76 " LEAVE WELL ALONE. 



perfectly flat road, and his time was three hours and 

 a quarter. He was well horsed, and his stock, as 

 they well might be, fat as pigs. He had driven 

 several of them for many years, and so he might at 

 the pace : in fact, unless they died from their age or 

 fat, they had nothing else to kill them. He was 

 removed from this road to another to drive an oppo- 

 sition, and here the case was widely different, and bad 

 was the judgment that changed his situation. He 

 had now to drive light horses over fifty miles of 

 diversified country, great part of it hilly, the time 

 specified by both coaches being ten miles and a half 

 an hour including stoppages. What was the con- 

 sequence ? In a few weeks, his stock, that he took 

 to in fine condition, were torn to pieces ; he was out 

 of his place, in a hunting phrase out of his line of 

 country ; was no judge of pace ; was himself and had 

 his horses all abroad, and was forced to be put back 

 on his old coach, where his horses, which had during 

 this time been driven by quite a young hand, were 

 very glad to see him : so were his passengers, his 

 horse-keepers, his neighbours, and every one on the 

 road, for a more superior well-conducted man never 

 lived : he was a man of that cast of mind and manners 

 that falls to the lot of few men in his situation. 



Nothing can certainly be prettier than to see a 

 coach going over Smitham Bottom, or any other 

 similar piece of choice ground, at the rate of fifteen 

 miles an hour, with four nearly thorough-bred 

 horses, careering along and playing with each other, 

 all above their work, before a pet coach, the coachman 

 with a cigar in his mouth and nothing to do but 

 to hold them. Some beautiful specimens of coach- 

 horses and coachmanship have been seen along that 



