酷兔英语
    当前位置:
  1. 首页
  2. 文章
  3. 娱乐英语
  4. 原版小说
  5. 正文

The Life of Thomas Telford-Part4_Samuel Smiles(1812-1904)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

0 收藏 0 分享 0 赞

章节正文
文章总共2页


better than a cart without springs, the body resting solid upon the

axles. Taking the bad roads and ill-paved streets into account,



it must have been an excessively painful means of conveyance.

At one of the first audiences which the Queen gave to the French



ambassador in 1568, she feelingly described to him "the aching

pains she was suffering in consequence of having been knocked about



in a coach which had been driven a little too fast, only a few days

before."*[3]



Such coaches were at first only used on state occasions.

The roads, even in the immediate neighbourhood of London, were so



bad and so narrow that the vehicles could not be taken into the

country. But, as the roads became improved, the fashion of using



them spread. When the aristocracy removed from the City to the

western parts of the metropolis, they could be better accommodated,



and in course of time they became gradually adopted. They were

still, however, neither more nor less than waggons, and, indeed,



were called by that name; but wherever they went they excited great

wonder. It is related of "that valyant knyght Sir Harry Sidney,"



that on a certain day in the year 1583 he entered Shrewsbury in his

waggon, "with his Trompeter blowynge, verey joyfull to behold and



see."*[4]

From this time the use of coaches gradually spread, more



particularly amongst the nobility, superseding the horse-litters

which had till then been used for the conveyance of ladies and



others unable to bear the fatigue of riding on horseback.

The first carriages were heavy and lumbering: and upon the execrable



roads of the time they went pitching over the stones and into the

ruts, with the pole dipping and rising like a ship in a rolling sea.



That they had no springs, is clear enough from the statement of

Taylor, the water-poet--who deplored the introduction of carriages



as a national calamity--that in the paved streets of London men and

women were "tossed, tumbled, rumbled, and jumbled about in them."



Although the road from London to Dover, along the old Roman

Watling-street, was then one of the best in England, the French



household of Queen Henrietta, when they were sent forth from

the palace of Charles I., occupied four tedious days before they



reached Dover.

But it was only a few of the main roads leading from the metropolis



that were practicable for coaches; and on the occasion of a royal

progress, or the visit of a lord-lieutenant, there was a general



turn out of labourers and masons to mend the ways and render the

bridges at least temporarily secure. Of one of Queen Elizabeth's



journeys it is said:-- "It was marvellous for ease and expedition,

for such is the perfect evenness of the new highway that Her



Majesty left the coach only once, while the hinds and the folk of a

base sort lifted it on with their poles."



Sussex long continued impracticable for coach travelling at certain

seasons. As late as 1708, Prince George of Denmark had the



greatest difficulty in making his way to Petworth to meet Charles VI.

of Spain. "The last nine miles of the way," says the reporter,



"cost us six hours to conquer them." One of the couriers in

attendance complained that during fourteen hours he never once



alighted, except when the coach overturned, or stuck in the mud.

When the judges, usually old men and bad riders, took to going the



circuit in their coaches, juries were often kept waiting until

their lordships could be dug out of a bog or hauled out of a slough



by the aid of plough-horses. In the seventeenth century, scarcely

a Quarter Session passed without presentments from the grand jury



against certain districts on account of the bad state of the roads,

and many were the fines which the judges imposed upon them as a



set-off against their bruises and other damages while on circuit.

For a long time the roads continued barelypracticable for wheeled



vehicles of the rudest sort, though Fynes Morison (writing in the

time of James I.) gives an account of "carryers, who have long



covered waggons, in which they carry passengers from place to

place; but this kind of journeying," he says, "is so tedious, by



reason they must take waggon very early and come very late to their

innes, that none but women and people of inferior condition travel



in this sort."

[Image] The Old Stage Waggon.



The waggons of which Morison wrote, made only from ten to fifteen

miles in a long summer's day; that is, supposing them not to have



broken down by pitching over the boulders laid along the road, or




文章总共2页
文章标签:名著  

章节正文
Copyright © 2023 Qeto All rights reserved.
商务合作 | 联系我们 | 关于我们 | 版权声明 | 隐私条款 | 如果智培

京ICP备05059198号-1 京公网安备 11011202003401号