drinking a glass of wine with me." So the landlord would reappear,
and, sitting down opposite my father, they would solemnly dispose
of the port, and let us trust that it never gave either of them
the faintest twinge of gout. These little mutual attentions were
then expected on both sides. Neither my father nor mother ever
used the word "hotel" in speaking of any hostelry in the United
Kingdom. Like all their contemporaries, they always spoke of an
"inn."

In 1860 a new contract had been signed with the Post Office by the
London and North-Western Railway and the City of Dublin Steam-
Packet Co., by which they jointly undertook to convey the mails
between London and Dublin in eleven hours. Up to 1860, the time
occupied by the journey was from fourteen to sixteen hours.
Everything in this world being relative, this was rapidity itself
compared to the five days my uncle, Lord John Russell, the future
Prime Minister, spent on the journey in 1806. He was then a
schoolboy at Westminster, his father, the sixth Duke of Bedford,
being Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland. My uncle, who kept a diary from
his earliest days, gives an account of this journey in it. He
spent three days going by stage-coach to Holyhead, sleeping on the
way at Coventry and Chester, and thirty-eight hours crossing the
Channel in a sailing-packet. The wind shifting, the packet had to
land her passengers at Balbriggan, twenty-one miles north of
Dublin, from which my uncle took a special post-chaise to Dublin,
presenting his glad parents, on his arrival, with a bill for L31
16s., a nice fare for a boy of fourteen to pay for going home for
his holidays!

In order to fulfil the terms of the 1860 contract, the mail-trains