A popular writer who flourished some five and forty years ago quotes a letter from a personal friend, who boasts of the following wonderful feat of locomotion:-- "I was out hunting last season, on a Monday, near Brighton, and dined with my father in Merrion Square, Dublin, at six o'clock on the following Wednesday, distance four hundred miles." It was done thus:--He went from Brighton in an afternoon coach that set him down in London in time for the Holyhead Mail, and this mail, with the help of the steamer to cross the Channel, delivered him in Dublin at the time mentioned. What would the writer say now, when, by leaving London at 7.15 a.m., he may dine at the table-d'hôte at the Shelbourne Hotel, Dublin, at 7.30 p.m., with ample time to have a hot bath and change his dress before dinner is served? The writer then proceeds to say:-- "In this wonder-working age few greater improvements have been made in any of the useful arts than in those applied to the system of travelling by land. Projectors and projects have multiplied with our years, and the fairy-petted princes of the "Arabian Nights' Entertainments" were scarcely transported from place to place with more facility or dispatch than Englishmen are in A.D. 1832. From Liverpool to Manchester, thirty-six miles, in an hour and a half! Surely Dædalus is come amongst us again." What would the writer of the above have thought if he had lived to travel by what is termed the "Flying Dutchman," which now runs from London to Plymouth in six hours and a quarter, and which, we understand, will shortly accomplish seventy miles an hour. To resume--or, as the gentlemanly gang under Captain Macheath say, "Let us take the road" as it was at the period above mentioned. The Edinburgh Mail ran the distance (four hundred miles) in forty hours, stoppages included. The Exeter day-coach, the "Herald," performed her journey of one hundred and seventy-three miles in twenty hours; Stevenson's Brighton "Age" kept its time to the minute; in short, from London to Cheltenham, Gloucester, Worcester, Birmingham, Norwich, Bath, Bristol, Southampton, Oxford, Cambridge, was little more than a pleasant Summer day's drive. In order to accomplish the above fast journey two important considerations were required; first, that the horses should not be overworked, and, secondly, that they should be well fed. Horses have increased greatly in price since the period I write of, and a team which would have cost a hundred guineas in 1832 could not now be had for two hundred and fifty guineas. The cost of coaches of the best materials varied from one hundred and forty pounds to one hundred and sixty pounds; generally speaking, they were hired from the maker at from twopence half-penny to threepence per mile. CHAPTER IV. JOURNEY TO BATH IN THE PALMY DAYS OF COACHING--A DRIVING GIOVANNI--"PARSON DENNIS"--CONTRAST TO THE ABOVE--TENNANT'S DESCRIPTION--THE OLD BRIGHTON ROAD--MODERN IMPROVEMENTS--A SQUIRE OF 1638.