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Yet so it is. They are " regularly booked." Their " places are taken " by one 

 who shows no disposition to make room for them ; even their coaches are already 

 beginning to crumble into things that have been ; and their bodies (we mean their 

 coach bodies) are being seized upon by rural loving folks, for the vulgar purpose 

 of summer-houses. But a few days and they will all vanish 



" And like the baseless fabric of a vision, 

 Leave not a trace behind." 



No, not even a buckle, or an inch of whipcord; and if, some years hence a 

 petrified whipple tree, or the skeleton of a coachman, should be turned up, they 

 will be hung up side by side with rusty armour and the geological gleanings of 

 our antediluvian ancestors. 



We cannot part with our civil, obliging, gentlemanly friends of the road 

 without a feeling of regret, and an expression of gratitude for the benefits they 

 have done us. It was pleasant, after a warm breakfast, to remove our heels from 

 the hob, and ensconce oneself by the side of our modern whip to establish a 

 partnership in his cosy leathern apron to see him handling his four spirited bays 

 as though his reins were velvet and having, with a few familiar words and a 

 friendly cigar, drawn the cork from the bottle of his varied information, to learn, 

 as we slapped along at ten miles an hour, whose park it was, stretching away to 

 the left, to listen to his little anecdotes of horse and flesh, and his elucidation of 

 the points of the last Derby. " Peace to the manes and to the names " of our 

 honest coachmen, one and all of them, and of their horses too we speak of their 

 whippish names, for in the body we hope they may long tarry, and flourish to boot, 

 in other departments of the living. 



