Sing Wo! &c.
The landlords cry, What shall we do? our business is no more,
The railroad it has ruined us, who badly fared before;
'Tis luck and gold to one or two, but ruined are a score.
Sing Wo! &c."
The leathern belt worn by the groom nowadays is the survival of the strap to which the lady held, as she sat on a pillion behind her groom. The horses ridden in those days must have been strong, or the distances not considerable, and the pace moderate, for to carry two full-grown persons cannot have been a trifle for a horse on bad roads.
"It is of some importance," said Sydney Smith, "at what period a man is born. A young man alive at this period hardly knows to what improvements of human life he has been introduced; and I would bring before his notice the changes that have taken place in England since I began to breathe the breath of life—a period of seventy years. I have been nine hours sailing from Dover to Calais before the invention of steam. It took me nine hours to go from Taunton to Bath before the invention of railroads. In going from Taunton to Bath I suffered between ten thousand and twelve thousand severe contusions before stone-breaking MacAdam was born. I paid fifteen pounds in a single year for repair of carriage-springs on the pavement of London, and I now glide without noise or fracture on wooden pavement. I can walk without molestation from one end of London to another; or, if tired, get into a cheap and active cab, instead of those cottages on wheels which the hackney coaches were at the beginning of my life. I forgot to add, that as the basket of the stage-coaches in which luggage was then carried had no springs, your clothes were rubbed all to pieces; and that even in the best society, one-third of the gentlemen were always drunk. I am now ashamed that I was not formerly more discontented, and am utterly surprised that all these changes and inventions did not occur two centuries ago."
