ELECTRIC CARRIAGES.

245

locomotion, as I firmly believe that if an Act can be passed to encourage their construction, electric carriages will be made to travel at a great speed with perfect safety, and with none of the objectionable characteristics of a steam-engine. It will be merely a matter of charging the battery at intervals during the journey, and this could easily be done at the large towns in which one rested.

The following interesting account of a dog-cart propelled by electricity appeared in the Morning Post of January 6th, 1888, copied from Engineering:

AN ELECTRIC DOG-CART.-Mr. Volk, whose electric railway is known to all visitors to Brighton, has constructed an electrically driven dog-cart, which is attracting a good deal of attention there. It is driven by a half horse-power Immisch motor and sixteen small E. P. S. accumulators, which have a capacity equal to six hours' work. In the desire to keep the machinery light scarcely sufficient power has been provided, so that, although the vehicle will make a speed of nine miles an hour on asphalte, it only makes a speed of four miles on a soft macadam road, while, with two passengers, an incline of one in thirty is the limit of its climbing power. The motor runs at a high speed, and transmits its motion by means of a Reynolds chain to a countershaft, from which another chain carries the power to a four-feet wheel attached to one of the road wheels. This last driving wheel is formed of a series of blocks about one foot apart.-Engineering.

CHAPTER VII.

PAST AND

PRESENT-EIGHTEENTH

CENTURIES.

AND NINETEENTH

One hundred years ago—Ill omens-Three-bottle men-Watchmen and Bow Street runners-Signboards-Village stocks-May-poles ---Beating the bounds-Dick Turpin-"Stand, and deliver!" -Collecting-The ducking-stool-The majesty of the law-The last century-Encouraging virtue by exposing vice-Military patrols-An empty boast--An exchange of property-"I merely borrow "Turpin's death-A sharp archbishop-"Remove that dangerous weapon "-Tyburn tree-Men of the time-Wars of the last century-Abolition of slavery-Yoho !-Washington Irving and an English coach-Virgil on driving.

THE eighteenth century was essentially the period of road travelling. One thing which has a material influence upon civilisation is the ease and speed with which one can perform long journeys.

Any person at the present day who is over sixty years of age should retain a vivid recollection of the mail and stage-coaches, although that mode of travelling may have only continued for a short period. during the very earliest days of their childhood; but all persons now alive of seventy years and upwards must have passed much of their life amidst scenes familiar to travellers on the road previous to the introduction of railways.

ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO.

247

The extreme limit of human life appears to be very little over a hundred. That people do live to such an age may be proved by the frequent statements to that effect in the newspapers. An old lady died lately near my house who was over a hundred years old. old. To remember any public event that took place a hundred years ago, a person must have lived very considerably beyond that age. It is an extraordinary thing to think that any one alive now actually existed in times which, to us, have become remote and historical; but that they can recollect such events is still more remarkable. Yet there have been known persons who can do this.

It is almost impossible to realise that such enormous changes should have taken place in the social and political aspect of affairs within a period occupied by a single life. The present age, which we consider so highly civilised, may, in the course of a hundred years, be regarded by our successors as a period quite as wanting in the comforts, conveniences, and luxuries of life as was England, in our opinion, a century ago.

It must be remembered that the fact of travelling by coach is not sufficient in itself to convey to the minds of the present generation the conditions under which a journey was performed a hundred years ago. To do this, the world must roll back upon the wheels of time, and country and town and their inhabitants must present exactly the same appearance to our eyes as they did to people who were on a journey at that period. Every modern improvement that now exists is a forcible reminder of the age in which we live. The reality of our surroundings makes it difficult for us to form an adequate conception of the circumstances.

under which Englishmen travelled during the last century, neither can we picture to ourselves the various infinitesimal details of dress, manner, and custom that made that period so foreign to the present.

The aspect of affairs throughout England and Europe was vastly different from what it is now. In 1788 George III. was King of England, Louis XVI. was insecurely seated on the throne of France, and George Washington was President of the United States, America having declared her independence, and there is no doubt but that the States would belong to us now had it not been for the ridiculous. and obstinate policy of Farmer George. France, shortly after this, was in the throes of her great Revolution, with all its attendant horror, terror, blasphemy, and anarchy, during which time the French ports were blockaded to the English, and those Englishmen who cared, or who could afford, to travel, were almost compelled by necessity to do so in their own country. In 1788 William Pitt, although only in his twenty-fourth year, was at the head of the English Government, fulfilling the duties of First Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer, Lord Thurlow was Lord Chancellor, Lord Carmarthen was Home Secretary, and Lord Sydney Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. This was the younger Pitt's first Administration.

One hundred years ago was not altogether the pleasantest time that an Englishman could have selected for a sojourn upon this planet. Only a few years previously the American War had been brought to a close, and White, in his celebrated "History of Selborne," says that "the summer that followed

upon that event was an amazing and portentous one; there were alarming meteors and tremendous thunderstorms; for many weeks of June, July, and August, the sun was clouded over with a smoky fog, that proceeded from whatever quarter the wind blew ; the sun when it rose and set was lurid and bloodcoloured. This phenomenon prevailed over the whole of Europe; people looked with superstitious awe upon this singular twilight." To Englishmen, particularly sensitive to meteorological influences, having lost America, they became fully convinced that their country was ruined; to those of the French, who had time to think amidst the terror and confusion which everywhere prevailed during the Revolution, this peculiar phenomenon must have appeared as though it were an indication of the anger of Heaven, and of the vengeance that would overtake those that had brought their country to such a terrible pass.

As regards England, the money she spent in losing America, she afterwards succeeded in replacing in her exhausted treasury. The prevailing notion during the greater part of the reign of George III. was that England was in its declination, and these ideas were supplemented by positive assertions that her population was decreasing, and would go on doing so indefinitely; but this is proved never to have been the case; in fact, if it had been the case, it might, in a manner, have benefited the State, by relieving it of its surplus population, for whom there was no employment. Oliver Goldsmith admits that the depopulation which he deplores in his wonderful poem, the "Deserted Village," was nowhere to be seen in reality. In my previous chapters I have given a parody on this poem, and