Things are altered now when we have carriages of every description--for the high and low, the rich and the poor. Vis-a-vis,--an open carriage chiefly constructed for the benefit of conversation, as its name implies. Landau, landaulets, phætons, chaises, whiskeys, cabs, fiacres, &c., &c., are but names adapted to different purposes, and constructed nearly upon the same principles as coaches, but some of them close, others open, some to be opened or shut according to the weather, or taste of the passengers, and calculated to contain an indefinite number, from two to six persons; nay, there are the jolly good omnibuses running in every town and village in the kingdom, the generality of which are constructed to carry twelve inside and eight outside passengers. The number of hackney coaches which ply in the streets of London have been augmented from time to time, since their first establishment in 1625, when there were only twenty. Coaches, cabs, omnibuses, &c., now plying, amount to nearly three thousand. To prevent imposition, the proprietors of these carriages are compelled to have their names painted on some conspicuous place of the carriage, and their number affixed in the inside, as well as the out. This regulation has become absolutely necessary of late years, on account of the numerous frauds practised by the coachmen. We read that in Russia there are employed clumsy, but very convenient sorts of carriages, so constructed as to be either closed or open, and to hold a bed or couch, called _brichka_, with which persons can travel even for two or three thousand miles without much inconvenience, except it be over the rough stones of their towns, owing to the superior accommodations of either lying down or sitting; this change of position renders a journey less irksome, without which it would prove intolerable. In Russia, from Riga to the Crimea, at least, post horses are furnished by the government, and entrusted to subalterns in the Russian army to provide them. Coaches for hire were first established by public authority in France, as early as 1671. There are employed in the streets of the capital no fewer than three thousand hackney coaches. As early as the year 1650 Charles Villerme paid into the royal treasury fifteen thousand livres, for the exclusive privilege of keeping and using fiacres in Paris. Post chaises were introduced in the year 1664. Hackney coaches were established in Edinburgh in 1673, when the number was only twenty. Public fiacres were introduced at Warsaw in 1778. In Amsterdam the coaches have no wheels; nor have they any at Petersburg in the winter--they are used as sledges.