Secondly, in the ' Exact Dealer's Daily Companion,' already quoted, there is a selection of the roads to which most importance was attached, upon the whole of which 3953 computed miles answer to 5020 mea sured miles, or 100 computed miles give 127 measured miles. Accord ing to D'Anville, Ogilby 'i3 whole work gives 7679i measured miles of road, and 5765 computed, so that 100 computed miles make 133 measured miles. Hence the remaining 2659 measured miles give 1812 computed miles; or, off the principal roads, 100 computed miles give 147 measured miles. These results place, in such large numbers of miles, insuperable difficulties in the way of any explanation which should equally apply to the greater and lesser roads; and it seems to us that there remains only the hypothesis that the computed miles were inaponertaured distances, and that the larger and mere important roads were straighter than the rest. If our hypothesis be correct, these computed miles should represent distances on an incor rect map, which in fact they do. We found them agree somewhat better with the county maps in old editions of Camden's' Britannia than with our modern maps. And long sifter this article was written, we found that our explanation not only had been given, but was at one time so common as to admit of reference as to a thing understood. Dr. Grew, in a paper in the Philosophical Transactions' (1711), speaking of some erroneous "under-reckoning" says, "their mistake seems to have been,.their reckoning only by the maps ; that is, by computed and not by measured miles." It is believed that, since the time of Ogilby, the roads have been much shortened by the various acts of parliament. Have the mile-stones been always altered accordingly ! or was the increased speed of stage coaches, towards the end of their career, in part the result of calling a shorter line of road by the same number of miles ? To try this question, we shall compare a few distances from place to place, as given in Ogilby 's Britannia,' with those in Mogg's edition of Paterson's Roads' (1824), altered so as to start from the same point, namely, the old standard in Comhill rium Willelmi de Worcestre.' The date of the writer is well settled, for he asserts that in the year 1473 he presented to the bishop of Winchester his own translation into English of Cicero de Senectute. This William of Worcester was given to measurement : he records the dimensions of the churches which he visited, and the numbers of miles between the several towns. From the latter enumerations we have collected the most definite instances, which we have compared with our latest road-books, as follows (W is the number of miles in W. of W.'s account ; R in the road-books) :— The measures in Ogilby may of course be erroneous ; but as they were certainly made with a sufficient instrument, and exhibit every appearance of care, and as in our country it is nobody's business to see that all succeeding milestones are altered when a mile of road is saved in the middle of a line, we suspect strongly that a rcmeasurement would often show the distances of 1821 to be too long. And in truth the four distances just given are now said to be of 111,337, 108, and 138 miles.
The credit of the antiquaries tradition, which would otherwise be considerable, is destroyed by its probable origin, as above stated. We now come to another species of evidence, the testimony of foreign writers. The new measures of any country found their way abroad but slowly at the beginning of the 17th century, and we shall not therefore be surprised to find foreign writers of the middle and end of that century varying from then existing measures in their statements. We shall first take the geography of Varenius, first published in 1650, and edited in 1672 by no less a person than Newton, then Lucasian professor. The following sentence was allowed by the editor to pass without comment :—" Triplicia habent Angli milliaria : majors, quorum 274 msquant gmdurn sive 19 Hollandica ; mediocria quorum 50 ; mi nima quorum 60 vel 55." Now the mile of Varenius is described by himself as containing 18,000 Rhineland feet, each of which, according to Dr. Bernard, is 1.033 English feet. Whence it may be deduced
that the three miles described as English by Varenits severally contain and statute miles (taking " 60 vel 55 " to be 60). We have no doubt that Varenius has here got hold of the leuca, the old mile or half the leuca, and the modern statute mile, which, being not sixty years old when he wrote, was not, though the contemporary legal measure, more accurately known than the others. Again, Ozanam, in his Mathematical Dictionary,' 1691, makes the English mile a quarter longer than the Italian mile, that is, considerably above the statute mile ; but his accounts of itinerary measures are so evidently theorised into round hundreds and thousands of geometrical paces, that no dependence can be placed on any specific results drawn from them. If his geometrical pace be five French feet (Paucton, p. 179), this English mile (which he states at 1250 paces) is 6250 French feet, or 2219 English yards, that is, statute miles. But this is hardly worth notice, for no value of the geometrical pace can be taken which will make Ozanam's account of measures consistent with itself. We shall take one more conjectural determination of the mile, derived from the sea league of the 17th century. Gunter states this at three miles of 5000 feet in a mile, the league being the twentieth of a reputed degree. The author of the Exact Dealer's Daily Companion,' above cited, calls it three Italian miles, or 4904 yards. Now if the original league were the land measure, then the mile (or half of the leuca) would have been 2452 yards, or 1.4 statute miles.
D'Anville endeavours to make the old mile the same thing as the original French league, or the Roman mile and a half [LF-souE], taking the computed mile, already discussed, as the old measure. But inde pendently of the mile thus considered not being long enough (and we have no instance of an itinerary measure shortening by time), the distinction between the mile and the league seems to have been one of the most common notoriety from the time of the earliest menu scripts; and previous to this time the confusion which might have made D'Anville's supposition true had already lengthened the league by 500 paces.
The only way of detecting the length of any measure, a copy of which is not absolutely preserved, is by the knowledge of some quan tity, which having been handed down in terms of the old measure, and being still in existence, can be re-estimated in terms of the new measures. Unfortunately wo have no very exact measurements of well-known lengths; nevertheless by using such as we have, and taking the mean of a considerable number, the odds arc much against any very serious error remaining in the result.
About 1478 William Botoner, commonly called William Wircestre, or William of Worcester, made a tour in various parts of England, and wrote, apparently for his own use, a large number of memoranda, which remained in the library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, and were published in 1778, by Dr. Nasmyth, with the title,* Itinera • To give the best chance of a correct result which our present means afford, we must increase this 1314 modern road miles in such pro portion as will make them correctly represent the same roads at the time when William of Worcester travelled. This we have no data for I doing, and any supposition we may make must rest on its own intrinsic probability. To neglect this correction altogether would make the preceding give 100 old miles equal to 141 statute miles, and this is the lowest conclusion which can be formed. But if five per cent. of devia tion has been corrected since the old account, that is, if what is now 100 miles would have been 105, then I00 old miles may be stated at 148 statute miles. This conclusion, and even a stronger one, may be reinforced from a totally distinct quarter. But first let it be observed, that since roads have no tendency to lengthen, but the contrary, it may be inferred that such of the preceding instances as make the old mile least are most probably those in which the distances have been shortened ; and instead of being the cases of most weight, are precisely the reverse.