THE “WONDER,” LONDON AND SHREWSBURY COACH.       From a Print after J. Pollard.

The Holyhead Road:/ THE MAIL-COACH ROAD TO DUBLIN

By Charles G. Harper

Author of “The Brighton Road,” “The Portsmouth Road,” “The Dover Road,” “The Bath Road,” “The Exeter Road,” “The Great North Road,” and “The Norwich Road”

Illustrated by the Author, and from Old-Time Prints and Pictures

Vol. I. LONDON TO BIRMINGHAM

London: Chapman & Hall

ltd. 1902

[All rights reserved]

vii

“The olden days of travelling, now to returnno more, in which distance could not bevanquished without toil”—those are the daysmourned by Ruskin, who had little better acquaintancewith them than afforded by his childishjourneys, when his father, a prosperous wine-merchant,travelled the country in a carriage witha certain degree of style. Regrets are, under suchcircumstances, easily to be understood, just as werethose of the old coach-proprietors, innkeepers,coachmen, postboys, and all who depended uponroad-travel for their existence; but few amongtravellers who lived in the days when the changewas made from road to rail had feelings of thatkind, else railways would not have proved soimmediately successful. It has been left for alater era to discover the charm and rosy glamourof old road-faring days, a charm not greatlyinsisted upon in the literature of those times,which, instead of being rich in praise of theroad, is fruitful in accounts of the miseriesviiiof travel. Pepys, on the Portsmouth Road in1668, fearful of losing his way at night, ashad often happened to him before; Thoresby, in1714 and later years, on the Great North Road,thanking God that he had reached home safely;Horace Walpole, on the Brighton Road in