singular skill and boldness they pierced or excavated hills, built bridges and viaducts, and raised embankments, remarkable alike for their extent and their durability. In Italy alone there were several thousand miles of public highways; of these the 'Queen of Roads,' or 'Appian Way,' 142 miles in length, is the most noteworthy. It was constructed by Appius Claudius 310 years before the birth No. 89. VOL. XII.

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of Christ; and Procopius, writing in the sixth century, says of it :-' To traverse the Appian Way is a distance of five days' journey for a good walker, and it leads from Rome to Capua; its breadth is such that two chariots may meet upon it and pass each other without interruption; and its magnificence surpasses that of all other roads. For constructing this great work, Appius caused the materials to be fetched from a great distance, so as to have all the stones hard and of the nature of millstones, such as are not to be found in this part of the country. Having ordered this material to be smoothed and polished, the stones were cut in corresponding angles, so as to fit together in joinings without the intervention of copper or any other material to bind them, and in this manner they were so firmly united, that in looking at them one would say they had not been put together by art, but had grown so upon the spot; and notwithstanding the wear of so many ages-being traversed daily by a multitude of vehicles and all sorts of cattle -they still remain unmoved; nor can the least trace of ruin or waste be observed upon these stones, neither do they appear to have lost any of their beautiful polish; and such is the Appian Way.'

Much of this description remains true even at the present day; and the road, after the lapse of more than 2000 years, still presents an instructive model to the modern artificer.

With the exception of the Roman highways, the public thoroughfares in England scarcely deserved the name of roads. During the period of Saxon rule, and down to the Stuarts, they were mere tracks across the country, patched with rude paving in the softer places, and 'very noisome and tedious to travel in, and dangerous to all passengers and carriages,' as declared in the act imposing 'statute labour' for the repair of the highways in the reign of Mary. The labour when performed was capricious, not systematic: people mended such portions as traversed their farms or estates, and left the rest to take care of itself.

The first attempts at real improvement may be considered as dating from the passing of the first turnpike act in 1653, of which the preamble stated that parts of the great north road leading to York and Scotland were 'very ruinous and become almost impassable, insomuch that it is become very dangerous to all his majesty's liege people that pass that way.' In the reign of Charles II. the taking of tolls was first established on a turnpikeroad leading from Hertfordshire to the counties of Huntingdon and Cambridge. So slow, however, was the progress of improvement, that the roads throughout the country were but little changed for the better during the next hundred years; many became worse, and some which had been wide were narrowed by encroachments and neglect. According to Stow, wagons were in use on some roads for the conveyance of goods and passengers as early as 1541; but the most of the traffic was carried on by means of packhorses, which, tethered together in long trains, made their way slowly and painfully along the causeways, and whoever met them was obliged to step off into the mire on either side to get out of their way. 'The people of Kendal,' says Roger North, writing in 1676, could write to most trading towns and have answers by the packs-for all is horse-carriage-with returns-time being allowed-as certain as by the post.' In 1609 to send a letter from York to Oxford, and get back an answer, took a whole month, and even after the establishment of the post in 1660 correspondence was

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but little expedited. The introduction of coaches, asserted a writer of the day, would ruin the country; the wagons mentioned by old Stow were advocated as travelling easily, without jolting men's bodies or hurrying them along,' which the obnoxious coaches did, at four miles an hour. In 1673 travellers were kept a week on the road between London and Exeter, the fare being 40s. in summer and 45s. in winter: the same fare was charged from London to Chester or York. In 1678 a six-horse coach took six days to perform the journey from Edinburgh to Glasgow. At the end of the seventeenth century the stage-coach with six horses occupied two days in the journey from London to Cambridge, fifty-seven miles; and fifty years later the journey to Oxford consumed the same time. Travelling by night was first introduced about 1740, not without opposition from those who foresaw ruin in any departure from old practice. Hogarth's picture, The Country Inn Yard,' brings before us the ordinary coach of the period. It underwent alterations from time to time as fancy or convenience dictated. In 1750 the Alton and Farnham Machine' was started with a wicker-basket slung behind for the outside passengers.

In the present day a man goes to Constantinople and back as an ordinary pleasure-trip calling for no especial remark. Not so a century ago. It was not uncommon at that period for people whose business led them from the Scottish to the English metropolis to make their wills before starting. The journey was indeed a formidable one, as may be gathered from an advertisement in the Edinburgh Courant' for 1758, stating that, with God's permission, the coach would 'go in ten days in summer and twelve in winter: a man may now breakfast in London and sup in Edinburgh, 400 miles distant, without undergoing severe fatigue, or sitting up to a late hour; and if so inclined, may cross over to New York in less time than was formerly consumed between the two cities. In 1765 a' flyingcoach,' drawn by eight horses, travelled from London to Dover in a day, fare 21s.

He

Arthur Young's experiences during his 'Tour' in 1770 furnish conclusive evidence as to the condition of the roads at a still later date. was travelling in Lancashire, a county now among those best furnished with railways, and says: 'I know not, in the whole range of language, terms sufficiently expressive to describe this infernal road. To look over a map, and perceive that it is a principal one, not only to some towns, but even whole counties, one would naturally conclude it to be at least decent; but let me most seriously caution all travellers who may accidentally purpose to travel this terrible county to avoid it as they would the devil, for a thousand to one but they break their necks or their limbs by overthrows or breakings-down. They will here meet with ruts, which I actually measured, four feet deep, and floating with mud, only from a wet summer-what, therefore, must it be after a winter? The only mending it receives in places is the tumbling in some loose stones, which serve no other purpose but jolting a carriage in the most intolerable manner. These are not merely opinions, but facts; for I actually passed three carts broken down in these eighteen miles of execrable memory.' This was not the only instance of bad roads that Young met with; he came upon others farther north, and denounces them in language equally emphatic.

On the eve of the nineteenth century travelling was still slow. Mr

Porter states, that he 'well remembers leaving the town of Gosport (in 1798) at one o'clock of the morning in the Telegraph, then considered a fast coach, and arriving at the Golden Cross, Charing Cross, at eight in the evening; thus occupying nineteen hours in travelling eighty miles, being at the rate of rather more than four miles an hour.'

The time, however, had come for a change; and Telford and Macadam, by their improvements in road-making, prepared the way for more rapid locomotion. The insurrections in Scotland in '15 and '45 led to the formation of numerous roads which penetrated the wildest districts of the Highlands, extending altogether to nearly 1000 miles in length. In these, real principles of construction were acted on, and the system of maintenance developed which gave to us the best roads in the world. In 1815 Telford commenced that grand memorial of his ability—the Holyhead Road; a work that may safely be contrasted with the most famous highways of antiquity, regard being had to smoothness of motion; and though no longer required for the service of the mail, its preservation will, we hope, be diligently cared for by those to whose charge it is intrusted. The establishment of this road effected an important change in our communication with Ireland. 'Previous to 1815, the sailing-packets which plied between Dublin and Holyhead were often tossed for several days in a stormy sea; and when the passengers had completed their miserable voyage, they were landed upon rugged, unprotected rocks, from whence they proceeded by miserable tracts of road, composed of a succession of circuitous and craggy inequalities, for twenty-five miles, across the Island of Anglesey to the Menai Strait—a troublesome and dangerous tidal ferry, over which the mail and other coaches could not be passed in boisterous weather.' Telford carried his road across this strait by means of the famous suspension-bridge which was opened in January 1826, the first stone having been laid in August 1819. It is 1710 feet long, contains 4,373,282 lbs. of iron, or 2186 tons, and cost, with the approaches, £120,000. The prime object kept in view was to diminish friction, to render draught as easy as possible, and these desiderata were attained. Macadam, about 1816, began to shew that to spread a layer of broken granite over the natural soil, properly prepared and levelled, was the best mode of forming a permanent and serviceable road; and his principles were actively reduced to practice in nearly all parts of the kingdom. The impulse once given, further improvements were continually sought after, and the result was a system of highways, of hard granite roads, as near perfection as mechanical and engineering science could make them. In some places 'granite tracks,' or 'stone tramways,' were laid down, and wherever tried, the result proved in favour of facility of transit. They had long been in use in the streets of Milan; and on Dartmoor a stone trackway was laid for twenty miles, from the quarries to Plymouth. A granite line was also laid from London towards the East India Docks along the Commercial Road; the Forth and Clyde Canal Company made use of iron for a similar purpose; and slate was employed in other quarters, but there was no difference in the results. One horse on the level track could do as much work as four on a common road. The advantage gained was so striking, that a proposal was made to lay granite tracks on the slopes of all the highways in the kingdom, as a certain remedy against the difficulty of ascending them.