"Father, I have not been good to you; but I will be, I will be.'. said Esther, laying her head on his knee."-PAGE 155:-F.H. THE RADICAL BY GEORGE ELIOT. "Upon the midlands now the industrious muse doth fall, My native country thou, which so brave spirits hast bred, THE ONLY LARGE TYPE EDITION. NEW YORK: WORTHINGTON CO., 747 BROADWAY, 1890. INTRODUCTION. FIVE-AND-THIRTY years ago the glory had not yet departed from the old coach-roads: the great road-side inns were still brilliant with well-polished tankards, the smiling glances of pretty barmaids, and the repartees of jocose hostlers; the mail still announced itself by the merry notes of the horn; the hedge-cutter or the rick-thatcher might still know the exact hour by the unfailing yet otherwise meteoric apparition of the pea-green Tally-ho or the yellow Independent; and elderly gentlemen in pony-chaises, quartering nervously to make way for the rolling, swinging swiftness, had not yet ceased to remark that times were finely changed since they used to see the pack-horses and hear the tinkling of their bells on this very highway. In those days there were pocket-boroughs, a Birmingham unrepresented in Parliament and compelled to make strong representations out of it, unrepealed corn-laws, three-andsix-penny letters, a brawny and many-breeding pauperism, and other departed evils; but there were some pleasant things, too, which have also departed. Non omnia grandior atas quæ fugiamus habet, says the wise goddess: you have not the best of it in all things, oh youngsters! the elderly man has his enviable memories, and not the least of them is the memory of a long journey in midspring or autumn on the outside of a stage-coach. Posterity may be shot, like a bullet, through a tube, by atmospheric pressure from Winchester to Newcastle: that is a fine result to have 3 |