Well, then, "Montem" was celebrated every third year. The day's work began by four boys, selected for the purpose and gaily habited, starting off by two and two, early in the morning, to scour the principal roads in the neighbourhood, and gather donations in money--called for the occasion "_Salt_"--from all the travellers they met with. By this means a nice sum was collected, which was given to the senior boy on the foundation upon his leaving the college for the University of Cambridge. At a later hour, about ten o'clock, the whole school assembled in the college square. The sixth form, if I recollect rightly, wore fancy dresses, representing some classical or historical characters, and attended by one or two pages, selected from the lower boys, and also wearing fancy dresses. The fifth form wore a rather heterogeneous dress, a mixture of military and civil. It consisted of a red coat and white trousers, with a sword and sash, surmounted by a cocked hat, from which was fluttering in the wind a feather, such as was worn by a Field-Marshal or a General Officer, according to the taste of the wearer, or in what he could get. The lower boys were dressed in blue jackets and white trousers, each carrying in his hand a white wand, in length about six or seven feet, and in the procession were mixed alternately with the semi-military fifth form. In this formation they marched round the quadrangle of the college, upon debouching from which a somewhat strange scene ensued. The wearers of the red coats drew their swords and began hacking vigorously at the wands, which were held out by their owners for the purpose of being cut to pieces. The swords, however, were so blunt that more wands owed their destruction to the hands of the blue boys than the swords of the red. The work of destruction being accomplished, the whole fell in again and marched to Salt Hill, where dinners were provided for them by their different houses; and dinner being ended, they returned to college as they liked. The two hotels at Salt Hill are, I believe, now converted to other uses, and the dwellers there would be as much astonished to see a "Montem," as one of the hundred and odd mails and coaches which passed their doors in those days. CHAPTER VI. HORSES. A book about coaching would be very incomplete without touching on the subject of horses, as they were like the main spring of a watch: the coach could not go without them. Of course, a very large number of horses were employed in the coaches, and I can remember that many people feared that, if coaches ceased to run, the number and quality of the horses bred in the country would deteriorate, in consequence of this demand for them falling off; but that, like most prognostications of the same sort, has proved to be unfounded, and I should think the number of horses at the present time employed in public conveyances, must exceed considerably what it was in the days of road travelling.