3S0 The Book oi- the Horse. 



For who so smoothly glides o'er liill and plain 



As Beaufort's Duke ? — What whip can equal Payne ? 



No matter ; dinner comes when all are able 



To drive their coaches well ; above the table, 



Ricardo [John Lewis] then can driving feats relate, 



And Bathyany swear he cleared the gate." 



Then, after deploring "the season gliding by," he refers to the carriage destined to 

 supersede alike curricles and cabriolets, and to the team that was for many years to be the 

 only surviving specimen of the London coaches killed by railroads. 



" Haply there rattles through the evening gloom 

 The one-horse chariot of the inconstant Brougham ; 

 Or Butcher Savage shows his coach of red, 

 His harness dirty and his team ill-bred." 



Before 1845 the last real four-horse stage-coach had ceased to book passengers in London. 

 The private four-horse drags, including Mr. Henry Peyton's yellow coach and team of greys 

 could be numbered on the fingers of one hand. " Butcher Savage " alone represented the 

 departed glories of the road, and in all weathers rattled his team of four coarse-bred iron-grey 

 horses through the suburbs — condemned, according to the gossip of omnibus drivers (who then 

 included in their ranks many broken-down knights of four-horse fame), under penalties in his 

 father's will, to drive a certain number of miles every day ! 



From time to time attempts were made to revive driving clubs, but, an authority — 

 the head waiter at "Limmer's" — declared that most of the members forgot their whips on the 

 second season's meet at that once noted house of call for the fast " men about town." 

 In 1870, the F. H. C, an association limited in numbers, and exclusive as White's or 

 Boodle's, alone maintained the ancient traditions of the road. And if the late Mr. Morritt of 

 Rokeby, its president, was to be believed, there were several entitled to wear the brown coat 

 and club button who were not willing to trust themselves even with the quietest team without 

 " a nurse " at hand, in the shape of a professional coachman or an amateur of the old 

 school. 



Since that date a furious revival has taken place. The services of the professional sur- 

 vivors of the coaching era have been in constant demand ; and recently Hyde Park has 

 repeatedly seen as many as a hundred well-appointed drags paraded on the same day before 

 an admiring and discriminating crowd of both sexes, which included the crhnc de la crhne of 

 the mid-day frequenters of that unequalled out-of-door lounge ; the majority of the hundred 

 coachmen, however, not venturing beyond the precincts of the park and the territory bounded 

 by St. James's Street and Tyburnia. 



At the same time — encouraged, no doubt, by the abolition of turnpikes, and the reduction 

 of the duties on horses, carriages, and servants — a number of gentlemen, with a taste for 

 driving, have established stage-coaches to run during the fine-weather months, to such pleasant 

 resorts as Tunbridge Wells, Windsor, Guildford, Watford, and St. Albans ; to which the long 

 journeys to Portsmouth and Oxford have since been added. But considering the heavy 

 expense of working a well-horsed, well got-up stage-coach, in spite of the best management, 

 the inevitable loss on every season, it is not probable that many stage-coaches will survive 

 the fashion of the present generation. 



