320 



CHAPTER XVII. 



POSTING IN FRANCE. 



BY THE DUKE OF BEAUFORT, K.G. 



WHEN the railway was made from Boulogne to Paris, posting 

 in France had been brought as nearly as possible to perfection. 

 Comparisons are odious, and I think I may fairly sum up the 

 question as to whether it was better done in England or in 

 France, by saying that the French system, the driving, harness- 

 ing, and everything connected with it, best suited the roads and 

 the carriages that had to travel along them ; and that if we had 

 tried our system and our harness on their horses, and they had 

 done the same by us, the whole thing would probably have 

 failed, I was on the point of saying, look what our boys, their 

 dress, their manner of driving and their horses were ; and then 

 look at the other side of the Channel ; but I forget that I am 

 writing for those who never saw either. To those, therefore, I 

 say, fancy, aiding imagination by pictures you may have seen, or 

 by the recollection of some well-turned-out postilion, a whipper- 

 in in a short jacket, a neat, well-built, pretty well-bred, very short- 

 tailed, light horse, and harness all made of leather, well fitting 

 well cleaned, well put on, boys that could ride to perfection, 

 and, whilst riding, drive as well boys who knew when they were 

 going seven and when they were going twelve miles an hour 

 (which no modern flyman or gentleman's coachman that I ever 

 see nowadays does know), who could do justice to their horses 

 over any ground and any distances, whose average stages were 

 ten miles (they varied from five to eighteen miles), and who 

 without distressing their horses got to the end of their stage 



