Will the
post-office lay its hand on its heart, in its moments of sobriety, and
assert that ever it waited for me? What are they about? The guard tells
me that there is a large extra accumulation of foreign mails this
night, owing to irregularities caused by war, by wind, by weather, in
the packet service, which as yet does not benefit at all by steam. For
an _extra_ hour, it seems, the post-office has been engaged in
threshing out the pure wheaten correspondence of Glasgow, and winnowing
it from the chaff of all baser intermediate towns. But at last all is
finished. Sound your horn, guard! Manchester, good-bye! we've lost an
hour by your criminal conduct at the post-office: which, however,
though I do not mean to part with a serviceable ground of complaint,
and one which really _is_ such for the horses, to me secretly is an
advantage, since it compels us to look sharply for this lost hour
amongst the next eight or nine, and to recover it (if we can) at the
rate of one mile extra per hour. Off we are at last, and at eleven
miles an hour; and for the moment I detect no changes in the energy or
in the skill of Cyclops.
From Manchester to Kendal, which virtually (though not in law) is the
capital of Westmoreland, there were at this time seven stages of eleven
miles each. The first five of these, counting from Manchester,
terminate in Lancaster; which is therefore fifty-five miles north of
Manchester, and the same distance exactly from Liverpool.
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