“For the better understanding of things and persons,” he writes, “in this general confusion, I have given directions to all the coachmakers and coachpainters in town, to bring me in lists of their several customers; and doubt not, but with comparing the orders of each man, in the placing of his arms on the door of his chariot, as well as the words, devices and ciphers to be fixed upon them, to make a collection which shall let us into the nature, if not the history, of mankind, more usefully than the curiosities of any medallist in Europe. It is high time,” he continues, “that I call in such coaches as are in their embellishment improper for the character of their owners. But if I find I am not obeyed herein, and think I cannot pull down those equipages already erected, I shall take upon me to prevent the growth of this evil for the future, by inquiring into the pretensions of the persons, who shall hereafter attempt to make public entries with ornaments and decorations of their own appointment. If a man, who believed he had the handsomest leg in this kingdom, should take a fancy to adorn so deserving a limb with a blue garter, he would be justly punished for offending against the Most Noble Order; and, I think, the general prostitution of equipage and retinue is as destructive to all distinction, as the impertinences of one man, if permitted, would certainly be to that illustrious fraternity.” The temptation for display must have been great. Nothing attracted the public attention like a fine coach. In the north of Scotland, indeed, any carriage caused the profoundest astonishment. “I was entertained,” says a contemporary writer, “with the Surprise and Amusement of the Common People when in the year 1725 a Chariot with six monstrous great Horses arrived here by way of the Sea Coast. An Elephant publicly exhibited in the Streets of London could not have excited greater admiration. One asked what the Chariot was; another, who had seen the gentlemen alight, told the first with a Sneer at his Ignorance, it was a great cart to carry people in, and such like.” And even in Johnson’s day, when there were few coaches to be found in this part of the country, though a lighter vehicle called in old account books a _cheas_ was sometimes used, public astonishment was great. Yet it was in the north of Scotland that military roads were constructed in 1726 and 1737—not particularly good roads, but very necessary—and the first of their kind. Swift in _Apollo, or a Problem Solved_, satirised the prevailing luxury. Compared with Apollo, he says:—