TWO FOREIGNERS ON COACHING 235 



to look forward with the greatest impatience was with 

 Bantam, which I found to be a pony, and according to 

 their talk, possessed of more virtues than any steed 

 since the days of Bucephalus. How he could trot! how 

 he could run! and then such leaps as he would take — 

 there was not a hedge in the whole country that he 

 could not clear. 



"They were under the particular guardianship of 

 the coachman, to whom, whenever an opportunity 

 presented, they addressed a host of questions, and pro- 

 nounced him one of the best fellows in the world. 

 Indeed, I could not but notice the more than ordinary 

 air of bustle and importance of the coachman, who wore 

 his hat a little on one side, and had a large bunch of 

 Christmas greens stuck in the buttonhole of his coat. 

 He is always a personage full of mighty care and business, 

 but he is particularly so during this season, having so 

 many commissions to execute in consequence of the 

 great interchange of presents. And here, perhaps, it 

 may not be unacceptable to my untravelled readers 

 to have a sketch that may serve as a general repre- 

 sentation of this very numerous and important class 

 of functionaries, who have a dress, a manner, a language, 

 an air, peculiar to themselves, and prevalent throughout 

 the fraternity; so that, wherever an English stage-coach- 

 man may be seen, he cannot be mistaken for one of any 

 other craft or mystery. 



"He 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; he is swelled 

 into jolly dimensions by frequent potations of malt 

 liquors, and his bulk is still further increased by a multi- 

 plicity of coats, in which he is buried like a cauliflower, 

 the upper one reaching to his heels. He wears a broad- 

 brimmed, low-crowned hat; a huge roll of coloured 



