CHAPTER XI 



THE AMATEURS 



Those men ascend to lofty state, 

 And Phcebus' self do emulate, 

 Who drive the dusty roads along 

 Amid the plaudits of the throng. 

 When round the whirling wheels do go, 

 They all the joys of gods do know. 

 See the 01ymi>ian dust arise 

 That gives them kindred with the skies ! 



Horace, Book I., Ode i. 



Thus Horace sings, in his Ode to Maecenas ; and 

 the driving amhition ohserved by that old heathen, 

 still to he noticed in these days, was a very marked 

 feature of the road at any time between 1800 and 

 1848, Avhen the railways had succeeded in disestab- 

 lishing almost every coach, and the opportunities 

 of the gentleman coachman were gone. 



The amateur coachman was a creation of the 

 nineteenth century. He was, for two very good 

 reasons, unknown before that time. The first was 

 that coachmanship had not yet l)ecome an art, 

 and, still in the hands of mere drivers whose only 

 recommendations were an ability to endure long 

 hours on the box and a brutal efficiency in i^unish- 

 ing the horses, had no chance of developing those 

 refinements that characterised the Augustan age 

 of coaching ; the second reason was that the 



