specimens of this architecture may still be seen in those districts which were not reached by the great fire. The fire had, in a few days, covered a space of little less than a square mile with the ruins of eighty-nine churches and of thirteen thousand houses. But the City had risen again with 5 a celerity which had excited the admiration of neighboring countries. Unfortunately the old lines of the streets had been to a great extent preserved; and those lines, originally traced in an age when even princesses performed their journeys on horseback, were often too nar- 10 row to allow wheeled carriages to pass each other with ease, and were therefore ill adapted for the residence of wealthy persons in an age when a coach and six was a fashionable luxury. The rich commonly traveled in their own carriages, 15 with at least four horses. A coach and six is in our time never seen, except as part of some pageant. The frequent mention therefore of such equipages in old books is likely to mislead us. We attribute to magnificence what was really the effect of a very disagreeable necessity. People 20 in the time of Charles the Second traveled with six horses because with a smaller number there was a great danger of sticking fast in the mire. Nor were even six horses always sufficient. Vanbrugh, in the succeeding generation, described with great humor the way in which a country 25 gentleman, newly chosen a member of Parliament, went up to London. On that occasion all the exertions of six beasts, two of which had been taken from the plow, could not save the family coach from being embedded in a quagmire. Public carriages had recently been much improved. Dur5 ing the years which immediately followed the Restoration, a diligence ran between London and Oxford in two days. At length, in the spring of 1669, a great and daring innovation was attempted. It was announced that a vehicle, described as the Flying Coach, would perform the whole 10 journey between sunrise and sunset. This spirited undertaking was solemnly considered and sanctioned by the heads of the university, and appears to have excited the same sort of interest which is excited in our own time by the opening of a new railway. The vice chancellor, by a 15 notice affixed in all public places, prescribed the hour and place of departure. The success of the experiment was complete. At six in the morning the carriage began to move from before the ancient front of All Souls College, and at seven in the evening the adventurous gentlemen 20 who had run the first risk were safely deposited at their inn in London. The emulation of the sister university was moved, and soon a diligence was set up which in one day carried passengers from Cambridge to the capital. At the close of the reign of Charles the Second, flying car25 riages ran thrice a week from London to the chief towns. But no stagecoach, indeed no stage wagon, appears to have proceeded further north than York, or further west than Exeter. The ordinary day's journey in a flying coach was about fifty miles in the summer, but in winter, when the ways were bad and the nights long, little more than thirty. The Chester coach, the York coach, and the Exeter coach generally reached London in four days during the 5 fine season, but at Christmas not till the sixth day. The passengers, six in number, were all seated in the carriage, for accidents were so frequent that it would have been most perilous to mount the roof. The ordinary fare was about twopence halfpenny a mile in summer and some- 10 what more in winter. This mode of traveling, which by Englishmen of the present day would be regarded as insufferably slow, seemed to our ancestors wonderfully and indeed alarmingly rapid. In a work published a few months before the death of 15 Charles the Second, the flying coaches are extolled as far superior to any similar vehicles èver known in the world. From History of England. the City that part of London comprised in the ancient city and originally surrounded by a wall. It is still spoken of as the City, to distinguish it from Westminster and other districts now included under the name of London. - the Restoration: this return to a monarchy took place in 1660, when Charles II was restored to his throne. - the great fire: the Great Fire of London occurred in 1666. — Vanbrugh (văn broo'): an English dramatist of the early part of the eighteenth century. - diligence: a public stagecoach. Oxford and Cambridge: the two great university towns of England. twopence halfpenny (tup ens ha pěn I): a sum equal to five cents of our money. 5 10 15 FROM WESTMINSTER BRIDGE WILLIAM WORDSWORTH WILLIAM WORDSWORTH (1770-1850) was a celebrated English poet. This City now doth, like a garment, wear All bright and glittering in the smokeless air. LONDON WILLIAM WORDSWORTH NOTE. The preceding sonnet was written, says Wordsworth, "on the roof of a coach, on my way to France.' On the poet's return he spent a few weeks in London, during which time he wrote the following lines, addressing them to Coleridge, his friend and fellow poet. "I could not but be struck," he explains in his notes, "with the vanity and parade of 5 our own country . . . as contrasted with the quiet, and I may say the desolation, that the revolution had produced in France." More than one writer, from Ben Jonson to Tennyson, has expressed similar dissatisfaction with the age in which he lived. Each generation looks back to the " good old times." O Friend! I know not which way I must look To think that now our life is only dressed Plain living and high thinking are no more: mean: insignificant. - fearful: shrinking, timid. 10 15 20 20 |