Where there was a village library, the books were chiefly of a religious
character; but books of travel and adventure, both by land and sea, were
also much in evidence, and _Robinson Crusoe, Captain Cook's Three
Voyages round the World_, and the _Adventures of Mungo Park in Africa_
were often read by young people. The story of Dick Whittington was
another ideal, and one could well understand the village boys who lived
near the great road routes, when they saw the well-appointed coaches
passing on their way up to London, being filled with a desire to see
that great city, whose streets the immortal Dick had pictured to himself
as being paved with gold, and to wish to emulate his wanderings, and
especially when there was a possibility of becoming the lord mayor.
The bulk of the travelling in the country was done on foot or horseback,
as the light-wheeled vehicles so common in later times had not yet come
into vogue. The roads were still far from safe, and many tragedies were
enacted in lonely places, and in cases of murder the culprit, when
caught, was often hanged or gibbeted near the spot where the crime was
committed, and many gallows trees were still to be seen on the sides of
the highways on which murderers had met with their well-deserved fate.
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