CONCLUSION. 



OUR ancestors, on alighting from any of the prolonged 

 journeys I have tried to describe, were used, being for- 

 tunate people who lived when life was not at all hurry, 

 to sit down quietly over a generous glass and take their 

 ease in their inn. We less fortunate descendants cannot 

 do this now, because time is not permitted us, and we 

 have no inns to take our ease in. We live in an age of 

 hotels, where on touching an electric communicator 

 everything but ease is to be had. 



However, though our ancestors' ease after travel may 

 not be ours, we may be permitted some sort of retro- 

 spection — such as was often theirs — over the long list 

 of perils past, on many thousand miles of good, bad, or 

 indifferent roads, in vehicles and company agreeably 

 diversified — some final desultory chat on road-bills, 

 coaches, horses, inns, to induce sleep or round the story. 



Of road-bills, then, to begin with, here are one or two 

 suggestive specimens — not connected with the roads on 

 which we have been travelling, but none the less 

 illustrative of Coaching Days and Coaching Ways for 

 all that. 



"FROM THE SWAN WITH TWO NECKS IN EAD LANE. 



AUGUST, 1774. 



" A post-chaise to Gloucester in sixteen hours, and a Machine in one day 



.—each three days a week. A Machine to Hereford twice a week in a day 



and a half. A Machine to Salop every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday 



in two days. A Machine for Wolverhampton every Sunday, Tuesday, and 



Thursday in one day." 



