CHAPTER VIII 



THE GOLDEN AGE, 1821 — 184S 



It Avas " golden " chiefly from the sportsman's 

 point of view, and in the ojiinions of those who 

 found a keen delight in the perfection of coach- 

 huilding and harness-making, in the smartness of 

 tlie beautiful horses, and in the speed attained. 

 From the sordid view-point of the profit-and-loss 

 account, although this was the age in which 

 Chaplin and a few others made their great for- 

 tunes, it was a time when the high speed and 

 other refinements of travelling made the j^ath 

 of the coach- proprietor a thorny and uneasy one, 

 often barren of aught but honour. " You are 

 ' in it,' I see," said a proprietor who himself 

 had been severely bitten in this way, and had 

 left the business, to a coachman who, like many 

 of his fellows, had long cherished an ambition 

 to become a coach-master, and had just acquired 

 a share : " you are ' in it.' Take care how you 

 get out of it." One of the prominent men in 

 it — Cooper, who ran a good line of coaclies on 

 the Bath Hoad — found himself at last in the 

 Bankruptcy Court, and many smaller men ap- 

 peared in the same place. The greatest increase 

 of cost was in the item of horses. In earlier 



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