The ancient historian, Diodorus Siculus, makes mention of a carriage in which Sesostris was wont to be drawn; and also, he says when he entered the city, or went out to the sacrifice, had four of his captive kings yoked to his chariot; but it is conjectured this carriage, to which that historian alludes, was a warrior’s car. There is, most assuredly, ample room to believe that this was the first species of carriage which was introduced; if so, those existed long before the Athenian king above-named; because all the Homeric heroes, Greeks as well as Trojans, and their auxiliaries, rode in these machines, called chariots, or warriors’ cars, which are also known to have existed long antecedent to that period. We remain assured that war chariots were used in the first ages of the world, by all the great monarchs who possessed dominion. That species of carriage before said to have been invented by the Athenian monarch, we therefore presume, was a covered carriage, similar to that species designated in the twelve tables of the Roman law, and by them called _arcera_, which was said to be a carriage of the last presumed description, and mentioned as being intended for the conveyance of the infirm. To this species of carriage succeeded the soft _lectica_. But we will leave this part of our subject, and proceed towards our own times. After the subversion of the Roman power, the northern sovereigns, who had become the barbarous and ignorant oppressors of our species, introduced and established, among other political regulations, the feudal system, as it was called, by which all property in land was held by certain fiefs, whereby the king, or, as termed, lord of the soil, let certain portions of the land to his nobles, military officers, and other great persons, generally often on condition of certain services required to be performed, called knights’ service, and other military tenures; by which custom those tenants of the sovereign had to provide certain men and horses to serve him in his wars.--These first tenants, or vassals, afterwards underlet those lands to villains, so named, in contradistinction to the present recognised term, from their living in villages or hamlets, and other tenants, from whom, in their turn, similar services and certain provisions were required.--Thus the European world, which had become the prey of effeminacy and luxury, had, by this single important circumstance, their character so radically changed, that, like the mysterious power of the Cadmæan wand of Harlequin, wrought so uncommon a change in the morals of European society, that those who had formerly kept carriages, and wallowed in all the soft luxurious delicacy of Asiatic effeminacy, suddenly, or, at least, progressively, became a society of hardy equestrian veterans. Insomuch, that masters and servants, husbands and wives, clergy and laity, all rode upon horses, mules, or asses, which latter animals