280 COACHING. 



Sir James Viney patronised a Mr. Pocock and 

 the making of kites for the purpose of drawing 

 a carriage, but these paper horses were un- 

 governable, particularly in a storm, and Sir 

 John gave them up for a couple of ponies, 

 ■which, in truth, were almost as wayward. 



One conveyance alone remains to which I 

 have not referred — the sedan chair, named after 

 the town of Sedan, in France. In early days 

 I well remember a very gorgeous specimen of 

 the above, emblazoned with the family arms, 

 which used to convey my mother to evening 

 parties; and as late as the year 1834 I have 

 often, at Leamington, Edinburgh, and Bath, 

 made use of a sedan chair to take me to 

 dinner. One advantage this conveyance had 

 over a carriage was that, upon a snowy or rainy 

 night, you could enter it under cover and get 

 out of it in your Amphitryon's hall. Occasion- 

 ally it was used by young spendthrifts against 

 whom writs were out, as it enabled them to 

 avoid the sheriff's officers. It was not always, 

 however, a safe refuge, as Hogarth, in one 

 of his prints, represents a tipstaff seizing hold of 

 some debtor he was in search of. 



Early in the present century a very clever 

 caricature appeared, in which an Irishman was 



