MODERN CARRIAGES. 363 



carried torches, and ran beside the carriages, before London 

 had any lamps, gas, or electric lights. 



Closely connected with carriages and roads were the inns 

 of former times, which have undergone almost as much change 

 in condition, use, and customs as the carriages we have been 

 considering. The inns, even in villages and small towns, had 

 to be used occasionally by the nobility, landed gentry, clergy, 

 professional men, and upper class of merchants and manu- 

 facturers in the course of their journeys, as well as by labour- 

 ing men, and were chiefly kept by steady, orderly, and hospitable 

 landlords and landladies, who prided themselves on their clean 

 linen, well -aired beds, and orderly households. The servants 

 had mostly been long in the same house, and knew the guests 

 personally, and in a friendly way. The cooking and pro- 

 visions, though plain, were fresh and wholesome. The landlord 

 brewed his own beer, and got credit or the reverse, according 

 to the result. The middle and lower classes relished their 

 home-brewed table beer or cider, while the upper classes kept 

 to orthodox port and sherry, there being little demand for 

 sparkling wines and claret. Of spirits there was but a moderate 

 demand, and then only as an occasional fillip, not to be 

 repeated till next day. With the withdrawal of the custom of 

 the upper and middle classes, the character of a large propor- 

 tion of such houses gradually fell, and many are now places 

 for the sale of drink lodging and other entertainment seems 

 now to be relegated to some other classes of the community. 



Returning to the main purport of our chapter ; not very long 

 before the accession of Her Majesty Queen Victoria, hackney- 

 coaches were the only carriages plying for hire in the streets of 

 London. They were invariably the old family coaches of the 

 nobility and gentry, and frequently bore the arms, coronets, 

 and heraldic devices of their original noble owners. They 

 were, however, despoiled of their gorgeous hammercloths that 

 seated the coachman in front, and the carved stands that 

 supported one or two footmen behind in their former halcyon 

 days. They had their whip or full C- springs, leather braces 



