50 THE COACHING ERA 



praftised upon the weak and unoffending — upon some 

 poor, friendless woman travelling with but little money, 

 and perhaps a brace of hungry children with her, or upon 

 some thin and half-starved man travelling on the hind 

 part of the coach from London to Liverpool, with only 

 eighteenpence in his pocket after his fare was paid, to 

 defray his expenses on the road, for as the insolence of 

 these knights of the road was vast, so was their rapacity 

 enormous; they had been so long accustomed to have 

 crowns and half-crowns rained upon them by their 

 admirers and flatterers, that they would look at a shilling, 

 for which many an honest labourer was happy to toil for 

 ten hours under a broiling sun, with the utmost con- 

 tempt; would blow upon it derisively, or fillip it into 

 the air before they pocketed it; but when nothing was 

 given them, as would occasionally happen — for how 

 could they receive from those who had nothing? and 

 nobody was bound to give them anything, as they had 

 certain wages from their employers — then what a scene 

 would ensue!" 



George Borrow was certainly unlucky in his acquaint- 

 ance with stage-coachmen. Leigh Hunt held them in 

 very different estimation: 



"The mail or stage-coachman, upon the whole, is no 

 inhuman mass of great-coats, gruffness, civility, and old 

 boots. The latter is the politer, from the smaller range of 

 acquaintance, and his necessity for preserving them. 



"His face is red, and his voice rough, by the same 

 process of drink and catarrh. He has a silver watch with a 

 steel chain, and plenty of loose silver in his pocket, mixed 

 with halfpence. He serves the houses he goes by for a 

 clock. He takes a glass at every alehouse; for thirst, when 

 it is dry, and for warmth when it is wet. 



