144 STAGE-COACH AND MAIL IN DAYS OF YORE 



ancient type of vehicle lingered amazingly on the 

 purely agricultural roads leading to the Metropolis 

 out of Kent, Sussex and Surrey. As the stage- 

 waggon was the earliest of old road vehicles, so 

 also it was the last ; and even when the last coach 

 came off the road, and people travelled only by 

 train, there were still left not a few of the old 

 waggons continuing their sober journeys, not in the 

 least affected by the railways. They came to and 

 set out from London very much as they had been 

 used to do two hundred and forty years before, 

 and resorted as of old to the ancient inns that 

 lingered in such strongholds of the old road-faring 

 interest as the Borough High Street, Aldgate and 

 Whitechapel, and Bishopsgate Street. It is true 

 they carried passengers no longer, for when railway 

 travel came, and was cheap as well as speedy, there 

 were none who could afford the time taken of old 

 by waggon. It was cheaper to pay a railway fare, 

 and thus save a day or even more. But with 

 heavy goods it long remained far otherwise, and 

 even into the 'sixties it was possible to see the 

 lethargic waggons still ponderously coming to their 

 haven out of Kent and Sussex at the " Talbot " in 

 the Borough (only demolished in 1870), from the 

 Eastern Counties to the " Blue Boar " or the " Sara- 

 cen's Head " in Aldgate, or from the North to the 

 "Tour SAvans," the "Bull," or the "Green Dragon," 

 in Bishopsgate Street Within, precisely as they had 

 done from the beginning, when Shakespeare was 

 play- writing. They were built in the same fashion 

 as of yore. The immense canvas-covered tilts had 



