THE NINETEENTH CENTURY: 1800— 1824 185 



this space of twenty-five years were included the 

 two most significant advances in the whole history 

 of the road — the introduction about 1805 of 

 springs under the driving-box, and the shortening 

 of the stages. AVithout either of them, the 

 acceleration that resulted in the Golden Age of 

 coaching, beginning in 1825, AAould have been 

 impossible. 



The placing of springs under the driving-l)ox 

 was due to the suggestion of John Warde, earliest 

 of the coaching amateurs, who had been taught 

 the art of driving a stage-coach by Jack Bailey, 

 a famed coachman on the old " Prince of Wales," 

 between London and Birmingham. He had found 

 the jolting received directly from the axle an 

 intolerable infliction on a long drive, and urged 

 coach-proprietors to provide springs. Said " Mr. 

 AVilkins of the 'Balloon'" — a character in 

 Nimrod's Life of a Sportsman — " they do say they 

 are going to put the boxes of all stage-coaches on 

 springs, but Heaven knows when that will be — 

 not in my time, 1 fear. Our jjeople say it 

 won't do; we shall go to sleep on them. No 

 danger of a man doing that now, even if he should 

 be a bit overtaken Avitli drink." Under these 

 circumstances there was, as Mr. AVilkins Avent on 

 to show, " a great deal of hart in sitting on a 

 coacli-l)ox," as well as driving four horses. 

 " Your body must go with the swing of the box, 

 and let your lines (loins, he meant) l^e as lissom as 

 you can. It would kill a man in a week to drive 

 as far as I do, if he did not do as I say." 



