This principle of allowing the horses greater freedom for action is well worthy of the attention of coach-builders. The manner in which our horses are confined by tight, heavy strapping and traces, by tight pole chains, by bearing reins, and the indiscriminate use of blinkers to the bridles, has been much overdone in England. If a horse with a heavy load and driven fast over slippery roads should stumble, it is most difficult for him to recover himself. He generally falls, and is pushed along by the impetus of the carriage, and is more or less injured in his limbs or nerves by the accident, while it is a matter of great difficulty, if not impossibility, for him to rise again till the harness be unstrapped and the carriage is removed from above him. Our horses are also harnessed too closely to their work in two-wheeled carriages. We have thought only of the ease of turning and moving the vehicle in crowded or narrow ways, without observing the advantage of long shafts over short shafts. If the shafts are considered as levers, by which the horse supports and moves the weight behind him in a two-wheeled cart, it will at once be obvious that although (whilst those levers are parallel with the road) it does not so much signify whether they are long or short, yet the moment they cease to be parallel with the road, when they point upwards, or more particularly when they point downwards, the difference between long and short levers is severely felt by the horse. We can all of us lift a weight or support a weight more easily with a long lever than with a short one, and it is the same with a horse. Those who have travelled abroad must have noticed the great weights placed upon two-wheeled carts in France and Belgium, and the greater comparative distance the horse is placed from the wheels, and yet he carries his load easily enough, because he does not feel its weight upon his back. Many English drivers seem to have observed this, and try and ease the horse and lessen his chance of stumbling by tipping the shafts up in front; but in this way the horse is made to feel a pressure on the under part of his body, which certainly will not improve his health. It is very probable that in future years public opinion will be in favour of longer shafts and poles. This will also tend to preserve good carriages from the damages they at present suffer from the heat of the horses and the quantity of mud which is thrown by their heels upon the front of the vehicle. The reins will of course have to be longer, but this cannot be of much consequence; the driver of a brougham is farther from the horse than the driver of a mail phaeton, but it is not by any means true that the brougham is any more difficult to drive than the phaeton on that account.