STANHOPES AND FASHIONABLE CARRIAGES. 219 



finest scene in an opera. So much, then for taste, about 

 which philosophers have long" since given up disputing. 

 The music for me is the music of the bars ; and the road, 

 after all, is the grand theatre of life. 



Had our present expedition in travelling been pro- 

 posed to our ancestors, as a possible thing, they would 

 have scouted it, as the illusion of a madman. So lately 

 as 1742, the coach from London to Oxford was two days 

 on the road, taking ten hours to go half way : the whole 

 distance is now done — without the least distress, without 

 the point of the thong being out of the coachman's hand 

 — in six hours. So much for the art of mechanism (for 

 to this, after all, is it due), reduced to the practical pur- 

 poses of life ! This, however, is but the beginning. 

 The master of mechanics laughs at strength ; and if a 

 second Daedalus 1 do not spring up among us, and teach 

 us to fly, there is little doubt but that, either by steam or 

 air, before the present century expires, carriages will be 

 transported without animal power. 2 Should this not be 

 the case, such improvements are making in roads and 

 carriages, that it looks as if there were no limitation to 

 draught. Indeed, it is now upon record, that, assisted 

 by the true principles of traction, a common cart-horse 

 drew fifty-five tons six cwt. six miles in one hour and 

 forty minutes, though he had the friction of twenty-four 

 wheels to oppose him. 



1 Since I wrote the above, I have been informed that a patent has been 

 applied for by a person who has invented a machine, in which we are to 

 travel (in vacuo) at the rate of two hundred miles per hour, and that the first 

 trial of it is to be from London to Brighton in fifteen minutes. 



2 How prophetic ! — Editor. 



