“There is of late,” says Chamberlayne in his well-known _Present State of Great Britain_ (1649), “such an admirable commodiousness both for men and women, to travel from London to the principal towns in the country, that the like hath not been known in the world; and that is by stage-coaches, wherein one may be transported to any place sheltered from foul weather and foul ways, free from endangering of one’s health and one’s body by hard jogging or over-violent motion on horseback; and this not only at the low price of about a shilling for every five miles, but with such velocity and speed in an hour as the foreign post can make but in one day.” Of course, there was opposition to these public coaches. In 1662, when there was not a round dozen of them, one writer was already exhorting their extinction on the ground that simple country gentlemen and their simple country wives could now come to London without due occasion, and there learn all the vice and luxury that were rampant. So in 1673, in a singular production called _The Grand Concern of England_, amongst the many proposals set forth for the country’s good, was one “that the Multitude of Stage Coaches and Caravans be suppressed.” One or two pamphlets of no particular interest appeared, both for and against these coaches, but it may be sufficient here to observe that they steadily increased in numbers and maintained their existence until the mail-coaches finally superseded them. [Illustration: _Early (?) French Gig at the South Kensington Museum_] One other public carriage of this time also deserves mention. This was the _carosse à cinq sous_, which appeared in the streets of Paris in 1662. The history of this primitive omnibus is well told by Mr. Henry Charles Moore.[34]