2 6 THE EXETER ROAD 



headgear. And so we leave liim, liatless, wigless, to 

 his fate. 



Y 



The late Thomas Adolphus Trollope, brother of the 

 better-known Anthony, was never tired of writing 

 voluminously about old times, and what he has to 

 say about the coaches on the Exeter Eoad is the 

 more interestino- and valuable as comins; from one 

 who lived and travelled in the times of which he 

 speaks. 



The coaches for the South and West of England, 

 he says, started from the ' White Horse Cellars,' 

 Piccadilly, which was one of the fashionable hotels 

 of 1820, the time he treats of 



The ' White Bear,' Piccadilly, he adds, was looked 

 upon with contempt, as being the place whence only 

 the slow coaches started. The mails and stages 

 moved off to the accompaniment of news-vendors 

 pushing the sale of the expensive and heavily taxed 

 newspapers of the period, and the cries of the Jew- 

 boys who sold oranges and cedar pencils on the pave- 

 ment at sixpence a dozen. Once clear of town, his 

 enthusiasm over the travel of other days finds scope, 

 and he begins : ' What an infinite succession of 

 teams ! What an endless vista of ever-changing 

 miles of country ! What a delicious sense of belong- 

 ing to some select and specially important and 

 adventurous section of humanity as we clattered 

 through the streets of quiet little country towns at 



