INN YARDS AND STABLES. 103 



be like the road through Clapham Common on the 

 Derby day, the traffic would be so enormous that 

 it would be almost impossible to drive along the 

 road with any comfort. Imagine to yourself the 

 passengers in a single excursion train turned out on to 

 a high-road and compelled to continue their journey in 

 vehicles drawn by the living and not by the iron horse, 

 and add to these the passengers by one parliamentary, 

 two ordinary trains, and one express, and you will 

 have some idea what the condition of a high-road 

 would be were the same number of persons to travel 

 upon it now as do upon the railway at the present day. 

 I do not think that it is so much owing to the increase 

 of travelling as to the increased population. After all, 

 coaches held very few people, and a post-chaise still 

 fewer. Were every one to travel now on the road as 

 they did then, the demand for horses would far exceed 

 the supply, and yet in these days of diminished road 

 travelling the number of horses employed by coaches 

 on the road appears to us very surprising. 



The number of horses quartered at Hounslow, 

 which was the first stage on the great western road, 

 was enormous, consequently Hounslow is always 

 regarded with curiosity by persons interested in 

 coaching ; and, as for the inns, it is interesting to read 

 of them and of the coach proprietors of those days. 

 These queer old inns are gradually being improved 

 off the face of the earth, and are making way for 

 the modern hotel in the same manner as the old 

 coffee-houses gave place to the modern club, and 

 both, I think, are an improvement. 



In Lord Lennox's book on coachinof there is a 

 very clever parody on Goldsmith's "Deserted Village." 



