The ordinary measure of talent is held to be success, _i.e._ the acquisition of property; though it is quite clear the qualities which insure success are not those which tend to produce excellence or improvement in carriages more than in any other arts. The inventor may produce, but it is for the most part the mere merchant or tradesman who profits by the inventions. Carriages are made to sell as plays are written to fill theatres, and the English carriage-builder takes a French or German carriage to improve upon because it saves his time and trouble, just as the English play-writer freely uses a French play to save the labour of his brains. Improvements are rarely the voluntary productions of English carriage-builders; they are forced on them by the purchasers—first individuals and then the mass—who desire some mere novelty, others greater ease, and others a more rapid rate of motion. Almost all the changes and improvements in carriages may be traced in their origin to the carriage users and not the carriage-builders. The carriage-builders do not lead, but they have always the means of pressing talent enough into their service whenever a sufficient demand offers them a remunerating return. Coaches were first invented on the Continent, but it was in England that they were improved into public stages, capable of being run 10 miles and upwards per hour for days and weeks together. This was not done at once, or by any one man: it was the combined result of numberless small improvements, forced on by the necessity of overcoming practical difficulties. Coach-builders have not been remarkable as a scientific body. They have been, strictly speaking, “practical men;” and as the knowledge they have gained by experience has not been carefully hoarded in books, carriage construction has remained a sort of occult matter, without any specific theory attached to it. Each one, as he is freshly initiated, gains his knowledge as best he can—from verbal instruction or from a new series of experiments—and thus a considerable portion of his time must elapse ere he can have verified his judgment. Enough of this knowledge exists in various brains which might suffice for the construction of a sound theory, but it would be a difficult operation to gather it together, for many petty feelings would be at work.