HARTLAND FOREST. CHAPTER I. He that with injury is grieved, Is sillier than a sottish chouse, Who, when a thief has robb'd his house, To help him to his goods again. Butler's Hudibras.' OLD SIR THOMAS FAIRLAND, of Northleigh Hall, near Exeter, in the county of Devon, and his neighbour, both in land and residence, old Squire Goldburn, of Southmead House, disputed, quarrelled, and went to law about a hedge, a gate, and a cartway between their estates, which, unhappily for themselves, and most happily for the gentlemen of the profession, attorneys, solicitors, and barristers, were contiguous, The contact, like many a one of a much higher nature, was too close for peace; and after more than B seven years' disputation, removals from sessions to sessions and court to court, after contesting every point and splitting every straw of the contest with the most delicate tact of quibble, shift, and quirk, after some hundreds spent on both sides, with, at the end of the time, just as near an approach to the termination of the cause as there was at the beginning, the principals began to weary of that most tedious of all wars—a war of the gown instead of the sword. Whilst both were thus heartily sick of John Doe and Richard Roe and all the costly fictions of the law, fortune did them a good turn; she sent them a journey to London together in the same rumbling vehicle, at the time of which we write (A.D. 1720) one of the earliest and oldest stage-coaches in England. It was nothing less than one of a celebrated set which were thus described and advertised in 'The Evening Post' of the period: 'London, Bath, and Bristol stage-coaches performed by Thomas Baldwin, citizen and cooper of London, living now at the Crown Inn, at Slough, near Windsor, being the Bowling Green House; goes from the Saracen's Head in Friday Street, and from the One Bell Inn behind the New Church near the Maypole in the Strand, and Mr. John Tillies in Swan Yard at the Coach and Horses over against Somerset House, for the White Hart Inn near the Town's End in Bristol, and at the White Hart Inn near the King's Bath in Bath, for London; and for the better accommodation and conveniency for travellers to and from the places above said, on Monday the 28th instant April 1720, begins FLYING from the above said places every Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday during the FLYING SEASON, which is a performance never before done. Likewise a THREE DAYS' COACH. Note the same coachman goes through to Bath and from Bath to London." * The above-named worthies set off together on the same day, and in the same coach, which, notwithstanding all its boasted rapidity, did not get on quite so fast as the speed of a modern railway. Sir Thomas Fairland and old Squire Goldburn, after arranging their legs with much courtesy so as to sit without inconvenience opposite to each other, somehow or other conceived the bright idea that, as neither of them needed their attorney to settle Copied from the original advertisement. their amicable adjustment of a footing in the stagecoach, even so might they manage to settle their other difficulty without further interference on the part of the gentlemen of the long robe and still longer bills. As Sir Thomas, who was a bit of a humorist, at least so considered at the Bowling Green Club, said something to that effect to his neighbour Goldburn. the latter worthy answered, with an encouraging allusion to the old fable (and thus used by him it was a gracious simile), that whilst two dogs were quarrelling for a bone, a mongrel intruder often managed to step in and run away with it, their friendly intercourse improved more rapidly than did the pace of the flying coach; and that day, when they dined together on the road (ample time was then given for such a refection to the traveller), over a social bowl of punch they positively once and for ever made up the dispute. The following were the terms of agreement, viz., that as Sir Thomas Fairland had an only child, a son, and Squire Goldburn an only child, a daughter, these children should inter |