'3 



I trust that some will benefit from these instructions, for there 

 are really few more agreeable sights than that of a good-looking team 

 handled neatly by a gentleman, who sits well, with, perhaps a lady beside 

 him on the box. I am much pleased to find that the taste for four-in-hand 

 driving is increasing of late, and am glad to say, some gentlemen drive very 

 well. It is easy enough, to detect those who are self-taught from those who 

 have received instruction from a professional man. Many think that driving 

 can be acquired without teaching. I wonder if any gentleman would like 

 to dance in a ball-room without first taking lessons ; and yet some, do not 

 hesitate to drive four horses a feat attended with much danger, not only 

 to the public generally, but to themselves and those who accompany them, 

 if undertaken without due knowledge. 



Before concluding, I will relate some of the difficulties we had to 

 encounter in foggy weather. We were obliged to be guided out of 

 London with torches, seven or eight Mails following one after the other, 

 the guard of the foremost Mail lighting the one following, and so on till 

 the last. We travelled at a slow pace, like a funeral procession. Many 

 times I have been three hours going from London to Hounslow. I 

 remember one very foggy night, instead of my arriving at Bagshot (a 

 distance of thirty miles from London, and my destination) at eleven o'clock, 

 I did not get there till one in the morning. I had to leave again at four 

 the same morning. On my way back to town, when the fog was very 

 bad, I was coming over Hounslow Heath when I reached the spot where 

 the old powder-mills used to stand. I saw several lights in the road, and 

 heard voices, which induced me to stop. The old Exeter Mail, which left 

 Bagshot thirty minutes before I did, had met with a singular accident ; it 

 was driven by a man named Gambier ; his leaders had come in contact 

 with a hay-cart on its way to London, which caused them to turn 

 suddenly round, break the pole, and blunder down a steep embankment, 



