102 COACHING DAYS AND COACHING WAYS 



which apology for lack of speed, in five and thirty 

 minutes, the Comet careers into Brentford. 



At the jolting of the coach on the old familiar paving 

 stones Mirabel becomes young again. The past re- 

 appears. He is in the Exeter Fly once more, with the 

 blooming Belinda — whose bright eyes are dimmed now ; 

 with her mother, who has long since vanished off the 

 face of the earth ; with the lawyer of Salisbury who, 

 whilst she was upon it, had aspired to keep her com- 

 pany ; with the blue-faced warrior from Dettingen, 

 intoxicated and timorous to the last. 



" Wounds bleed anew ; the Plaint pursues with tears 

 The wanderer through life's labyrinthine waste ; 

 And names the Good already past away, 

 Cheated, alas ! of half life's little day," 



as Goethe sings of a similar condition of affairs. To 

 be brief, the old man feels sad, and looks it ; but when 

 his companions ask him what the matter is, and whether 

 they may prescribe, he observes, " Hah ! . . What ! . . . 

 No improvement in this filthy place ? Is Old Brentford 

 still here ? A national disgrace." In answer to which 

 somewhat splenetic attack on a perfectly respectable 

 town, he is informed that Old Brentford is here ; and a 

 second after it could only have been described as there, 

 for the Comet leaves it at ten round miles an hour, and 

 fifty-five minutes precisely from leaving" Hyde Park 

 Corner draws up at Hounslow. 



Mirabel is delighted, for he wants some breakfast. 

 " Thank Heaven," he says, " we are arrived at a good- 

 looking house," with which words he stands up for the 

 purpose of alighting at it ; but he is violently and with 

 horrid suddenness reseated, and the waiter, the inn, and 

 indeed Hounslow itself, disappear in the twinkling of 

 an eye. By and by, when he has recovered from the 

 painful shock of nearly swallowing his teeth, he eyes the 

 proprietor sternly, and says, " Sir, you told me we were 

 to change horses at Hounslow," searching meanwhile for 



