CHAPTER II. 



MAIL AND STAGE-COACHES. 

 " All the world's a stage." 



Shakespeare. 



Last days of road travelling — Present and past aspect of English roads 

 — Long-distance day-coaches — Road versus rail — Of the clock — 

 The time journeys occupied — Horses a necessity — Fast coaches 

 —Guards' time-bills — Too late — Farming turnpikes — Snow- storm 

 of 1S54 — Great snow-storm of 1836 — The clerk of the weather — 

 Sleighing and sleighs — Driving in a fog — Old coaching inns — 

 ALail guards — Inn yards and stables — The yard of tin — Improve- 

 ment in coaches — The last coaches — The preservation of leather 

 — Coach inspectors — Highwaymen — Skids and breaks — Horsing 

 the mails — Mail coachmen — A coach attacked by a lioness — 

 Coach proprietors— Rail and road — Coach-horses — Immature — 

 The Telegraph — Scarlet coats — In the City — State of English 

 highways — A Transatlantic opinion — Coaching misadventures — 

 High-roads passing through tunnels — Colonel Paterson's road- 

 book — Other road-books — Cost of coach-horses — Lord William 

 Lennox — Death from exposure — Coaches racing — Convicted of 

 manslaughter — A careless coachman — An English coach on a 

 French road — The locomotive. 



As I have endeavoured to explain, the progress made 

 in the construction of high-roads was very slow, 

 but when in the last days of coaching all had been 

 done that could be done to render them perfect, 

 suddenly they were abandoned, and the stream of 

 traffic was turned towards the railway ; then the 

 roads appear to have gone gradually back, not to 

 their original state — that would have been too sad, 

 and would have been impossible at the present time — 

 but they vastly differed from the roads over which 

 the mail and stage-coaches had been running. Con- 

 sequently first came a period of slow but sure improve- 



