Gradually London took the lead in improving its ways.  It was no longer necessary for the fair and young to be carried through the mud upon costly pillions, on the backs of high-stepping Flanders mares.  Beauty rolled over the stones in four-wheeled carriages, and it did not need more than half-a-dozen running footmen—­the stoutest that could be found—­to put their shoulders occasionally to the wheel, and help the eight black horses to drag the ponderous vehicle through the heavier parts of the road.  Science came to the aid of beauty in these distressing circumstances.  Springs were invented that yielded to every jolt; and, with the aid of cushions, rendered a visit to Highgate not much more fatiguing than we now find the journey to Edinburgh.  Luxury went on—­wealth flowed in—­paviers were encouraged—­coach-makers grew great men—­and London, which our ancestors had left mud, was now stone.  Year after year the granite quarries of Aberdeen poured themselves out on the streets of the great city, and a million and a half of people drove, and rode, and bustled, and bargained, and cheated, and throve, in the midst of a din that would have silenced the artillery of Trafalgar, and a mud which, if turned into bricks, would have built the tower of Babel.  The citizens were now in possession of the “fumum et opes strepitumque Romae;” but some of the more quietly disposed, though submitting patiently to the “fumum,” and by no means displeased with the “opes,” thought the “strepitumque” could be dispensed with, and plans of all kinds were proposed for obviating the noise and other inconveniences of granite blocks.  Some proposed straw, rushes, sawdust; ingenuity was at a stand-still; and London appeared to be condemned to a perpetual atmosphere of smoke and sound.  It is pleasant to look back on difficulties, when overcome—­the best illustration of which is Columbus’s egg; for, after convincing the sceptic, there can be no manner of doubt that he swallowed the yelk and white, leaving the shell to the pugnacious disputant.  In the same way we look with a pleasing kind of pity on the quandaries of those whom we shall call—­with no belief whatever in the pre-Adamite theory—­the pre-Macadamites.

A man of talent and enterprise, Mr Macadam, proposed a means of getting quit of one of the objections to the granite causeways.  By breaking them up into small pieces, and spreading them in sufficient quantity, he proved that a continuous hard surface would be formed, by which the uneasy jerks from stone to stone would be avoided, and the expense, if not diminished, at all events not materially increased.  When the proposition was fairly brought before the public, it met the fate of all innovations.  Timid people—­the very persons, by the by, who had been the loudest in their exclamations against the ancient causeways—­became alarmed the moment they saw a chance of getting quit of them.  As we never know the value of a thing till we have lost it, their attachment to stone and