Travelling in England Thirty Years Ago: from the Autobiography of an English Opium Eater [December 1834]

England already presented to its inhabitants, the most equestrian of nations, a general system of decent bridle roads. Even at this day it is doubtful whether any man, taking all hinderances into account, and having laid no previous relays of horses, could much exceed the exploit of Cary, a younger son of the first Lord Hunsden, a cousin of Queen Elizabeth. In all the provinces of England, when the soil was deep and adhesive, a worse evil beset the stately equipage. An Italian of rank, who has left a record of his perilous adventure, visited, or attempted to visit, Petworth, near London, about the year 1685. All the roads in England, within a few years, were remodelled, and upon principles of Roman science. From mere beds of torrents, and systems of ruts, they were raised universally to the condition and appearance of gravel walks in private parks or shrubberies.