198 



COACHING DAYS AND COACHING WAYS 



Of the coachmen on this celebrated road for travelHng, 

 as I have already remarked, a great authority on the 

 subject held a poor opinion. And why ? Simpl}^ 

 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 

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





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The 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 ! l^ut 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, utterh- 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- 



