2i8 ECHOES OF OLD COUNTY LIFE. 



they assisted the Company by finding omnibuses and 

 vehicles to meet their trains at Euston, and to convey 

 passengers over the unfinished sections of the Hue. It 

 was a long time before the exclusiveness of the nobility 

 and of the old country gentlemen was broken through, 

 before they would condescend to mix with those who 

 could not boast their own private carriages ; and for 

 some time after the railway lines were opened private 

 carriages were conveyed on trucks, and the owners rode 

 inside them, till the manifest dangers of the system 

 became patent, and they were compelled to put up 

 with the ordinary first-class compartments. It was no 

 less than a social revolution that was silently produced 

 by the leveUing tendency of steam locomotion. 



The capital embarked in the coaching and carrying 

 business at that time was estimated at many millions 

 of pounds. Men of the present day can form but a 

 small idea of the importance of coaching and posting 

 before railways were perfected. It seemed hard, after 

 Telford, Macadam, and other engineers had laid out and 

 improved the great main roads of the kingdom, and 

 coaching and posting had arrived as near as possible to 

 perfection, • that the Stephcnsons, the Brunels, and 

 Lockes should have cast to the winds the splendid 

 results that had been achieved by the knights of the 

 whip and the road. As an old coach proprietor I must 

 perforce recount a few of the grievances which we 

 country proprietors loved to air. The London firms 

 had many great advantages over us. Every coach that 

 left any booking-ofhce was charged ^i per month 

 for booking passengers, and as many hundred coaches 



