OF FARRIERY, 



319 



and as it was almost the universal fashion to 

 drive from the saddle, accompanied by out- 

 riders, the servants also escaped dislocation. 

 But there was a class of devoted wretches for 

 whom no such good luck was found, and who, 

 in an honest effort to procure their daily bread 

 underwent the agonies of an earthly purgatory 

 without any parallel in a Christian land. 

 When Mr. Palmer first bestowed upon us the 

 convenience of mail-coaches, as might be ex- 

 pected, he committed a few small oversights ; 

 among these were the coachmen's boxes, tliat 

 w€re without springs, and were constructed 

 upon the common principle. The consequence 

 was, that the seats upon which they were 

 destined to perform their avocations were 

 pieces of pine, or other obdurate plank, sup- 

 ported upon standards springing from the 

 beds of the fore-axles. These " devils' sedans" 

 were covered with a tanned bull's hide, to 

 which, as a material for incubation, granite is 

 as an air cushion. Old Dan Herbert, who 

 for the last ten years of his life drove between 

 Chester and Birkenhead, and as a very supe- 

 rior sample of the Old School will be re- 

 membered by many a reader of these pages, 

 was on the Holyhead mail from Chester to 

 Stafford in those hard times for dragsmen. 

 For better than five and thirty years Dan was 

 a most communicative coachman, and withal 

 had an ambition for saying smart things. In 

 one of our conversations upon the bumpings of 

 his early education, I asked him how his con- 

 stitution could have supported such inhuman 

 exercise, and whether it had not proved fatal 

 to men less robust than he was ? " VVh>, Sir," 

 was his rejoinder, " it was well enough when 

 once we got used to it : but I assure you the 

 case-hardening was no joke : some died under 

 the operation, and some did not ; but there 



never was a man who tried it that it did not 

 make him think of his latter end." 



The epoch from which we may date the 

 rapid advance in improvement as regards every 

 department of the Road, is coeval with the 

 system of remodelling our highways upon the 

 plan of Mr. M'Adam. That the scheme of 

 road-making which bears the name of that 

 gentleman was not of his invention, all who 

 have travelled in Scotland and Ireland must 

 have known. Still we are indebted to him 

 for its introduction into this country, and for 

 many judicious innovations by which he 

 brought it to its present perfection. As the 

 facilities for locomotion improved, so did the 

 appliances to aid it. 



The call for increased speed upon the com- 

 mercial roads was met about twelve years ago 

 on the Birmingham line by the appearance of 

 three "Tally-ho's," now distinguished as 

 "The Patent," The Independent," and "The 

 Eclipse." Looking at the time they have 

 been at work — their chronometrical regularity 

 for half a score years — their pace, and the 

 style in which they are worked through the 

 country, and not at the ends alone, we shall 

 hardly find any thing altogether more complete 

 than this trio. Awful forebodings attended 

 their starting : their speed was pronounced 

 suicidal, and the waste of human life that was 

 to result from it fearful to contemplate. It is 

 a singular fact that the only fatal accident I 

 recollect occurring to any of them was the 

 death of poor Peck, the guard, who was killed 

 but the other day by a fall off his coach w hile 

 it was standing still. 



In the way of fast-work, however, combined 

 with the fashion in which it was done, cer- 

 tainly the pas must be given to the coaclies 

 which were put on the Brighton Road tlie 



