CHAPTER VI.
"The circle form'd, we sit in silent state, Like figures drawn upon a dial-plate; Yes ma'am, and no ma'am, uttered softly show, Every five minutes how the minutes go." COWPER.
It is scarcely necessary to tell the reader that England, as regarded material civilization, was a very different country a hundred years since, from what it is to-day.

We are writing of an age of heavy wagons, coaches and six, post-chaises and four; and not of an era of MacAdam-roads, or of cars flying along by steam.

A man may now post down to a country-house, some sixty or eighty miles, to dinner; and this, too, by the aid of only a pair of horses; but, in 1745 such an engagement would have required at least a start on the previous day; and, in many parts of the island, it would have been safer to have taken two days' grace.

Scotland was then farther from Devonshire, in effect, than Geneva is now; and news travelled slowly, and with the usual exaggerations and uncertainties of delay.

It was no wonder, then, that a Jacobite who was posting off to his country-house--the focus of an English landlord's influence and authority--filled with intelligence that had reached him through the activity of zealous political partisans, preceded the more regular tidings of the mail, by several hours.