The Sport of Our Ancestors 



fore, confine ourselves, at present, to the usual course of 

 public conveyances ; — and a sentence in the private letter 

 of a personal friend of our own has suggested the subject 

 to us. ' I was out hunting,' he writes, ' last season, on a 

 Monday, near Brighton, and dined with my father in Merrion 

 Square, Dublin, at six o'clock on the following Wednesday — 

 distance four hundred miles ! ' It was done thus : — he went 

 from Brighton in an afternoon coach that set him down in 

 London in time for the Holyhead mail ; and this mail, with 

 the help of the steamer to cross the Channel, delivered him 

 in Dublin at the time mentioned. But expedition alone is 

 not our boast. Coach travelling is no longer a disgusting 

 and tedious labour, but has long since been converted into 

 comparative ease, and really approaches to something like 

 luxury ; otherwise it could never have had any chance to 

 engage the smallest part of the attention of that genuine 

 ' Epicuri de grege porcus ' — the late happily-named Dr. 

 Kitchener.' It is difficult to determine the exact period at 

 which a stage-coach first appeared upon the road ; but it 

 seems to be pretty well ascertained, that in 1662, there were 

 but six, and one of the wise men of those days — John Cross- 

 well, of the Charter House — tried his best to write them 

 down. It was supposed he had the countenance of the 

 country gentlemen, who were afraid, if their wives could 

 get easily and cheaply conveyed to London, they might not 

 settle so well afterwards to their domestic duties at the Hall 



1 Dr. Johnson boasted of having travelled from London to Salisbury in 

 one day, by the common stage, ' hung, high, and rough ' ! 



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