A VISIT 



' Sir, always to pay for a thing at Oxford when 

 ' you have it, if you can. If you cannot, go 

 ' without it' I thought this sensible advice, and 

 the worthy artiste of the whip raised himself in 

 my good opinion accordingly. Persons who have 

 of late years described English coachmen, and 

 especially foreigners, appear quite to have mis- 

 taken their habits and characters. One agreeable 

 writer tells us, that a coachman has commonly a 

 broad, full face, curiously mottled with red, as if 

 the blood had been forced by hard feeding into 

 every vessel of the skin that he is swelled into 

 jolly dimensions by frequent potations of malt 

 liquors, and that his bulk is still further increased 

 by a multiplicity of coats, in which he is buried 

 like a cauliflower, the upper one reaching to his 

 heels. He further informs us that he wears a 

 broad-brimmed low-crowned hat, a huge roll of 

 coloured handkerchiefs about his neck, knowingly 

 knotted and tucked in at the bosom, and that he 

 has, in summer, a large bouquet of flowers in his 

 button-hole, his small-clothes extending far below 

 the knees, to meet a pair of jockey boots which 

 reach about half way up his legs. He also makes 

 him thrust his hands into the pockets of his great 

 coat, and roll about the inn yard, surrounded by 

 an admiring throng of hostlers, stable-boys, and 

 shoe-blacks, who look up to him as an oracle, and 

 treasure up his cant phrases. This description 



