4 COACH PASSENGERS 



agricultural and pastoral district — which included a 

 place of fashionable resort rising yearly in favour with 

 the public — I had an opportunity of making the 

 acquaintance of the button-maker from Birmingham, 

 with his cadaverous hue, soiled white waistcoat, and 

 unwashed hands ; the jolly-looking, lusty grazier, his 

 cheeks sflowino: with health, and his lono- drab coat 

 envelo^^ing a form that told of an unrestricted enjoyment 

 of the good things of this world, a few of which class 

 half the year were my regular clients ; the lace-buyers, 

 Avho bi-monthly visited Stony Stratford and Towcester, 

 and their neighbourhood ; the pretty Warwickshire 

 lasses, who periodically came up for the fashions ; and 

 the dwellers in Mesopotamia, as I will term those who 

 inhabited the delightful spot — that, being free from the 

 smoke of furnaces on the one hand, and the busy turmoil 

 of the great metropolis on the other, held out such 

 flatterino; invitations to, and administered to the wants 

 of, the votaries of pleasure — and, last to be enumerated, 

 those votaries themselves. 



Among my most frequent companions from the first- 

 named place was an extraordinary character ; even the 

 present Member for that then unrepresented borough has 

 not attained greater celebrity in its neighbourhood. Un- 

 like our Quaker friend, neither political power nor sena- 

 torial distinction had any charms for him. Money, Avith the 

 pleasures and enjoyments it j^roduces, was his object, and 

 fortune seemed to mark him as an especial favourite ; for 

 she tempted and rewarded his advances with her choicest 

 gifts, and his name and fame were as familiar to the 

 inhabitants of Birmino'ham then as is that of the o^reat 



