traversed the whole remaining distance in a single day in summer, and in a day and a half in winter. The charge for this was £ 1 11s. 6d. In these sums were not included the payments to the drivers and guards. The "Newcastle Fly" ran six times a week, starting from London an hour after midnight. The "Edinburgh Fly" ran only on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. A traveller then who lost no time on the road, leaving London at one o'clock on Sunday night, would in the summer-time reach Edinburgh by Thursday evening, and in the winter alter mid-day on Friday.[1] Even the mail which was carried on horse-back, and went five times a week, took in good weather about 82 hours.[2] The news of the battle of Culloden. though it was forwarded by an express, was seven days all but two or three hours in reaching London.[3] There were men living in 1824 who recollected when the mail came down with only one single letter for Edinburgh.[4] By 1793 a great acceleration had been effected in the coach-service. It was possible, so the proud boast ran, to leave Edinburgh alter morning service on Sunday, spend a whole day in London, and be back again by six o'clock on Saturday morning.[5] The weary traveller would have had to pass every night in the coach. By the year 1800 the journey was done from London to Edinburgh in fifty-eight hours, and from Edinburgh to London in sixty and a half.[6] But such annihilation of time and space, as no doubt this rapid rate of travelling was then called, was not dreamed of in Johnson's day. The capitals of England and Scotland still stood widely apart. It was wholly "a Scotch scene" which the English traveller saw, and "independent tastes and ideas and pursuits" caught his attention.[7] Nevertheless in one respect Edinburgh, as I have already said, felt strongly the influence of England. In its literature and its language it was laboriously forming itself on the English model. There had been a long period during which neither learning nor literature had shone in Scotland with any brightness of tight. Since the days of the great classical scholars not a single famous author had been seen. There had been "farthing candles" from time to time, but no "northern lights."[8] The two countries were under the same
- ↑ Moyston Armstrong's Survey of the Post Roads, etc. in 1777 (ed. 1783), p. 6; and Twiss' Life of Lord Eddon, i. 39.
- ↑ It was three hours longer on the return journey from Edinburgh to London.—Arnot's History of Edinburgh, p. 539.
- ↑ Gentleman's Magazine for 1746, p. 209.
- ↑ Redgauntlet (ed. 1860), ii. 77.
- ↑ W Creech's Letters to Sir John Sinclair, p. 11.
- ↑ Paterson's British Itinerary, ii. 602.
- ↑ Cockburn's Life of Jeffrey, i. 157.
- ↑ Boswell's Johnson, v. 57, n. 3. See also ib. pp. 58. 80.Johnson's Works, ix. 157, and Tytler's Life of Lord Kames, i. 5
