LORD WILLIAM LENXOX. i57 



first staofe on the western road will serve as an 

 example for the remaining distance. 



In the last days of coaching there was scarcely 

 a town in England through which some sort of stage- 

 coach did not pass. Just at the last the manner in 

 which the coach business was conducted was simply 

 perfect ; very long distances were done in a single 

 day, such as between London and Manchester, Exeter 

 and Shrewsbury. The coaches used to run to Brighton 

 at the rate of twelve miles an hour. One of the 

 Stamford stage-coaches, that ran daily to London in 

 1807, accomplished the journey, ninety-nine miles, 

 in nine hours and four minutes, including time for 

 refreshments ; the coach maintained a rate of twelve 

 miles an hour. Fast coaches had a horse to every 

 mile of road over which they ran. 



Lord William Lennox, to whose book I venture 

 to make some reference, in speaking of coaching, 

 appears to do so from personal knowledge and ex- 

 perience ; he not only travelled a great deal by coach 

 in his younger days, but frequently, when a youngster, 

 drove public coaches himself. When his book was 

 published, he was seventy-three years of age. He 

 says that " a young man alive at the present day, 

 hardly knows to what improvement of human life he 

 has been introduced; gas," he says, " in my young days 

 was unknown, the streets of London were in semi- 

 darkness. It took me nine hours sailing from Dover 

 to Calais before the invention of steam, and nine 

 hours to go from Taunton to Bath before the invention 

 of railroads." 



In point of comfort there can be no comparison 

 between railway travelling and coaching, that is to 

 say in rough wintry weather, or even in wet summer 



