“Knowledge and amusement are very happily blended together, and the reader who finds his acquaintance with the history of roads increased at the end of his journey, will also find his available fund of anecdote augmented.”

“The book contains little more than a hundred pages, and might be read during the journey by the express train between London and Brighton; but so suggestive is every page, that an intelligent and imaginative reader will not reach the end till the book has been many an hour in his hands.”

“This is a pleasant book, somewhat quaint, particularly the preface, but full of amusing and instructive reading.”

“If the other volumes of the series are equal to the present in interest and value, we think we may safely predict a very extensive popularity for the enterprise.... The author has collected from all manner of curious and out-of-the-way sources materials for his book, and it reads like one of old Montaigne’s Essays.”

“A charming volume of curious and learned gossip, such as would have riveted Charles Lamb by its fine scholarly tone and its discursive wealth. If the other volumes are up to this mark, the series will be by far the best of the many which now make Literature the luxury of the poor.”

“Exactly the book for the amusement of a man of education. Lively and learned, poetical and practical. This book is to the scholar fatigued with trash like a bottle of rich Hungarian wine to a man who has been condemned to the thin potations of France and the Rheingau.”

“Old Roads and New Roads.—(Chapman and Hall, London.) No. I. of ‘Reading for Travellers.’ A first-rate little volume, printed with large type, and just the thing for a railway ride. The publishers have acted wisely in calling to their aid a scholar and a writer of the highest order.”

“Messrs. Chapman and Hall have re-entered the field of Railway Literature, and have very fittingly commenced their series of ‘Reading for Travellers’ with a graphic historical sketch of Old Roads and New Roads. It is at once scholarly and popular in style and contents——yet free from the slightest tinge of pedantry or affectation. The narrative is by no means a mere dry record of facts and dates. It is abundantly diversified and relieved with illustrative anecdotes and sprightly observations—philosophy and pleasantry combining with genuine erudition to make this one of the most useful and entertaining of the volumes of railway reading with which we have met.”