POSTING IN ENGLAND. 313 



necks and reaching down to their heels, with a pocket on each 

 side in which you invariably saw their hands as they lolled at 

 the door on the look-out for a carriage. 



As I write I call to mind one old boy, from the Bear at 

 Reading, with a yellow jacket and a very red face. It did not 

 signify at what time of the year he drove you, he always had 

 a yellow flower in his mouth, which he kept there the whole 

 seventeen miles to Newbury, or the thirteen miles to Maiden- 

 head, or the eighteen to Salt Hill, and in the yellow jacket he 

 always had a red flower. When there was much of a run on 

 the road the boys were constantly in the saddle, and drove and 

 rode not only the horses harnessed to carriages many miles during 

 the twenty-four hours, but had the more tedious work of bringing 

 the tired horses home ' lear,' which was the expression used for 

 harness-horses when travelling without a carriage behind them. 

 I remember having to go to attend a political meeting at 

 Raglan in Monmouthshire in 1846. In the morning we left 

 Gloucester early, and a very tall boy unusually so for his 

 profession quite five feet ten, drove from there to Ross (the 

 distance thence was eleven miles to Monmouth and eight on 

 to Raglan), seventeen miles, waited the return, and drove back 

 to the Bell. The writer had to post on to Stroud, and there 

 being no other postboy at home, the same boy mounted a 

 fresh horse, and with a fresh hand-horse drove nine miles to 

 Stroud and had to ride the horses back fifty-two miles alto- 

 gether. He was under two hours each way along the very hilly 

 road to Ross, and about fifty minutes doing the nine miles to 

 Stroud. He started at 8 A.M. and would not be home before 

 ten at night. It was a hard life. Too much work one day, not 

 enough the next It is always much pleasanter travelling with 

 four horses than with a pair, but if a man living a hundred miles 

 from London was in a hurry, he could do the journey quicker 

 with a good mail-phaeton and pair of post-horses than he could 

 with four. 



A few remarks must be made about the difference between 

 putting horses to a carriage when they are to be ridden and 



