horseback they rode in one suit, and carried another to wear when they came to their journey's end, or lay by the way; but in coaches they ride in a silk suit, with an Indian gown, with a sash, silk stockings, and the beaver hats men ride in, and carry no other with them. This is because they escape the wet and dirt which on horseback they cannot avoid; whereas in two or three journeys on horseback, these clothes and hats were wont to be spoiled; which done, they were forced to have new very often, and that increased the consumption of manufacture. If they were women that travelled, they used to have safeguards and hoods, side- saddles and pillions, with strappings, saddle or pillion cloths, which, for the most part, were laced and embroidered; to the making of which there went many several trades, now ruined.' But the writer has other reasons to urge against coach- travelling. Those who travel in this manner,' he observes, become weary and listless when they ride a few miles, unwilling to get on horseback, and unable to endure frost, snow, or rain, or to lodge in the fields.' Besides, he asks,' what advantage it can be to a man's health to be called out of bed into these coaches an hour or two before day in the morning-to be hurried in them from place to place till one, two, or three hours within night; insomuch that, after sitting all day, in the summer-time, stifled with heat and choked with dust-or in the winter-time, starving or freezing with cold, or choked with filthy fogs, they are often brought into their inns by torchlight, when it is too late to sit up to get supper, and next morning they are forced into the coach so early that they can get no breakfast?" These somewhat amusing remonstrances against coach-travelling, which, bad as it was, had the merit of being an advance on what preceded it, ought to afford a caution to the general opponents of improvement. Arguments of a similar nature are now used in reference to almost every proposed melioration in our social condition, and will doubtless, in a century hence, be quoted for their short-sighted folly, though at present meeting with countenance from a large class in the community.

Notwithstanding the introduction of stage-coaches in the seventeenth century, they were placed only on the principal roads, and used almost exclusively by persons of refined taste and wealth. The popular mode of conveyance continued for at least a century afterwards to be by stage-wagons; these were very large and cumbersome machines, drawn by six or eight horses, and devoted chiefly to the carriage of goods to and from the metropolis. The only part of the vehicle which afforded accommodation to passengers was the 'tail' of the wagon, as it was called-a reserved space with a hooped-up cover at the hinder part of the machine; and here, sitting upon straw as they best could, some half-dozen passengers were slowly conveyed on their journey. The chance attacks of highwaymen and other incidents which occurred to the occupants of the wagon, also their adventures at the inns where they slept for the night, are graphically described by the old novelists, and will be in the recollection of most of our readers.

The length of time consumed in journeys by even the best kind of carriages of past times is now matter for surprise. The stage-coach which went between London and Oxford in 1661, in the reign of Charles II., required two days, although the distance is only about sixty miles. In 1669 a great acceleration took place, and the distance was performed in thirteen hours-that is, from six o'clock in the morning till seven o'clock in the evening-which was reckoned a great feat. Within memory, six hours were ordinarily required in the journey by stage-coaches. The distance is now done by the express on the Great Western Railway in an hour and twenty minutes!

So shockingly bad were the roads, that in 1703, when Prince George of Denmark went from Windsor to Petworth to meet Charles III. of Spain, the distance being about forty miles, he required fourteen hours for the journey, the last nine miles taking six. The person who records this fact says, that the long time was the more surprising, as, except when overturned, or when stuck fast in the mire, his royal highness made no stop during the journey.

In 1742 stage-coaches must have been more numerous in England than in Charles II.'s time; but it does not appear that they moved any faster. The journey from London to Birmingham, 116 miles, then occupied nearly three days, as appears from the following advertisement: "The Lichfield and Birmingham stage - coach set out this morning-Monday, April 12, 1742-from the Rose Inn, Holborn Bridge, London, and will be at the Angel, and the Hen and Chickens, in the High Town, Birmingham, on Wednesday next, to dinner; and goes the same afternoon to Lichfield. It returns to Birmingham on Thursday morning to breakfast, and gets to London on Saturday night; and so will continue every week regularly, with a good coach and able horses. Thus the whole week was occupied in a journey to and from Lichfield by Birmingham, an entire space of probably not more than 240 miles-that is, at an average of forty miles a day.

The stage-coach journey from London to Bath, in 1748, occupied from the morning of one day to the evening of the next, a night being spent on the road, although the whole distance travelled was only 108 miles. So slow were improvements, that within the last forty years the journey by stage to Bath was accomplished in not less than fifteen hours; and to Exeter, 193 miles, double the time was employed. A lady mentions to us some reminiscences of her journey by stage-coach from London to Exeter forty-six years ago. She left London on Monday afternoon at two o'clock, and arrived in Exeter on Wednesday evening at seven o'clock-a period of fifty-three hours. The coach stopped one night on the road, so that the actual time in travelling was about forty hours. At present, the journey is performed by the express-train in less than five hours!

It is now about a hundred years since a stage-coach was started to run between Edinburgh and London. Previous to that event, when there was no regular conveyance, the Edinburgh newspapers occasionally presented advertisements, stating that an individual about

to proceed to the metropolis by a postchaise, would be glad to hear of a fellow - adventurer or more to lessen the expenses for mutual convenience. However, before 1754, there was a stage-coach between the two British capitals. In the Edinburgh Courant' for that year it is advertised that 'The Edinburgh stage-coach, for the better accommodation of passengers, will be altered to a new genteel two-end glass coach machine, hung on steel springs, exceeding light and easy, to go in ten days in summer, and twelve in winter; to set out the first Tuesday in March, and continue it, from Hosea Eastgate's, the Coach and Horses in Dean Street, Soho, London, and from John Somerville's in the Canongate, Edinburgh, every other Tuesday, and meet at Burrowbridge on Saturday night, and set out from thence on Monday morning, and get to London and Edinburgh on Friday. In winter, to set out from London and Edinburgh every other [alternate] Monday morning, and to go to Burrowbridge on Saturday night; and to set out from thence on Monday morning, and get to London and Edinburgh on Saturday night. Passengers to pay as usual. Performed, if God permits, by your dutiful servant, HOSEA EASTGATE.' Here a distance of 200 miles requires six days in winter, being at the rate of little more than thirty-three miles a day.

Within our own recollection, the mail-coach occupied fifty-four hours in the journey between London and Edinburgh. Look how the thing is now managed! The mailtrain takes seventeen hours, and the express performs the journey in twelve hours. A person may comfortably breakfast in London, and be seated at supper in Edinburgh; and in reality be less fatigued than if he had been packed up for three hours in a stage-coach.

Many will have a vivid recollection of the difficulties in the way of transit before river and channel steamers came into operation. Twenty-four hours were ordinarily consumed in the voyage from London Bridge to Margate by one of the famous Margate hoys--a pleasant run down the Thames by steamer now settling this important affair

in less than a forenoon. Then, what an appalling enterprise in the olden time was the journey and voyage to Dublin-the long and dreary coaching from London to Liverpool, followed by the sea-passage in one of the sailing packets. An entire week was considered a fair length of time for the land and sea journey; but sometimes the sea part of it alone occupied eight or ten days, for the weather occasionally drove the packet for shelter into ports on the Welsh or Irish coast. A mighty pleasant way this was of reaching Dublin, half a century ago! Now observe the difference. By train and steamer, by way of Holyhead, the journey from London to Dublin may be done in fourteen hours! Practically, Dublin is now nearer London than Birmingham was thirty years ago. Hundreds of similar marvels are within everybody's knowledge.

Some very curious particulars could be given of the tediousness of goods-transit in past times by canals, wagons, and other conveyances. Robertson in his 'Rural Recollections,' referring to a period between 1770 and 1780, drolly observes, 'that the common carrier from Selkirk to Edinburgh, thirty-eight miles distant, required two weeks to make out his journey between the two towns, going and returning, with a suitable resting-time at each to his poor fatigued horse, which had perhaps not less than five or six hundredweight of goods to drag along. The road originally was among the most perilous in the whole country; a considerable extent of it lay in the bottom of that district called Gala Water, from the name of the principal stream. The channel of the water itself, when not flooded, was the track chosen, as being the most level and easiest to be travelled on. The rest of the way, very much up and down hill, was far worse. The townsmen of this adventurous individual, on the morning of his way-going, turned out to take leave of him, and to wish him a safe return from his perilous undertaking.' We occasionally perform this perilous undertaking' by the train down the vale of the Gala in an hour and a half!