156 THE COACHING ERA 



Bristol, Manchester, York, Newcastle, Edinburgh, 

 Glasgow, Perth, Stirling, Aberdeen — expressing the 

 grandeur of the empire hy the antiquity of its towns, 

 and the grandeur of the mail establishment by the 

 diffuse radiation of its separate missions. Every moment 

 you hear the thunder of lids locked down upon the 

 mail-bags. That sound to each individual mail is the 

 signal for drawing off, which process is the finest part 

 of the entire spedlacle. Then come the horses into 

 play. Horses! can these be horses that bound off with 

 the aftion and gestures of leopards? What stir! — what 

 sea-like ferment! — what a thundering of wheels! — what 

 a trampling of hoofs! — what a sounding of trumpets! — 

 what farewell cheers — what redoubled peals of brotherly 

 congratulation, connefling the name of the particular 

 mail; — "Liverpool for ever!" — with the name of the 

 particular vi£lory — "Badajoz for ever!" or "Salamanca 

 for ever!" The half-slumbering consciousness that, all 

 night long and all the next day — perhaps for even a 

 longer period — many of these mails, like fire racing along 

 a train of gunpowder, will be kindling at every instant 

 new successions of burning joy, has an obscure effeft of 

 multiplying the viftory itself, by multiplying to the 

 imagination into infinity the stages of its progressive 

 diffusion. A fiery arrow seems to be let loose, which 

 from that moment is destined to travel, without inter- 

 mission, westwards for three hundred miles — north- 

 wards for six hundred; and the sympathy of our 

 Lombard Street friends at parting is exalted a hundred- 

 fold by a sort of visionary sympathy with the yet 

 slumbering sympathies which in so vast a succession we 

 are going to awake. 



Liberated from the embarrassments of the city, and 

 issuing into the broad uncrowded avenues of the 

 northern suburbs, we soon begin to enter upon our 



