COUNTRY ROADS IN JANE AUSTEN'S TIME.
[To TILE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR.'') SIR,—Your reviewer makes a disparaging reference to Jane Austen's prowess as a walker. Is he not a little severe upon her ? I could name a part of Kent, on high ground, which even in these days is hardly passable in winter, and there must be many similar places throughout the country, especially in low-lying districts. In Jane Austen's time, probably the country roads were as bad as when Cowper was writing, not many years earlier. There are some interesting remarks on the subject in an essay by Anne Mozley (Essays from Blackwood, 1892), intituled " The Poets at Play," in which she quotes a poem by Cowper called "The Distressed Travellers, or Labour in Vain."
"I sing of a journey to Clifton We would have performed if we could, Without cart or barrow to lift on Poor Mary and me through the mud.
He: Stick fast there while I go and look.
She : Don't go away, for fear I should fall He: I leave examined in every nook,
And what you have here is a sample of all.
Come, wheel round; The dirt we have found Would be worth an estate, at a farthing a pound."
The date assigned to this trifle is 1781. In February 1785 he writes : " Of all the winters we have passed at Olney, this, the seventeenth, has confined us most. Thrice, and but thrice, since the middle of October, have we escaped into the fields for a little fresh air and a little change of motion. The last time it was at some peril we did it, Mrs. Unwin having slipt into a ditch." Walking was necessary to Cowper, and a lady companion was equally necessary; hence the point be makes of having leave to walk in the Tbrockmortons' grounds. Miss Mosley explains the provision made for walking in all old gardens. "A terrace, we see, was no affair of mere state, it was a necessity of health ; for if people walk for exercise in narrow bounds, it must be on a straight line, not one winding
and turning."—I am, Sir, &c., EDWARD H. QUICEE. 13 South Norwood Bill, S.E.
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