ABSTRACT
The Augustans had a different spatial sense from our own. Distances seemed longer, and any protracted journey took the traveller through a highly diversified country, socially, economically and culturally. Macaulay points out that it would have been easy to identify the origins of any visitor to London, whatever his standing, as soon as he uttered a few words. In 1700 England was still predominantly rural. Indeed it was little better than scrubland over large tracts of the country. Social life in the early eighteenth century was acutely affected by this circumstance. It had not yet come into men's minds to forge a concept of 'communication', straddling geography and psychology. Memories were long, prejudices slow to burn out. In the Augustan context, a week was assuredly not a very long time in politics. The moral essay, a genre as leisurely and as lacking in pressure as was ever invented, came to its perfection in weekly journalism.
