Stage-coaches were, however, an innovation, and this was enough to condemn them in the eyes of the men of imagi native memory. In 1673 a writer gravely suggested "that the multitude of stage-coaches and caravans travelling on the roads might all or most of them be suppressed, especially those within forty, fifty, or sixty miles of London."* He felt, however, that perhaps this was too good to be hoped for; and so moderated his demands to the proposition, that the number of stage-coaches should be limited to one to every shire town in England, to go once a-week backwards and forwards, and to go through with the same horses they set out with, and not travel more than thirty miles a-day in summer, and twenty-five in winter. His arguments in support of these proposals were, that coaches and caravans were mischievous to the public, destructive to trade, and prejudicial to lands; because, firstly, they destroyed the breed of good horses, and made men careless of horseman ship; secondly, they hindered the breed of watermen, who were the nursery of seamen; thirdly, they lessened the

revenue.

"There is nothing new under the sun," said the wisest of men, and the corroboration of this truth is sometimes most amusing. We laugh at the arguments against stage-coaches in 1673; but what can we say to the following objections to the Manchester and Liverpool Railroad in 1825 ?—

Mr. Smiles says, in his "Life of George Stephenson," that "the public were appealed to on the subject; pamphlets were written and newspapers were hired to revile the railway. It was declared that its formation would prevent cows grazing and hens laying. The poisoned air from the locomotives would kill birds as they flew over them, and render the preservation of pheasants and foxes no longer possible. Householders adjoining the projected line were

• A pamphlet entitled "The Grand Concern of England explained."

told that their houses would be burnt up by the fire thrown from the engine chimneys, while the air around would be polluted by clouds of smoke. There would no longer be any use for horses; and if railways extended, the species would become extinguished, and oats and hay unsaleable commodities. Travelling by road would be rendered highly dangerous, and country inns would be ruined. Boilers would burst, and blow passengers to atoms. But then there was always this consolation to wind up with-that the weight of the locomotive would completely prevent its moving, and that railways, if made, could never be worked by steam power."

There were, however, men who battled for the stagecoach in the seventeenth century, as there were men who fought to obtain railways for us; happily, the advocates of quicker transit, in both cases, were successful; yet we who can now go from London to Exeter in five hours, or London to Liverpool in five to six hours, cannot help smiling at the satisfaction with which "velocity" and "speed," nearly equal to four miles an hour, were once regarded.

A traveller describing England in 1691, early in the reign of William III., says—

"Here one may be transported, without over-violent motion, and sheltered from the influences of the air, to the most noted places in England, with so much speed, that some of these coaches will reach above fifty miles on a summer day."

Another writer, in 1720, is even more enthusiastic. He says that the coaches afford "such admirable commodiousness both for men and women of better rank to travel from London, and to almost all villages near this great city, that the like of it hath not been known in the world."

The old coach advertisements, which in a few instances are preserved, tell rich tales of travelling. In 1682, Not

tingham to London was a journey of four days-now you can accomplish it in less than three hours and a-half.

There is, or was till lately, a printed card, framed and glazed, preserved in the bar of the "Black Swan," in York, which tells that "York four days coach begins Friday, the 12th of April, 1706." It gives instructions to travellers how to secure places in a coach which performs the journey from London to York in such an "expeditious manner;" it "actually performs the whole journey in the short space of four days, if God permit." "York to Stamford in two days, Stamford by Huntingdon to London in two days more."

Now the traveller takes the Scotch Express at the Great Northern Station, at a quarter past nine in the morning, and travelling through the same towns, enters the station at York at twenty minutes past two p.m.-five hours instead of four days!

An advertisement in Walker's Birmingham Newspaper, April 12, 1742, informed the public that "the Lichfield and Birmingham Stage Coach set out this morning (Monday) from the Rose Inn, at Holborn Bridge, London, and will be at the house of Mr. Francis Cox, the Angel and Hen and Chickens, in the high town of Birmingham, on Wednesday next, to dinner, and goes the same afternoon to Lichfield; and returns to Birmingham on Thursday morning to breakfast, and gets to London on Saturday night, and so will continue every week regularly."

Three days from Birmingham-now three hours!

Mr. Pennant, in his journey from Chester to London, gives an account of the travelling in March 1739-40; he says:-"I changed my Welsh school for one nearer the Capital, and travelled in the Chester stage, then no despicable vehicle for country gentlemen. The first day, with much labour, we got from Chester to Whitchurch, twenty

miles-the second to the Welsh harp,-the third to Coventry, the fourth to Northampton,-the fifth to Dunstable; and as a wondrous effort, on the last to London before the commencement of night. The strain and labour of six good horses, sometimes eight, drew us through the sloughs of Mireden, and many other places. We were constantly out two hours' before day, and as late at night." Now Chester to London is accomplished in five hours and a-half!

How it should increase our admiration of the arduous and apostolic labours of Wesley and Whitfield, when we remember it was over roads such as these they were at that very time riding thousands of miles yearly-for Christ's sake going up and down the realm of England to preach the Gospel.

George Stephenson used to speak of "the Engine and Rail" as "Man and wife;" if the same relationship existed between the old Stage Coach and the old Coach Road a century ago, there must have been frequent domestic jars— and the passenger family must have passed a most uneasy life.

The journey from Petworth to London is less than fifty miles, yet the proud Duke of Somerset, who died in 1748, was obliged to have a house at Guildford, which was regu larly occupied, as a resting-place for the night, whenever he or any part of his family wished to come up to town from his estate at Petworth.

A little earlier, however, in 1703, matters were worse than this: an attendant on the Archduke Charles, who visited England on his way to Spain, thus describes a journey from Portsmouth to Petworth :-" We set out at six in the morning, and did not get out of the coaches, save only when we were overturned, or stuck fast in the mire, till we arrived at our journey's end. It was hard service for