vm INTRODUCTION. 



admitted on all hands to have ^' done the state 

 some service" in the well-contested battles of the 

 Peninsula, and finally, in the glorious fight at Wa- 

 terloo ; it is, therefore, rather to prove the beneficial 

 effect our improved breed of blood horses has had 

 upon the commercial interests of the country, that 

 we would address ourselves. 



In order to do this, it is only necessary that 

 we contrast the mode of travelling before this im- 

 provement had taken place, or extended itself, with 

 that of the present day, Dashwood"^ observes : '' that 

 he is old enough to remember a certain west- 

 coach, (and he takes it for a fair average rate of 

 the travelling in those days), when it always took 

 ten, and sometimes twelve hours, to accomplish 

 its journey, fifty-seven miles, or thereabouts, from 

 yard to yard." Its present time is something 

 above six hours. In 1742, the single stage-coach 

 that travelled between London and Oxford, 

 began the journey at seven in the morning, and 

 did not reach its destination until the evening 

 of the following day, resting at High Wycombe 

 during the intervening night. The same journey 

 is now regularly performed in six hours. 



Again, so late as in the summer of 1798, the 

 Telegraph, then considered a fast coach, left the 



* A well-known writer on sporting subjects in the Old Sporting 

 Magazine, in an article on coaching, written in 1824. 



