Indeed, England at this time was superior to most European countries so far as her posting-carriages and roads were concerned. Leigh Hunt, in expressing his delight of them, was only following in the wake of Johnson and the others who had always enjoyed their cross-country rides. “A post-chaise,” he says, “involves the idea of travelling which, in company of those we love, is home in motion. The smooth running along the road, the fresh air, the variety of scene, the leafy roads, the bursting prospects, the clatter through a town, the gaping gaze of a village, the hearty appetite, the leisure (your chaise waiting only upon your own movements), even the little contradictions to home-comfort, and the expedients upon which they set us, all put the animal spirits at work, and throw a novelty over the road of life. If anything could grind us young again, it would be the wheels of a post-chaise. The only monotonous sight is the perpetual up-and-down movement of the postilion, who, we wish exceedingly, could take a chair. His occasional retreat to the bar which occupies the place of a box, and his affecting to sit upon it, only remind us of its exquisite want of accommodation. But some have given the bar, lately, a surreptitious squeeze in the middle, and flattened it a little into something obliquely resembling an inconvenient seat.” Prints of these post-chaises are common. Rowlandson, in particular, loved to draw them. Gillray, too, shows the post-chaise in Scotland and Ireland, where apparently things were not quite so easy as in England. The Scottish post-chaise is shown breaking to pieces, and the Irish chaise is little better than a wreck, with the body held together by a piece of rope, with hardly a spoke left to the wheels, and a roof put roughly together of thatched straw. The unfortunate lady inside has put one foot through the panelling and another through the floor, which reminds one that it was of an Irish post-chaise that the famous story of the poor man who had to run with the carriage because the bottom had fallen out was originally told. It remains to consider a few particular eighteenth-century carriages of other countries. [Illustration: _Early American Shay_ (_From “Stage Coach and Tavern Days” [A. M. Earle]_)] [Illustration: _English Posting Chariot—Early Nineteenth Century_ (_From a Photograph_)]