lo COACHING DAYS AND COACHING WAYS 



Church. The fair sex formed the larger part of the 

 crowd which attended. Flambeaux blazed, and the hero 

 was laid under a plain white marble stone, " whereon 

 were curiousl}" engraved the Du Vail arms," and under 

 them written in black this epitaph : — 



"DU VALL'S EPITAPH. 



" Here lies Du Vail : Reader, if Male thou art, 

 Look to thy Purse : if Female, to thy Heart. 

 Much Havoc has he made of both ; for all 

 Men he made stand and ^Vomen he made fall. 

 The second Conqu'ror of the Norman Race 

 Knights to his arms did yield and Ladies to his Face. 

 Old Tyburn's glory, lingland's illustrious Thief, 

 Du Vail the Ladies' joy: Du Vail the Ladies' Grief." 



What is an inscription in Westminster Abbey to this 

 surprising offering at the tomb of genius } " The Second 

 Conqu'ror of the Norman Race." Can anything be more 

 magnificent ? " Du Vail the Ladies' Grief" This sorrow 

 is heavenl}'. Let us take our leave of this great man 

 and follow the Flying Machine that he has lightened. 

 We shall not have to go far to catch it up in spite of our 

 digression. It has been off the Road as well as we have, 

 has got into one of those ruts or rather trenches, which 

 filled foreigners with strange oaths — and there it sticks 

 fast — the six horses with flanks distended, the coachman 

 scarlet in the face w^ith thonging them, the guard armed 

 with a stick in aid of his amiable exertions ; all powerless 

 to move it. The state of the roads at this time in early 

 spring and winter must have been something awful. So 

 late as 1797, Middleton, in his Survey of Middlesex, 

 speaking of the Oxford road at Uxbridge, observes that 

 during the whole of the winter there was but one pass- 

 able track on it, and that was less than six feet wide and 

 was eight inches deep in fluid sludge. To be in charac- 

 ter, on a sliding scale, all the rest of the road was from 

 a foot to eighteen inches deep in adhesive mud, which 



