NOBLEMEN MAKING SHIFTS. 93 



if things continue to regress as they are now doing, 

 will, in a very few years, become very scarce indeed. 

 Economy has, doubtless from necessity, become so 

 much the order of the day, that numberless families 

 who were accustomed to keep their chariot and coach- 

 man, with a groom for their saddle-horses, have now 

 2:)ut down chariot and coachman, got a Brougham, 

 Clarence, or some other description of vehicle that 

 goes with one horse, which the groom drives in ad- 

 dition to his former business. Those men who moved 

 in a certain rank of life kept a coachman for their 

 lady's use, and one for their own chariot : this latter 

 functionary is now, in a vast number of cases, dis- 

 pensed with, and a cab and tiger stand in the stead, 

 or the Brougham and groom again. Body-coachmen 

 will always probably be indispensable to the establish - 

 ments of noblemen : but in many of them now he occa- 

 sionally drives his master's chariot — a thing he was 

 in former days never expected to do, unless on such 

 an occasion as o-oina: to Court. The first coachman 

 to a woman of high fashion requires much more 

 knowledge of his business than people generally 

 suppose. Here every jolt must be broken ; no 

 chucking of his carriage over the crossings in the 

 street ; no sudden pulls up, or hitting horses with so 

 little judgment as to cause a sudden backward jerk to 

 the carriage ; no stopping at doors so as to leave it 

 swaying backwards and forwards to the full extent 

 of the check-braces, and the discomfiture of its 

 delicate and fastidious inmates: the carriage must 

 start, go on its way, and stop as smoothly as it went 

 off. Let the accustomed perfect coachman of such 

 a lady be exchanged without her knowing it, and 

 a merely moderately good one put in his place. 



