COACHING 



coffin, emblematic of the death of a great institution. 

 Yet the mail-coach survived until a much later date 

 in some districts, where the line was slow to 

 penetrate. Mr. S. A. Kinglake, in Baily^s Magazine 

 of 1906, gave an account of the Oxford and 

 Cheltenham coach, which only began to carry the 

 mails in 1848, and made its last trip in 1862, when 

 the opening of a new branch line ousted this 

 lingerer on the roads. 



The interregnum between the last of the old coaches 

 and the modern era was not a very long one : 

 indeed, taking the country as a whole, and accept- 

 ing the coach as subsidiary to the railway, the old 

 and the new overlap. Modern road coaching dates 

 from the later 'sixties, when the late Duke of 

 Beaufort, with some others, started the Brighton 

 coach. This was the first of several private ventures 

 of the same kind: their primary object was to enable 

 the owners to enjoy the pleasure of driving a team, 

 and the financial side of the business was not much 

 regarded. The subscription coach was a later 

 development, with the same object in view, pleasure 

 rather than money-making, and the large majority 

 of the coaches which run from London to Brighton, 



53 H 



