The Sport of Our ^Ancestors 



coach of fifty years back is now become difficult to produce, 

 we will describe it. It had a most comfortable and roomy 

 body, quite fit to contain six portly persons, and suspended 

 by long leather braces, affixed to nearly upright springs. 

 To enable the body to hang low, the perch of a bent form,, 

 called the compass perch, was used ; and the carriage was 

 of great length and strength. In fact, it was, coachman and 

 all, in strict accordance with the animals that drew it, and 

 came under the denomination of ' slow and easy.' The 

 fashionable open carriage of this day was a still more un~ 

 sightly object — the high, single-bodied phaeton, all upon 

 the fore- wheels, and looking as if the hinder ones had nothing 

 to do but to follow. This was the favourite carriage of the 

 late King, when Prince of Wales, and was commonly driven, 

 by such as could afford it, with four horses in hand. Indeed, 

 it may almost be said to have given birth to our gentleman- 

 coachmanship, as well as to the well - known doggerel 

 epigram : — 



* What can Tommy Onslow do ? 

 He can drive a phaeton and two. 

 Can Tommy Onslow do no more ? 

 Yes — he can drive a phaeton and four ! ' 



The phaeton was succeeded by the no less classically 

 yclept curricle — a carriage, when properly appointed, and 

 followed by two well-dressed and well-mounted grooms, of 

 singular elegance certainly. It had a long run in the fashion- 

 able world ; but being, like the phaeton, only calculated 

 to carry two persons, and requiring never less than three 

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