When, however, he found that he could not succeed, when, after many efforts, the oppression—­for I will not call it despondency—­remained still as powerful as ever, he mentally turned, as if to face an enemy that pursued him, and to gaze full upon the inevitable power itself; all the more awful as it was, in the misty grandeur which shrouded the frowning features from his view.  He nerved his heart, too, and resolved, whatever it might be that was in store for him, whatever might be the change, the loss, the adversity, which all his sensations seemed to prophesy, that he would bear it with unshrinking courage, with resolute determination; nay, with what was still more with one of his disposition, with unmurmuring patience.

In the meanwhile, however, he strove, as he went along, to persuade himself that the presentiment was but the work of fancy; that there was nothing real in it; that he had excited himself to fears and apprehensions that were groundless; that the expedition of the Earl to Italy was but a temporary undertaking, and that it would most probably make no change in his situation, no alteration in his fortunes.

Thus thought he, as he rode slowly onward, when, at the distance of about a quarter of a mile, he perceived another horseman, proceeding at a pace perhaps still slower than his own.  The aspect of the country between Oxford and London was as different in that day from that which it is at present as it is possible to conceive.  There is nothing in all England—­with all the changes which have taken place, in manners, morals, feelings, arts, sciences, produce, manufactures, and government—­which has undergone so great a change, as the high roads of the empire during the last hundred and fifty years.  No one can now tell, where the roads which lay between this place and that then ran.  They have been dug into, ploughed up, turned hither and thither, changed into canals, or swallowed up in railroads.  The face of the country, too, has been altered, by many a village built, and many an old mansion pulled down, long tracts of country brought into cultivation, and deep plantations of old trees shadowing that ground which in those days was unwholesome marsh, or barren moor.  Even Hounslow Heath, beloved by many of the frequenters of the King’s Highway, has disappeared under the spirit of cultivation, and left no trace of places where many a daring deed was clone.

However that may be, the road which the young traveller was following, lay not at all in the direction taken by either of the present roads to Oxford; but at a short distance from High Wycombe turned off to the right—­that is, supposing the traveller to be going towards London—­and approached the banks of the Thames not far from Marlow.  In so doing, it passed over a long range of high hills, and a wide extent of flat, common ground upon the top, which was precisely the point whereat Wilton Brown had arrived, at the very moment we began this digression upon the state of the King’s Highways in those times.