NIMROD'S NORTHERN TOUR. 



the English, or in what the English excelled them. But between the 

 systems of travelling in France and in England, there cannot be 

 admitted any parallel ; nor indeed for the former, any apology ; and 

 when I am seated on the box of an English stage coach, and contrast 

 the neatness of its build with the clumsiness of a French Diligence ; the 

 brightness — I was nearly saying elegance — of its harness, with the 

 poverty-struck tackle of the other, which an English farmer in some 

 counties would be ashamed of; the personal cleanliness, and almost 

 genteel, although appropriate, character of the coachman, with the dirty, 

 smoke-dried, smock-frocked, non-descript appearance of the diligence 

 driver ; and though last, not least, the rapid and soul-stirring pace of its 

 horses, with the funereal slowness of the others, I cannot help feeling a 

 conscious pride in the superiority of my own country, as regards the 

 actual operations of common life. But here the energy of the British 

 mind comes into play. A saving of time is every thing to an English- 

 man ; whereas — as far as my experience has gone — a Frenchman 

 thinks little of it. Discussing this point with one of them on our 

 journey from hence to Dunkirk — only twenty-five miles, which occupied 

 rather better than five hours, by the Lisle diligence, — he acknowledged 

 the tardiness of French travelling, but added emphatically, that it was 

 7nuch cheaper than in England. This I denied ; and told him that if 



1 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 selecting it out 

 of the many that leave Dover for the Metropolis, w^as to see the perform- 

 ance of a coachman called Bill Watson, whose father and four brothers 

 are all on the bench on the same road — a circumstance unparalleled, 1 



