198 



COACHING DAYS AND COACHING WAYS 



Of the coachmen on this celebrated road for travelling, 

 as I have already remarked, a great authority on the 

 subject held a poor opinion. And why ? Simply 

 because, according to ''Viator Junior" (quoted by 

 Captain Malet in his Annals of the Road, to which ex- 

 haustive authority I gratefully recommend coaching 

 fanciers), simply because the excellence of the road 

 annihilated the breed. This severe critic indeed ranges 

 forty-five trembling coachmen in his judicial mind's eye, 



- ■ *■#■-• *V'' ' 





*g£an&*» «••' 





r 



Tie Village Cage, Lindfield. 



and out of the whole batch is only able to select seven 

 or eight worthy of the title of " artists ; " capable, as he 

 poetically puts it, of " hitting 'em and holding 'em." Oh, 

 what a fall is here ! But Viator Junior proceeds to 

 details. Not having travelled in an excursion train (he 

 writes in 1828), he marvels how passengers can trust their 

 necks to coachmen, utterly incompetent to take along a 

 heavy load in safety, at the pace at which the Brighton 

 coaches are timed — and then a ghastly vision of incom- 



