furnishing a most delightful "out- | posers make songs about him, ing" and a pleasant way of visiting one of Scotland's most famous spas, presents one advantage over the railway with whose business it seeks to some extent to cope, that it passes through several centres of population, which are by the exigencies of engineering left at some distance from the railway route, so that pleasure and convenience are most agreeably blended in the enterprise. The following summary of stage coaching past and present, from one of the newspapers of the day, may fitly conclude this part of the subject: young maidens love him. He, on his side, tries to merit these favours by strict attention to the business of his part, which consists not only in rapid and seemingly reckless driving, but also in assuming a picturesque attire and in singing sentimental songs. "In England, also, the coachman has long been looked upon as a character of some importance; and even on the new four-horse vehicles which, as if in memory of the past, have been set going on so many roads, a certain number of extra shillings are charged for the privilege of occupying the boxseat, including, as it does, the right of talking to the driver. It needs only a limited acquaintance with the novel literature of the last century to know that it was once the custom for passengers not only to fee the coachman with a fee not specially charged for in the price of a seat, but also to offer him refreshment, usually in a liquid form, as often as the coach stopped. Owing, no doubt, to constant movement and abundance of fresh air, he could, without bad effects, consume an amount of drink which was practically unlimited. He had plenty of good stories to tell, possessed a certain knowledge of character, and was often not without character himself. 66 Stage coachmen are no longer called upon to stand and deliver; are no longer forced either to fight or fly for their lives. But they have always been a persecuted race; and it would seem to be their destiny only to escape danger in one shape to meet with it immediately afterwards in another. So arduous and perilous in some parts of Europe is the life of a driver, that popular imagination invests him with many of the attributes of a hero. Such is the Russian yamstchik, who traverses long distances, in all weathers, at the risk of being interrupted, not indeed by bicyclists, but by snowstorms which may block up the road, by robbers who may plunder him, and by wolves which may devour him. The driver on the eastern plains of Europe is as popular a personage as the sailor of the northern and western seas. Artists paint him, poets and com- | highwayman, against whom he but He was not, however, the absolute monarch of the road. In the midst of his best anecdotes it was sometimes his fate to be pulled up short by a dashing rarely contrived to make a good fight. This was the 'something bitter' in his cup. He was a very great man in his way, and could generally give a good account of himself by word of mouth; but he had his master on the great thoroughfares, and in presence of a DUVAL or a TURPIN was obliged to succumb. As civilisation, however, progressed, the highwayman disappeared, and for a space of time the British stage-coachman must have been supremely happy, yet not for long. An enemy more irresistible and more persistent than the highwayman was soon to appear. The steam-engine was invented, and railroads were everywhere laid down. To the happy period which intervened between the suppression of highwaymen and the general introduction of railways the greatest stage-coachman in English literature belongs; and the effect of railway opposition was, as every one knows, to break old Mr. WELLER's heart. When 'Pickwick' first appeared the road was indeed in a thriving condition. The railway whistle had already been sounded, but the doomed coachmen did not yet recognise it as the signal for their extinction. They heard it,' but they 'heeded not; indeed, many of them laughed it to scorn. They were a truly conservative race, and quite unable, when they at last found that their battle against steam was unavailing, to shift their ground from road to rail, and seek employment as engine-drivers and stokers. They preferred to perish; and the old race of stage-coachmen apparently died out. "The spirit of coaching still, however, lurked in the heart of the nation, and the last few years have witnessed a partial revival of the interest once universally felt in the glories and humours of the road. To the Four-in-hand Club a similar association called the Coaching Club was added. A club proper, under the title of the Road Club, has lately been formed; and meanwhile stage-coaches have been started on every great road leading out of London. These coaches are, for the most part, private enterprises, in so far that they are supported by amateur whips, and are not run for the sake of gain. Those, moreover, who travel by them do so for their own pleasure, and believers in the doctrine of l'art pour l'art may be pleased to see their favourite idea realised on the high road, where driving, under the new conditions, is certainly practised for the sake of driving." THE CANAL. CHAPTER I. My son, the road the human being travels, And thus, secure, though late, leads to its end. Piccolomini-SCHILLER. (Coleridge's Translation.) HISTORICAL NOTICES OF CANALS-CANALS IN CHINA-INVENTION OF THE CANAL LOCK-EARLIEST MODERN CANALS IN EUROPE CANALS OF BRITAIN-REMAINS OF ROMAN CANALS IN BRITAIN -EARLY PROPOSALS FOR CANALS-JAMES BRINDLEY-BRINDLEY'S FIRST CANAL-FURTHER ENTERPRISES-CANAL TUNNELSCANALS IN SCOTLAND AND IRELAND. HISTORICAL NOTICE OF CANALS. As a means of travelling, in the shorten some important sea routes sense in which this book is written, canals have till recently occupied a very subordinate place, while in many countries, and even within Britain itself, they fulfil important functions in commerce, supplementing and competing with the railway system in the carriage of goods, especially of the bulkier and less valuable sort As will be seen in the sequel, a new development of the canal system has been made, interesting under the head of travelling (though beyond our geographical limits), and worthy of detailed investigation. We refer to the actual completion of the Suez Canal, and the proposals to by means of canals. Amongst these are the canal projected to join the Atlantic and Pacific through the Isthmus of Darien ; the proposal to unite the Mediterannean with the Atlantic through a new development of the ancient canal system of France; the Amsterdam canal now completed, and the Paumben Channel, proposed to be made north of Ceylon. Canals are of very great antiquity. Who were the first people to roll obedient rivers through the land" cannot now be stated, but from the classical writings— Herodotus, Pliny, Aristotle, and others—there is reason to conclude undoubted antiquity and vast | numerable rivulets that are con extent, the Imperial Canal, which connects Hangchow with the river system of Pekin, being about a thousand miles in extent. Part of this canal, namely, that towards the south, is believed to have been made as early as the sixth century, but the northern portion dates from the thirteenth century. "This canal," as we read in Col. Yule's edition of the Travels of Marco Polo, "appears to have been completed in 1289, and is said to extend for a distance of forty days' navigation, and is provided with many sluices, and when vessels arrive at these sluices they are hoisted by means of machinery, whatever their size, and let down into the other side into the water." A writer of our own day says: "Availing themselves of the great number of rivers and lakes that exist in their country, the industrious Chinese have almost everywhere opened communications by water, and for this purpose, and for the object of irrigation, have dug so many canals that much of China is like a vaster Holland. The traveller finds almost everywhere a large canal of fine, deep, clear water, flanked by two causeways cased with flat stones or marble slabs, set in the ground and fastened by grooves made in posts or columns of the same materials. From the main canal there shoot off, at certain distances, numbers of smaller canals, the waters of which are again let off into in ducted to different large towns, or employed to irrigate the country. Besides these, they have an infinite number of reservoirs and channels by which they can lay the fields under water, to produce rice, their principal food, and which requires almost constant humidity. "But nothing in China or any part of the world is to be compared with the Yun Leang, or Royal Canal, which is 300 leagues in length. It was dug by an almost incredible multitude of men, and at a most prodigious expense, under the emperor Chi-tson, (about the year 1280), the founder of the dynasty of the Western Tartars. 'This canal,' says Du Halde, 'traverses the provinces of Pe-tche-li and Chan-tong; then it enters the province of Kiang-nan, and discharges itself into the great and rapid Yellow River. Down this river you sail for two days, when you come to another river, where you find again the canal, which leads to the city of Hoaingan; from thence it passes by many cities and large towns, and arrives at the city of Yang-tcheou, one of the most famous ports of the empire; and a little beyond this place it enters the great river Yang-tse-Kiang, which divides the province of Kiang-si nearly into two equal parts, and runs as far as Nan-ngan, from whence you go by land to Nan-kiong, the chief city of the province of Quang-tong, where you embark upon a river that leads to Canton, so that you may travel very commodiously, |