The Sport of Our (^Ancestors 



But we will now adhere to sober prose, and the changes 

 of our own time. Thirty years ago, the Holyhead mail left 

 London via Oxford, at eight o'clock at night, and arrived 

 in Shrewsbury between ten and eleven the following night, 

 being twenty-seven hours to one hundred and sixty-two 

 miles. The distance is now done^ without the least difficulty, 

 in sixteen hours and a quarter ; and the Holyhead mail is 

 actually at Bangor Ferry, eighty-three miles further, in the 

 same time it used to take in reaching the post-office at 

 Shrewsbury. We fancy we now see it, as it was when we 

 travelled on it in our schoolboy time, over the Wolver- 

 hampton and Shiffnal stage — in those days loose uncovered 

 sand in part — with Charles Peters or Old Ebden quitting 

 his seat as guard, and coming to the assistance of the coach- 

 man, who had flogged his horses till he could flog them no 

 longer. We think we see them crawling up the hill in 

 Shrewsbury town — whip, whip, whip ; and an hour behind 

 their time * by Shrewsbury clock ' ; the betting not ten to one 

 that she had not been overturned on the road ! It is now a 

 treat to see her approach the town, if not before, never after, 

 her minute ; and she forms a splendid day-coach through 

 Wales and England, on her up-journey in the summer ; 

 namely, from Holyhead to Daventry. A young man of the 

 name of Taylor, a spirited proprietor, horses her through 

 Shrewsbury, from Hay-gate to Nescliff, in a manner that 

 deserves to be spoken of. The stages are ten and 

 eight, and for these he has a team of bays, a team of 

 greys, and two teams of chestnuts, that can show with 



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