172 EAKLY MODES OF CONVEYANCE. PART III. 



the establishment of the stage-coaches, was, that not only 

 did the gentlemen from the country come to London in 

 them oftener than they need, but their ladies either came 

 with them or quickly followed them. "And when they 

 are there they must be in the mode, have all the new 

 fashions, buy all their clothes there, and go to plays, 

 balls, and treats, where they get such a habit of jollity 

 and a love to gaiety and pleasure, that nothing after- 

 wards in the country will serve them, if ever they should 

 fix their minds to live there again ; but they must have 

 all from London, whatever it costs." Then there were 

 the grievous discomforts of stage-coach travelling to be 

 set against the more noble method of travelling by horse- 

 back, as of yore. " What advantage is it to men's health," 

 says the writer, waxing wroth, " to be called out of their 

 beds into these coaches, an hour before day in the morn- 

 ing ; to be hurried in them from place to place, till one 

 hour, two, or three within night ; insomuch that, after 

 sitting all day in the summer-time stifled with heat and 

 choked with dust, or in the winter-time starving and 

 freezing with cold or choked with filthy fogs, they arc 

 often brought into their inns by torchlight, when it is 

 too late to sit up to get a supper ; and next morning 

 they are forced into the coach so early that they can get 

 no breakfast ? What addition is this to men's health or 

 business to ride all day with strangers, oftentimes sick, 

 antient, diseased persons," or young children crying ; to 

 whose humours they are obliged to be subject, forced to 

 bear with, and many times are poisoned with their nasty 

 scents and crippled by the crowd of the boxes and 

 bundles ? Is it for a man's health to travel with tired 

 jades, to be laid fast in the foul ways and forced to wade 

 up to the knees in mire ; afterwards sit in the cold till 

 teams of horses can be sent to pull the coach out ? Is it 

 for their health to travel in rotten coaches and to have 

 their tackle, perch, or axle-tree broken, and then to wait 

 three or four hours (sometimes half a day) to have them 



