So then, at the middle of the century, when heavy and slow stage-coaches were making their appearance on the English country roads, and the unsuccessful _carosse à cinq sous_ was being tried in the streets of Paris, the success of the _berlin_, the _brouette_, and other chariots, was in process of remodelling men’s ideas upon the most feasible carriage for town use. The older coaches, as I have said, were still retained for particular occasions, and, indeed, continued to be built with more ornamentation than ever before. The very spokes of the wheels were decorated, paintings appeared on the panels, and every inch of the coach made as brilliant as possible. France in particular possessed carriages of the most gorgeous possible description. These were not only entirely gilded over, but in some cases actually bejewelled. The richest stuffs lined their interiors, and masters painted their panels. Immense sums were spent. There is preserved at Toulouse a carriage of this date which shows most of these features. The interior “is, or rather was, lined with white brocade embroidered with a diaper of pink roses, the roof being lined with the same, while its angles are hidden by little smiling cupids gilded from top to toe. The surface of the panels is, or rather was, a piece of opaque white, exceedingly well varnished, and edged with a thick moulding of pink roses; the foliage, instead of being green, was highly gilded and burnished.” But the ever-increasing traffic rendered necessary a much smaller vehicle than these monstrosities for general use, and this led, somewhere about 1670, to the introduction of the _gig_. This was a French invention, which, while no doubt the logical outcome of the _brouette_, bore resemblance to the old Roman _cisium_, and led ultimately to the cabriolets, once so popular both in France and England. Certain experiments tending towards a gig had been made earlier in the century with a chair fixed to a small cart. The first successful gig was a slender, two-wheeled contrivance, “the body little more than a shell,” says Thrupp, provided with a hood “composed of three iron hoop-sticks joined in the middle to fall upwards.” It was the prototype of the _calèche_ in France, the _carriole_ of Norway, the _calesso_ of Naples, and the _volante_ of Cuba. Gozzadini describes one of them as “an affair with a curved seat fixed on two long bending shafts, placed in front on the back of the horse and behind upon the two wheels.” They were introduced into Florence, he says, in 1672, and “so increased in numbers that in a few years there were nearly a thousand in the city.” An early gig of this kind is preserved at South Kensington. It is a forlorn-looking vehicle. The body is curved, but there is no hood. The seat is absurdly small and “beneath the shafts are two long straps of leather and a windlass to tighten them—this apparatus was, no doubt, to regulate the spring of the vehicle to the road travelled over.”