THE START. 



The Swan with Two Necks, The Bull and Mouth, and 

 other similar yards ; or they would await at Hyde Park 

 Corner the mails going out of London by that route. 

 What finer spectacle could be viewed than one of 

 these Royal Mails, in full trim, with a fine team of 

 four greys, both leaders carrying bar, and up to 

 their bits, coach properly laden in and out, sometimes 

 driven by some crack dragsman, with guard all in red 

 and gold, and with his great tin horn at right 

 angles with the mail, as he raises it to blow a cheery 

 blast ? The four-horse drags in Hyde Park are nothing 

 to this. We know they come out for a drive, and 

 will go in again; but here, on a December evening, 

 snow slightly falling, we saw in imagination this 

 down mail encountering a thousand difiiculties — we 

 pictured her as perhaps snowed up, or gallantly 

 fighting ; her way through to her destination. The 

 passengers we envied and held in respect, the out- 

 siders wrapped up in the greatcoats with capes, the 

 insiders closely packed, • and their breath already 

 frozen on the window-panes. 



Ah ! those were halcyon days. How has De Quincey 

 painted them for us ! Who that has read his ' The 

 English Mail-Coach,' can forget his thrilling picture of 

 the mail carrying through the country the news of the 

 victory of Talavera ? Englishmen had not in those 

 days been made efi'eminate by a sentimental policy, 



