long been an important nursery of seamen, would cease to be the chief thoroughfare from London up to Windsor and down to Gravesend. Saddlers and spurriers would be ruined by hundreds. Numerous roadside inns at which mounted travellers had been in the habit of stopping would be deserted, and would no longer pay any rent. The new carriages were too hot in summer and too cold in winter. The passengers were grievously annoyed by invalids and squalling children. The coach frequently reached the inn so late that it was impossible to get supper, and sometimes started so early that it was impossible to get breakfast.' That this torrent of rhetoric produced much effect upon the race of innkeepers, spurriers, and saddlers is not to be supposed. They had sense enough to perceive that a change was inevitable, and consequently they set themselves 'to swell the triumph or partake the gale.'

M. Misson, an eminent French traveller, visited England in 1719, and in a narrative of his travels which he subsequently published, he mentions, among the several ways of travelling in England, 'the coaches that go to all the great towns by moderate journeys, and others which they call flying coaches, that will travel twenty leagues a day and more, but these do not go to all places.' Horses might be hired for any length of time. Besides these there were waggons which the traveller describes as 'great carts covered in, that lumber along but very heavily,' and which he asserts were used by none but 'a few poor old women.' The 'flying coaches' that Misson alludes to were, in all probability, those that traversed the best and most frequented roads, while the coaches running what he calls 'moderate journeys' were doubtless those that plodded their weary way over the common roads. The word 'flying,' as applied to coaches of that period, must be taken for what it is worth. To travellers (before the age which witnessed the birth of Macadam) who were accustomed to find the roads in a most miserable state, the stage-coach moving at the rate of four or five miles an hour, a rate which it is tolerably certain they never exceeded, must have appeared nothing short of a miracle.2 1 John Cresset's Reasons for Suppressing Stage Coaches. 2 Twiss's Life of Lord Chancellor Eldon, i. 48, 49.

It was probably one of these 'flying' coaches to which Daniel Defoe refers in the account which he gives of his 'Tour through Great Britain,' when he says that at the period of his visit the town of Ipswich in Suffolk possessed among other advantages that of speedy communication with the capital, as a fast coach covered the distance between the two in the space of one day. Of how many hours the coach 'day' was composed in the early part of the eighteenth century does not appear. Most likely it comprised the time between sunrise and sunset, with an occasional brief interval for refreshment. For a period of fully thirty-six years no stage coach ever journeyed after nightfall, but as time went on they commenced to run on moonlight nights. Such, at any rate, was the case in 1740 when Fielding wrote and published his novel of 'Joseph Andrews.' Chapter xii. of that work, it may be remembered, narrates how the hero after having been robbed of all his possessions by footpads was left for dead in a ditch near the highway at night; where, after lying motionless a long time, he just began to recover his senses as a stage-coach came by. The postilion hearing a man's groans, stopped his horses and told the coachman.'

Until the middle of the century coachmen were forbidden to drive coaches on the seventh day, but this law was soon relaxed; a limited number received a licence for that purpose on certain roads, and at last all restrictions were removed. In the early days of coaching, no coachman professed his ability to control more horses than those fastened to the shafts, consequently, when more than two horses were employed, the leader, or one of the leaders, was ridden by a postilion.

The Daily Advertiser,' January 9, 1745, advertises that

For Chester, Coventry, or any part of that road, a good coach and six horses will set out from the George and White Hart Inn, in Aldersgate Street, to-morrow or Friday next, the 10th and IIth inst., where any family or passengers may be accommodated to any part of that road. For Hull, York, Scarborough, or any part of that road, a handsome glass coach and six able horses will set out from Mr. Newman's, the George and Blue Boar Inn, in Holborn, on Friday next, the 11th inst. Perform'd by George Dinmoore.

Richard Thomson, in his 'Tales of an Antiquary,' causes that garrulous old gentleman to favour his auditory with what he remembered of the stage-coaches of his own young days :

Stage coaches (he is made to observe) were constructed principally of a dull black leather, thickly studded by way of ornament with black, broad-headed nails, tracing out the panels; in the upper tier of which were four oval windows, with heavy, red wooden frames, or leathern curtains. Upon the doors also were displayed, in large characters, the names of the places whence the coach started, and whither it went, stated in quaint and antique language. The vehicles themselves varied in shape. Sometimes they were like a distiller's vat, somewhat flattened, and hung equally balanced between the immense front and back springs. In other instances they resembled a violoncello case, which was past all comparison the most fashionable form; and then they hung in a more genteel posture, namely, inclining on to the back springs, and giving to those who sat within the appearance of a stiff Guy Faux uneasily seated. The roofs of the coaches in most cases rose into a swelling curve, which was sometimes surrounded by a high iron guard. The coachman and the guard, who always held his carbine ready cocked upon his knee, then sat together; not as at present, upon a close, compact, varnished seat, but over a very long and narrow boot, which passed under a large spreading hammercloth, hanging down on all sides, and finished with a glowing and most luxuriant fringe. Behind the coach was the immense basket, stretching far and wide beyond the body, to which it was attached by long iron bars or supports passing beneath it, though even these seemed scarcely equal to the enormous weight with which they were frequently loaded. These baskets were, however, never great favourites, although their difference of price caused them to be frequently well filled. The wheels of these old carriages were large, massive, ill-formed, and usually of a red colour, and the three horses that were affixed to the whole machine -the foremost of which was helped onward by carrying a huge, long-legged elf of a postillion, dressed in a cocked hat, with a large green and gold riding-coat-were all so far parted from it by the great length of their traces that it was with no little difficulty that the poor animals dragged their unwieldy burden along the road. It groaned and creaked at every fresh tug which they gave it, as a ship rocking or beating up through a heavy sea strains all her timbers, with a low moaning sound, as she drives over the contending waves.1

This little sketch might very well have been penned by the writer with a print of Hogarth's Country Inn Yard scene lying before him, seeing that it tallies with this particular production Tales of an Antiquary, ed. 1832, iii. 92-5.

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of his inimitable pencil in almost every particular. That scene depicting as it does the yard of one of the inns on the Dover road -'The Old Angle In, Toms Bates, from London '—a legend which is evidently a sly hit at the orthography current in Hogarth's day, affords a remarkably interesting description of the peculiarities of stage-coach travelling as they existed about the time Fielding penned his description of them in 'Joseph Andrews.' This very novel supplies a curious illustration of the assumptions of superiority by those who travelled in the stage-coaches, one of the last places in the world where they might have been supposed to lurk. One of the characters, a Miss Graveairs, the daughter of a gentleman's steward who had ridden postilion to a squire's coach, while the coach was waiting in the inn yard retarded the entrance of passengers into it by protesting, despite the remonstrance of all the rest, against the admittance of a footman into the coach,' poor Joseph Andrews being 'too lame to mount a horse.' A young lady who was the grand-daughter of an earl begged almost with tears in her eyes that the poor footman might be allowed to enter. The worthy parson Abraham Adams prayed. Mrs. Slipslop scolded. But all to no purpose. Miss Graveairs was inexorable, and told the petitioners that 'there were waggons on the road,' and that if the coachman desired it she would rather pay for two places than that such a fellow should be suffered to come in. 'Madam,' said Slipslop, 'I am sure no one can refuse another coming into a stagecoach.' 'I don't know, madam,' said the lady, 'I am not much used to stage-coaches, I seldom travel in them.' In the end Miss Graveairs was transferred by her father to another coach.1

But, although 'flying coaches' were on the road, and neckor-nothing mortals, as they were called, travelled by them, they were expensive. The majority of people either patronised the waggons or, which was more frequently the case, they stopped at home. A journey to or from Newcastle to London was in those days a doubtful and hazardous expedition-not unlike setting out in quest of the north-west passage. Many persons would, when they determined to attempt the achievement, make their wills before setting out. Intercourse between so important a Joseph Andrews, b. ii. c. 5.

1

town as Liverpool and the metropolis, as well as between that port and the interior of the country, was very rare so late as the year 1753. At that time there was not a single stage-coach that left the place for any other town in the kingdom. People who wanted to travel had either to do so on horseback, in their own or hired carriages, or to journey in companies. Every Friday morning William Knowles, George Glover, William Thornton, or James Lancaster, started from the Swan with Two Necks, Lad Lane, London, 'with a gang of horses' for the conveyance of passengers and light goods, and reached Liverpool on the Monday evening following. This was then considered very swift travelling. The old Lancashire and Cheshire stagewaggons, which started from the Axe Inn, Aldermanbury, London, every Monday and Thursday, were ten days on the road in summer and eleven in winter; goods were forwarded from Liverpool at about the same speed of travelling by various carriers to the principal towns in Lancashire and Yorkshire. Not until April 1774 did a stage-coach begin to run between Manchester, Warrington, and Liverpool, and then only thrice a week. During the same year a 'machine' was set running between Liverpool and Preston.

In 1748 a family about to embark at Falmouth hired a coach and horses for that purpose in London. The coachman not caring to return to London without passengers began to cast about. A party of young men in the port availed themselves of the opportunity to journey to the metropolis on the stipulation that if they drove into a town during the day, if a cockfight took place, the coach was to wait for them." With the second half of the century a vast improvement was effected in the speed of the coaches, though very little in the vehicles themselves. A number of the 'Salisbury Journal' for 1752 contained the following advertisement :

For the better conveyance of travellers, the Exeter fast coach starts every Monday from the Saracen's Head, Skinner Street, Snow Hill, London. Monday dines at Egham, lies at Murrell's

'Baines's Hist. of Liverpool, p. 418; Brookes's Liverpool in the Last Quarter of the Eighteenth Century.

2 Davies Gilbert's Hist. of Cornwall.