“It was a favourite carriage,” he writes, “seventy years ago or more, and was frequently used by gentlemen for long posting journeys in England and on the Continent. In these days this carriage was always built with a perch, the undercarriage resembling that of a coach, whence its name. For a time elliptical springs were adopted, but during the last ten years the fashionable mail phaeton has been a solid-looking square-bodied vehicle on its old undercarriage.” In 1889, he also observes that a jointed perch was used, the object being “to prevent the vehicle being twisted on bad roads, and also to preserve its equilibrium under trying conditions of roads.” The _demi mail phaeton_, to which Sir Walter gives the credit of having ousted the ugly _perch high phaeton_ from public favour, “derives its names from the peculiar arrangement of the springs in the construction of the undercarriage.” Another variety, the _Beaufort phaeton_, is large enough to carry six people, and was, in the first place, expressly designed to carry people to the meet. Yet another modification, the _Stanhope phaeton_, invented by the peer of that name, is smaller than the last-mentioned, and has achieved a world-wide popularity. “The head and apron render it suitable for winter work, and when the hood is thrown back the stanhope is an admirable vehicle for summer use whether in town or country.” The _T-cart_ is a smaller _stanhope_ “with compassed rail and sticked body in front and a seat for the groom behind.” Sir Walter records the fact that its greatest popularity was about 1888, after which it was supplanted by the _spider phaeton_—a “tilbury body on four wheels with a small seat for the groom supported on branched irons behind.” It would be possible to mention half a dozen other varieties of the phaeton,[59] but such a list is best relegated to a coachbuilder’s catalogue. There is only one innovation which should not be allowed to pass unnoticed here. Many of the phaeton bodies during the ’sixties were constructed of basket-work; indeed, Croydon, where lived the inventor, received all the benefits which a new industry brings in its trail, but the popularity of these basket-carriages waned as rapidly as it had waxed—due, according to one writer, to the ridicule heaped upon them by _Punch_. A revival was attempted in 1886, and “we have a reminiscence of it in the imitation cane-work painted on the panels of many carriages” at a still later date.[60] We come to the closed carriages.