254 DRIVING. 



dinner and its surroundings were as perfect as they could be, 

 and no exception could be taken to the cuisine or the wines. 

 The next foregathering at the Windmill only resulted in a 

 gastronomic dead heat, for the preference could be given to 

 neither. There was then nothing to be done but to give one 

 more trial to each hostelry ; and the second dinner at the 

 Castle served but to further fog the self-appointed arbiters. 

 Then it so happened that, when the club went to the Wind- 

 mill, for the last time, the day was broiling hot. The cloth had 

 been cleared, and the diners were on the point of settling down 

 to their wine, when the head waiter entered, followed by numer- 

 ous attendants. Each guest was requested to rise, and the 

 chair on which he had been sitting was exchanged for a^w/one. 

 After this careful attention to detail, the verdict was in favour 

 of the Windmill. There were a couple of halts on the way 

 down to Salt Hill, a distance of 24 miles from London. The 

 club lunched at the Packhorse, Turnham Green, on the right 

 of the road, and took further refreshment at the Magpies, 

 Hounslow Heath ; thence they ran to their destination, and 

 back the next day, ' without,' as Nimrod says, ' the horses being 

 taken out of their harness.' 



Scarcely, however, had the Four-Horse Club been fairly 

 started ere a charge of furious driving was formulated against 

 some of the members : ' an ungovernable phrensy,' it was stated, 

 took possession ' of these youths, who fancied, no doubt, that 

 they were in the act of directing Roman chariots in the field of 

 Mars, by their declared hostility to everything that came in 

 their way.' For this, they 'received permission to resign,' and 

 there was some talk of starting a new club, the Defiance, to be 

 composed partly of ' new hands and partly of the members 

 who were lately permitted to retire from the Buxton and 

 Peyton Association.' The intending founder of the club was 

 a gentleman whose name cannot be discovered ; but he was a 

 coachman of repute, and likewise a personage with science 

 enough to ' design many of the improvements in the new- 

 fangled machines.' Preliminaries were carried as far as de- 



