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cheerful during thick fogs. To the great annoyance of his family, he makes it a rule to have a fit of spleen once a fortnight, and spends the day drinking port wine by the side of a coal fire, and renouncing the soothing cigar. He shrugs his shoulders contemptuously at everything which savours of Danish, especially at the Danish ladies," who are only fit for cooks" compared to the English ladies. And if by chance any one touches his sleeve in brushing by him, he exclaims "God dam!" Finally, the patient becomes exceedingly disagreeable to his associates by his tiresome fastidiousness and constant ennui, and he winds up by using a plaid, instead of any other outer garment.

When the complaint appears in the decline of life, the sufferer from Anglomania often involves himself in the mazes of obscure theoretical doctrines, whose nearest approach to reason and truth would disappear in the clear light of practical common sense. But another phase of this Anglomania is evinced at this advanced period among sundry old gentlemen who used to flourish in our beloved islands in shoes and white stockings, at the time when to wear large stiff boots was the good burgher's first duty, and when to have sported an eye-glass would have been an infringement of the moral law. No one has an idea whence these elderly cavaliers come, who wander about as solitaries, like St. John the Baptist in the wilderness, living not exactly upon locusts, but upon quite as curious food-namely, old English beef-so gloriously old, that none but persons labouring under what may be termed a state of break-neck abstraction, could fancy it young-so petrified by age, that it would not be at all a wild idea to suppose it the flesh of some of the pigeons from Noah's Ark.

Let us now turn to the fair sex and while searching for truth, which is the first duty of the natural historian, let us gladly make the gallant admission that this lovely sex have not hitherto been seized upon by the Anglomania as by an epidemic disease; but we cannot deny that a sporadic case of it is found here and there. We do not often see a face bordered on each side by long fair ringlets; we do not often encounter the languishing looks of the English ladies: our ladies have fortunately not yet learned to mingle a degree of ludicrous prudery, and gloomy bigotry, with a bold system of busying themselves about all affairs touching on a certain watchword-EMANCIPATION; nevertheless we cannot be blind to the fact that our Danish dames and damsels have latterly shown a propensity towards eschewing every male creature who has not been formally introduced, and this savours of the Anglomania. Further, we cannot fail to remark the tender-hearted, charitable fever which seems to be gaining ground. Not indeed quite to the extent in which it rages among Englishwomen, who get up associations for the relief of the distant and tolerably well-fed African negroes, whilst they leave their own poor neighbours to die of starvation, but which still is characterised by an extraordinary fancy for labouring in ladies' committees on account of asylums, hospitals, servant-girls, &c., to all of whom and which assistance might be more easily rendered with less ostentation.

However, we must arrest our observations here, that we may not involve ourselves in any unpleasant collision with our fair countrywomen. Let us conclude with the hope that what is called "the weaker sex" may continue to be able better to withstand the Anglomania epidemic than the stronger sex have hitherto done.

THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY:

OR, ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE MANNERS AND CUSTOMS OF OUR GRANDFATHERS.

BY ALEXANDER ANDREWS.

PUBLIC CONVEYANCES IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.

HAVING taken a glimpse at the state of the roads during the last century, it behoves us next to see what manner of vehicles were constructed for traversing them, and how they were contrived to resist the sudden shocks, and withstand the jerking and jolting occasioned by such trifling inequalities as ruts four feet deep, and sloughs of mud up to the horses' bellies. That they could not travel very fast must be at once apparent, but the speed to which they did attain seems wonderful when we consider the obstacles in their way. Swift, in his Journal, mentions travelling from Wycombe to Hyde-park Corner, the distance of twentyseven miles, in five hours, but this was no doubt by post or private con

veyance.

A few announcements of the coach-proprietors, taken from various periods, will throw some light upon this branch of our subject. In 1839 (and possibly to this hour), a printed card, framed and glazed, was preserved over the bar of the Black Swan Inn at York, giving notice that— "Your four days' coach begins, on Friday, the 12th April, 1706. All that are desirous to pass from London to York, or to any other place on that road, in this expeditious manner, let them repair to the Black Swan in Holbourne, in London, and to the Black Swan in Coney-street, York. At both places they may be received in a stage-coach, every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, which actually performs the whole journey in the short space of four daies (if God permit)! The coach sets forth at five o'clock in the morning, and returns from York to Stamford, by Huntingdon, to London, in two daies more, allowing passengers 14lbs. weight, and all above, 3d. per lb."

A weary pilgrimage must it have been from Edinburgh to London: "9TH MAY, 1734.-A coach will set out towards the end of next week for London, or any place on the road. To be performed in nine days, being three days sooner than any other coach that travels the road, for which purpose eight stout horses are stationed at proper distances."

At this period night travelling was not thought of: it was sufficiently hazardous to travel by day, and so great an undertaking was it considered, that, about 1720, a lady (Mrs. Manley) published a book of travels, under the title of "A Stage Coach Journey from London to Exeter," which informs us that the coach started from London at three o'clock in the morning. At ten the exhausted travellers were allowed to alight and take their dinner at a road-side inn; and at three o'clock in the afternoon the journey was concluded for the day, and the coach drawn into the inn-yard till next morning. This journey from London occupied four days of twelve hours each; so that, with a fair allowance for stoppages and meal times, the coach could scarcely have travelled at

the rate of four miles and a half in the hour. But if a Sunday intervened on the journey, the passengers were detained for the day in the town at which it chanced to find them, no stage-coaches being allowed to travel on the Sabbath. With these impediments, our readers will not be surprised to hear that, in 1745, the coach from Edinburgh to London, "the Northern Diligence, a huge, old-fashioned tub, drawn by three horses," according to Sir Walter Scott, performed its journey ("God willing," as the bills had it) in the moderate space of three weeks!

The arrangements for "sleeping the passengers" were always announced in the bills, thus:

"Manchester Machine, from the Swan with Two Necks, in two days; on Sundays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays. Sleep at Derby. "Sheffield and Manchester, from ditto;

at Nottingham.

same days, in two days. Sleep

"Gloucester Post Coach, in one day. Carries four in and one out." But, in 1740, an apparition appeared upon the road by night in the shape of a night coach; but the desperate enterprise seems to have been but little favoured at first, and, as late as the 8th of March, 1774, we find a post coach started "to go from the Rose and Crown, in St. John'sstreet, London; to run every Tuesday, Thursday, and Sunday; putting up, first day at Grantham, second day at York, and third day at Newcastle; to carry six inside and two out;" the journey performed by nineteen proprietors on the line of road. And, in 1760, the passengers to Brighton were detained for the night at East Grinstead (thirty miles from London), where the coach put up, arriving at Brighton in the afternoon of the day after its departure from town.

In 1760, a coach started from London for Liverpool once a week, and accomplished the journey in four days; and, in 1765, a "flying-coach" ran to Dover in one day. This prodigy was drawn by eight horses. But even the Dover machines, with six horses, excited a sort of awe at this period by their speed. A French traveller, a Mr. Grosley, who travelled by one of them to London, says of them, " They are drawn by six horses, go twenty-eight leagues a day, from Dover to London, for a single guinea. Servants are entitled to a place for half that money, either behind the coach or upon the coach-box, which has three places.'

Among a list of the terrific achievements of the coaches, starting from the Swan with Two Necks, in London, in April, 1774, we select the following as examples:

"A Post Coach to Gloucester, in sixteen hours, and a Machine in one day, each three days a week. A Machine to Hereford twice a week, in a day and a half. A Machine to Salop every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, in two days. A Machine for Wolverhampton every Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday, in one day."

The bill winds up with the following startling notice:

"The Rumsey Machine, through Winchester, hung on steel springs, begins flying on the 3rd of April, from London to Poole, in one day!" The Daily Advertiser, of April 9, 1739, furnishes us with several characteristic announcements, from among which we may quote the following:

"FOR BATH.-A good Coach and able Horses will set out from the

Black Swan Inn, in Holborn, on Wednesday or Thursday. Inquire of William Maud."

"The old standing, constant Froom Flying Waggon, in three days, sets out with goods and passengers, from Froom for London, every Monday, by one o'clock in the morning, and will be at the King's Arms, at Holborn Bridge, the Wednesday following, by twelve o'clock at noon, from whence it will set out on Thursday morning, by one o'clock, for Amesbury, Shrewton, Chiltern, Heytesbury, Warminster, Froom, and all other places adjacent; and will continue, allowing each passenger fourteen pounds, and be at Froom on Saturday by twelve at noon. If any passengers have occasion to go from any of the aforesaid places, they shall be supplied with able horses and a guide by Joseph Clavey, the proprietor of the said Flying Waggon. The Waggon calls at the White Bear, in Piccadilly, coming in and going out," &c.

The general construction of these vehicles is thus described in the "Tales of an Antiquary:"

"They were principally of a dull black leather, thickly studded, by way of ornament, with black broad-headed nails, tracing out the panels, in the upper tier of which were four oval windows, with heavy red wooden frames, or leathern curtains. Upon the doors, also, were displayed, in large characters, the names of the places whence the coach started and whither it went, stated in quaint and antique language. The vehicles themselves varied in shape; sometimes they were like a distiller's vat, somewhat flattened, and hung equally balanced between the immense back and front springs. In other instances they resembled a violoncello case, which was, past all comparison, the most fashionable form and then they hung in a more genteel posture, namely, inclining on to the back springs, and giving to those who sat within the appearance of a stiff Guy Fawkes uneasily seated. The roofs of the coaches, in most cases, rose into a swelling curve, which was sometimes surrounded by a high iron guard. The coachman and the guard, who always held his carbine ready-cocked upon his knee, then sat together over a very long and narrow boot, which passed under a large spreading hammercloth, hanging down on all sides, and finished with a flowing and most luxuriant fringe. Behind the coach was the immense basket, stretching far and wide beyond the body, to which it was attached by long iron bars or supports passing beneath it, though even these seemed scarcely equal to the enormous weight with which they were frequently loaded. These baskets were, however, never very great favourites, although their difference of price caused them to be frequently well filled. The wheels of these old carriages were large, massive, ill formed, and usually of a red colour, and the three horses that were affixed to the whole machinethe foremost of which was helped onwards by carrying a huge, longlegged elf of a postilion, dressed in a cocked-hat, with a large green-andgold riding-coat-were so far parted, by the great length of their traces, that it was with no little difficulty that the poor animals dragged their unwieldy burden along the road. It groaned and creaked at every fresh tug which they gave it, as a ship, rocking or beating-up against a heavy sea, strains all her timbers, with a low moaning sound, as she drives over the contending waves."

This description agrees in most of its details with the stage-coach exhibited in Hogarth's "Country Inn Yard," except that the guard in the latter bears a sword instead of a carbine, and the postillion is a dwarf-boy, not "a huge, long-legged elf," nor so elegantly caparisoned as the writer describes. In the "Night" of the same artist we have a similar picture of a "flying coach," upset by a bonfire on the Fifth of November; and, in the series of the "Election," are Specimens of Carriages "inclining on to the back springs," which gives them the appearance of having broken down.

A writer in the Monthly Magazine of October, 1822, gives a description of the old stage-coaches of his early days, and, in particular, mentions one-the "Hope"-which ran to Sheffield somewhere about 1780, previously to the great improvement introduced by Mr. John Palmer in 1784. We shall quote his remarks, as he enters upon the subject of the old crane-necked springs:

"The coach consisted, first, of the boot, a tall, clumsy, turret-like mass, on the top of which the coachman sat, that was erected on, and, without the intervention of any springs, was fixed on the fore axletree of the carriage; second, of an enormous wicker basket, in like manner fixed on the hind axletree; and, third, between these masses, the coach body was suspended by thick straps from four of what are now, for distinction's sake, called crane-necked springs. The roads were, at the period alluded to, in general, rough, sloughy, and uneven, and occasioned a degree of jolting and tossing about of the three distinct masses of which a stagecoach then consisted, such as those can scarcely conceive who may have seen only the modern coaches constructed of one piece, and resting on what are called grasshopper springs, so contrived and placed, that the jerk occasioned to either of the wheels by coming in contact with a projecting stone, or by momentarily sinking into a hole in the road, is received by, and equalised amongst four or more springs, which act, not on a single corner of the coach as the crane-necked springs used to do." Such coaches as these unwieldy, ill-balanced, and frequently overweighted on the roof-drawn by such horses, and travelling such roads, were constantly meeting with accidents-overthrows, breakings down, or stickings fast. But these were not the only, and scarcely the worst dangers to be dreaded; the significant hint about the guard's readycocked carbine, and the comfortable assurance with which the coach bills wound up of "Each of these conveyances being well guarded," tell of another peril the highwaymen by whom the roads were infested. So desperate were these banditti that, sometimes single-handed, they would attack a coach, and, despite the guard's carbines, rob the affrighted passengers of their property. Here are instances, and we might fill our pages with similar ones:

"Tuesday evening, two of the Greenwich stages were stopped in Kentstreet-road by a single highwayman, who robbed the passengers of their money," &c.-London Evening Post, May 7th, 1774.

"A few days ago the Ryegate coach was stopped a little way out of town, by a single highwayman, who robbed the passengers of thirty pounds."-Westminster Journal, October 29th, 1774.

"Friday night, the Epping stage-coach was robbed on the forest,

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