ROADS AND RATE OF SPEED. 21 



CHAPTER V. 



ROADS AND RATE OF SPEED. 



In illustration of the usual speed of travelling in 1766, 

 Lord Eldon states that when he left school in that 

 year to go to Oxford, he came up from Newcastle to 

 London in a coach which was called ' a fly,' 1 on account 

 of its quick travelling, as it was then thought, but he 

 was three or four days and nights upon the road. There 

 was no such velocity as to endanger overturning or 

 other mischief ; and as a sort of apology for its pace 

 there was printed on the panel of the carriage the phrase 

 Sat cito, si sat bene. The impression made by this 

 sentence upon the mind of the embryo chancellor was 

 heightened by a circumstance which occurred upon the 

 journey. A Quaker fellow-traveller called the chamber- 

 maid to the coach door and gave her sixpence, telling 



1 The continued application of the term ' fly ' to coaches may have been 

 suggested by the following circumstances : In i8c8 a Brighton carpenter, 

 employed at the Pavilion Stables, injured himself, and on his recovery he 

 made a seat on wheels to be drawn about on. The Prince Regent, seeing it, 

 ordered one like it, and this was used by him and his friends in their larks 

 at night. They named it jocosely a fly-by-night. When the carpenter sent 

 the pattern to London with an order for more, the coachbuilder made one 

 for a horse to draw. To this also the designation of a fly was given. 



