52 COACHING. 



the mud was ankle-deep, was not a very pleasant 

 thino-. 



Such was the system of travelling in tbe good 

 old times, as tbey were called, when every 

 affair of life moved on at a quiet, jog-trot 

 pace. But when competition of the most eager 

 kind became the order of the day, it cannot be 

 said that mails or coaches stood still. The 

 Edinburgh Mail ran four hundred miles in forty 

 hours, stoppages included. The Exeter day 

 coach, the " Herald," went over its ground, one 

 hundred and seventy-three miles, in twenty hours, 

 an admirable performance, considering the 

 natural uuevenness of the country ; and the 

 Devonport Mail performed the journey, two 

 hundred and twenty-seven miles, in twenty- two 

 hours. The increase of speed was alarming to 

 those who had been accustomed to the old- 

 fashioned slow coaches, and the rate at which 

 the new vehicles travelled was considered reckless 

 riskiuo: of human life. 



It may not be here out of place to observe 

 that the first requisite in a coach horse is action, 

 and the second sound legs and feet, with blood 

 and bone. The third desideratum is good wind, 

 as the power of respiration is called, without 

 which the first and second qualifications avail 



