“The chaise,” he writes, “is a strange sort of conveyance, of much greater use than beauty; resembling an ill-shaped chariot, only with the door opening before instead of the side. Three horses draw it, one between the shafts, and the other two on each side, on one of which the postillion rides, and drives too: This vehicle will upon occasion, go fourscore miles a day, but Mr. Walpole, being in no hurry, chooses to make easy journies of it, and they are easy ones indeed; for the motion is much like that of a sedan, we go about six miles an hour, and commonly change horses at the end of it. It is true they are not very graceful steeds, but they go well, and through roads which they say are bad for France, but to me they seem gravel walks and bowling-greens; in short, it would be the finest travelling in the world, were it not for the inns.” Such a chaise as Gray describes came to be known as a _diligence_, while in England the one-horse chaise was more frequently spoken of as a _one-horse chair_. Contemporary prints of carriages, however, are scarce, and for the most part show only the larger coaches. [Illustration: _The State Carriage of Bavaria. Early Eighteenth Century_ (_From Smith’s “Concise History of English Carriages”_)] These coaches were of two distinct patterns. There were the large square coaches of Charles II’s time, but there was also a new type of coach or chariot which had a curious backward tilt to the body. From a superficial examination of such a carriage, it would appear impossible for the seats to have been horizontal, and, indeed, one wonders why this form was adopted. The result of this backward tilt was to leave a space between the coachman’s box and the carriage-body itself. Here one of the grooms sat or sprawled as best he could. Four, five, or even six other grooms stood uncomfortably huddled together on a seat or slab at the back. These men must have added considerably to the weight of the coach, and certainly did not make travelling any swifter; but how necessary they were is shown by a letter of the period in which one nobleman’s servant in London informs another in Essex that my lord is resolved to set out. The Essex man is bidden to have “the keepers and persons who know the holes and the sloughs” ready to meet his lordship “with lanterns and long poles” to keep the coach on its way. So many accidents happened even on the shortest journeys that five or six men were necessary to put the coach aright. A road, such as we think of one now, simply did not exist. You had often to drive across fields in tracks which exceedingly heavy waggons had made. In 1703, to take another instance, the King of Spain, then in this country, was journeying from Portsmouth to Windsor. The difficulties he experienced on that occasion were recorded by one of the attendants.