NIMRO&S NORTHERN TOUR. $ 



is everything to an Englishman ; whereas as far as my ex- 

 perience has gone a Frenchman thinks little of i*-. Discussing 

 this point with one of them on our journey from hence to Dun- 

 kirk only twenty-five miles, which occupied rather better than 

 five hours, by the Lisle diligence he acknowledged the tardi- 

 ness of French travelling, but added emphatically, that it was 

 much cheaper than in England. This I denied ; and told him 

 that if I had not been called upon to mount the diligence by two 

 hours so soon as I was called upon, I could have earned three 

 times the amount of my fare to Dunkirk in those two hours. 



But to return to the Eagle coach. My chief object in select- 

 ing it out of the many that leave Dover for the Metropolis, was 

 to see the performance of a coachman called Bill Watson, whose 

 father and/iwr brothers are all on the bench on the same road 

 a circumstance unparalleled, I believe, in the annals of English 

 coaching. We were strangers to each other, which suited my 

 book the better, as I was then sure of seeing him in his every- 

 day costume ; that is to say, in his real character as the driver 

 of a very well-appointed and sufficiently fast coach, on perhaps 

 the most difficult road that is now to be found within the same 

 distance from London. Nor could I have selected a better day 

 for my observance of him ; for having to take up some passengers 

 in two or three very narrow Streets, and those full of interrup- 

 tions from building materials, I had a good opportunity of 

 judging of his powers of coachmanship, and he certainly afforded 

 me a treat. I found he not only was gifted with that delicacy ot 

 finger which is indispensable to perfection in the art, with 

 strength equal to anything that may be required of him for his 

 box, but that he had all the quickness of the new school with 

 the formerly-indispensable qualifications of the old one I mean, 

 the proper and ready use of his whip ; and which, on such 

 ground as his is, is more essential to safety than the generality 

 of persons are aware of. 



In short, from the scientific way in which he caught his thong 

 upon his crop, it was always ready for wheelers or leaders, and 

 the rapidity with which he applied it to his leaders when wanting 

 the near-side ones in particular I have never seen equalled. 

 But it was on the summit of the first hill we had to descend that 

 the performance of this artist most gratified me, for he showed 

 me that he was one of the few of his fraternity that are suffi- 

 ciently aware of the attraction of gravitation, or, in other words, 

 that the weight of his coach would multiply by its velocity by 

 pulling up his horses nearly to their walk, before he began to 

 descend it. He then handed his coach down it in a masterly 

 manner, without the assistance of the drag, and consequently 



