"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, DRAYTON: Polyolbion. THE ONLY LARGE TYPE EDITION. NEW YORK: WORTHINGTON CO., 747 BROADWAY, 1890. FELIX HOLT THE RADICAL. 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 |