But to what nation ought we to ascribe the invention of coaches? If under this name we comprehend covered carriages, these are so old as not to admit of any dispute respecting the question. To the following, however, one might expect an answer, Who first fell on the idea of suspending the body of the carriage from elastic springs, by which the whole machine has undoubtedly been much improved? To this question, however, I can find no answer, except the information before-mentioned, that suspended carriages were known in the time of Louis XIV. As the name coach is now adopted, with a little variation, in all the European languages, some have thought to determine the country of this invention from the etymology of the word[182]. But even allowing that one could fix the origin of the word, it would by no means be ascertained what kind of a carriage we ought properly to understand by it. M. Cornides[183] has lately endeavoured to prove that the word _coach_ is of Hungarian extraction, and that it had its rise from a village in the province of Wieselburg, which at present is called _Kitsee_, but was known formerly by the name of _Kotsee_, and that this travelling machine was even there first invented. However this may be, the grounds on which he supports his assertion deserve to be here quoted, as they seem at least to prove that in the sixteenth century, or even earlier, a kind of covered carriages was known, under the name of Hungarian carriages[184]. As the word _Gutschi_, and not _Gutsche_, was used at first in Germany, the last syllable gives us reason to conjecture that it is rather of Hungarian than German extraction. As Hortleder[185] tells us that Charles V., because he had the gout, laid himself to sleep in an Hungarian _Gutsche_, one might almost conclude that the peculiarity of these carriages consisted in their being so constructed as to admit people to sleep in them. This conjecture is supported by the meaning of the word _Gutsche_, which formerly signified a couch or sofa[186]. As the writers quoted by Cornides call the Hungarian coaches sometimes (_leves_) light, sometimes (_veloces_) swift, they ought rather to be considered as a particular kind of carriages for travelling with expedition. It is, however, still more worthy of remark, that, so early as the year 1457, the ambassador of Ladislaus V., king of Hungary and Bohemia, brought with him to the queen of France, besides other presents, a carriage which excited great wonder at Paris, and which, as an old historian says, was _branlant et moult riche_[187]. Does not the first word of this expression seem to indicate that the carriage was suspended?