New-York tribune., 1874-05-19
UJGHROADS and RAILROADS.

stalks the stables and haunts the sites OF the
old London coaching hOuses-Belle Savage or
Marks o. CRANKY must feel inexpressible
comfort, for there promises to be resurrcc-
ton of the coach-and-four in England. Tho
railways are no longer to mOnOpOlize travellers
and travel. The fOur-in- hand, after an almost
total disappearance ~ means of journcyiug,
is again becoming familiar, and one newspaper
goes so far as to anticipate that soon :" the
road and not the rail will be the chosen way
"of going (or the aflluent classes) upon an
Excursion of mere pleasure" Coaching
Company has been organized IN Liverpool
and others of the same kind are spoken Of.
1t will be remembered that DR.. johnson said
one day to Boswell as they were driven rap
idly along toward Stratford on Avon in a
post st-chaise: "Life has not many things
better than this" He afterwards said :
of | had no duties, and no reference
to futurity | would spend my life driving
"briskly in post-chaise with a pretty
"womano His love of hurry arose perhaps
from a morbid anxiety to be rid OF himself,
and our express trains would, without doubt,
have been very much to his mind Healthy
natures, however, will avoid over haste as
to SEQ a country hardly promote that end by
travelling so fast that they do not see it at all.
Journeying almost ceases to be recreation
when it is no longer pursued at leisure, often
in the night, and with opportunity only for
the observation of distant points of arrival
and departure. The ennui which tardiness
engendered may be equally provoked by pro-
lOngcd CELEBRITY. Scenery, once for ALL we must
give up. Rural nature and rustic man must
remain unstudied. Provincial humor can no
longer be observed in the country inn. If we
are travelling for resuscitatiOn, the time which
morally belongs to that duty-for it is duty
is cut short, and we are cheated out OF half
our vacation. We find restlessness and not
rest--the long. quiet rest with those we love,
away from pursuits which have Overtasked our
energies, from objects which have become
hackneyed, and from influences which have
ceased to pique our activities. Often we make
our holiday hard working one, and have
nothing in our excursion to brag of except the
distances achieved.
UnquestiOnably the railway saves time, but
it may happen that time is just what wisdom
commands us to lavishly squander. Idleness,
perfect and cOmplete-a surrender merely to
tho sensation of living-an abandonment of
all cares and anxieties, and of all duties ex-
cept the duty of recovering mental and physi-
cal tone-these may be what most we need
aud can least afford, upon principles OF the
strictest economy, to foregO. Then it is that
haste is precisely what we should study to
escape. Then it is that time tables should be
unto us an abomination. Then it is that in
dolence becomes virtue and lazness q sort
of religion.
Time is money, if market can be found for
the commodity, but it will go badly with us if
we forget that money is not all, whether it be
of paper or of gold. If a mans business COM
pels him to travel, for him properly are the
swift, tireless, screeching night-trains, with
their abnormal waking and their ftful and
troubled slumber. Travelling for rest and to
gain something better than mOney-health,
serenity, consolation, temporary oblivion of
sorrows which are weighing down the heart !;
travelling for change of scene and to divert
the mind from thoughts which are burden,
and from apprehensiOns which are torture
this is resource the more likely to be effective,
the more deliberately pursued. If pleasure
tour is undertaken to get rid of business, We
shall lamentably fail il we make business of
the tour.
Its curious to consider that rapid railway trav-
cling should have created a new luxury, viz,
slow travelling by coach for those who can
afford it-in their own vehicles by those who
possess an equipage, this being perhaps the
very perfection of meandering." The i'm
mense convenience, the economy, and the CON-
Portable appointments of the railway remain
but he travels best who travels Independently,
resting when he pleases, and going on only when
he has rested, confined to no positive and fixed
route at liberty to interpOlate excursions to
the right or to the left, and making nature as
he goes deliberate and instructive and
entertaining study.