"While with labour assiduous due pleasure I mix, And in one day atone for the business of six, In a little Dutch chaise on a Saturday night, On my left hand my Horace, a nymph on my right: No Memoirs to compose, and no Post-boy to move, That on Sunday may hinder the softness of love; For her, neither visits, nor parties at tea, Nor the long-winded cant of a dull Refugee: This night and the next shall be hers, shall be mine,-- To good or ill-fortune the third we resign: Thus scorning the world and superior to fate, I drive on my car in processional state. So with Phia through Athens Pisistratus rode; Men thought her Minerva, and him a new god. But why should I stories of Athens rehearse, Where people knew love, and were partial to verse? Since none can with justice my pleasures oppose, In Holland half drowned in interest and prose? By Greece and past ages what need I be tried, When the Hague and the present are both on my side? And is it enough for the joys of the day, To think what Anacreon or Sappho would say? When good Vandergoes, and his provident _vrow_, As they gaze on my triumph, do freely allow, That, search all the province, you'll find no man _dàr_ is So blest as the _Englishen Heer Secre ar'_ is." If Prior had been living now he would have found the greatest want of travelling accommodation in a country for whose more serious wants we have to answer, without having her wit to help us to an excuse. There is a story told of an Irish post-chaise, the occupier of which, without quitting it, had to take to his heels. It was going down hill as fast as wind and the impossibility of stopping could make it, when the foot passengers observed a couple of legs underneath, emulating, with all their might, the rapidity of the wheels. The bottom had come out; and the gentleman was obliged to run for his life. We must relate another anecdote of an Irish post-chaise, merely to show the natural tendencies of the people to be lawless in self-defence. A friend of ours, who was travelling among them, used to have this proposition put to him by the postillion whenever he approached a turnpike--"Plase your honour, will I drive at the pike?" The pike hung loosely across the road. Luckily, the rider happened to be of as lawless a turn for justice as the driver, so the answer was always a cordial one--"Oh yes--drive at the pike." The pike made way accordingly; and in a minute or two the gate people were heard and seen, screaming in vain after the illegal charioteers. "Fertur equis auriga, neque audit currus." VIRGIL. "The driver's borne beyond their swearing, And the post-chaise is hard of hearing." As to following them, nobody in Ireland thinks of moving too much, legal or illegal.