CONSTRUCTION OF COACHES. loi 



I do not think it was ever put into practical use on 

 any road. 



If the coach-masters did not understand much about 

 the scientific mechanical construction of coaches, or 

 take much trouble to acquire that knowledge, the 

 coach-builders do not seem to have been much better 

 informed, as Chaplin said : ' I consider the fore- 

 wheels in the mail-coach being higher, and the hind- 

 wheels lower than in the ordinary coaches, is an 

 improvement ; and it becomes a question, which I 

 have never yet met with anyone to solve, what would 

 be the happy height to adhere to. The coachmakers 

 are very good workmen, but there is not one in 

 five hundred — or at least I never met with one — ^ 

 who could explain upon any mathematical prin- 

 ciple, or any other sound reasoning, why the thing 

 should be so or so. They are not great mechanics 

 by any means ; they have heard that a fore-wheel 

 is better lofty, but none of them can tell you 

 why.' 



No very radical or extensive change seems to have 

 taken place in the building of stage-coaches, such 

 as dispensing with a perch or altering the number 

 or mode of fixing the springs ; but more improve- 

 ments were made in the mails when the contract 

 passed out of Mr. Vidler's hands, and the, build was 

 entirely altered — among other things in the springs, 



