Page:The child's pictorial history of England; (IA childspictorialh00corn).pdf/198

 poet Cowley, who had a country house at Chertsey, which is only twenty-two miles from London, invited a friend in town to pay him a visit, saying in his letter, that as he could not perform the whole journey in one day, he might sleep at Hampton.

12. I think he would have been glad of a railway, which would have taken him all the way before breakfast. In 1706, the stage coach from York was four days coming to London; and so late as 1763, there was only a coach once a month from Edinburgh to London; and it was a whole fortnight on the road; so I think you will see the advantages of our present mode of travelling.

13. The custom of buying and selling negroes had been abolished by parliament during the reign of George the Third, but there were many thousands of slaves in the West India islands, belonging to the British planters there.

14. During the reign of William the Fourth, the British government gave twenty millions of money to buy all the slaves of their masters and then set them free. The day when the negroes became free people was the first of August, 1838.

15. I told you that the Reform Bill was passed in this reign. One consequence of this measure