ANCIENT AND MODERN VEHICLES--PRACTICAL JOKES IN ENGLAND AND FRANCE--FRENCH COACHES--DILIGENCES--THE MALLE-POSTE--CARRIAGES IN THE REIGN OF LOUIS XIV.--PORTE FLAMBEAUX--QUARRELS BETWEEN RIVAL COACHMEN--AN ENGLISH STAGE-COACH IN FRANCE--CONCLUSION 285 CHAPTER I. ANCIENT CHARIOTEERS--CELEBRATED WHIPS--INTRODUCTION OF CARRIAGES INTO ENGLAND--MR. CRESSET'S PAMPHLET--THE STATE OF THE ROADS IN 1739--DANGEROUS CONVEYANCES--THE FLYING COACH OF 1669--DEAN SWIFT'S POETICAL LINES ON HIS JOURNEY TO CHESTER--DISCOMFORTS OF INSIDE TRAVELLING--TRAVELLING IN BYGONE DAYS. CHAPTER I. Before I allude to the road as it is, let me refer to what it was, and in so doing bring my classical lore into play. Pelops was a coachman, who has been immortalised for his ability to drive at the rate of fourteen miles an hour by the first of Grecian bards. Despite his ivory arm, he got the whip-hand of OEnomaus, a brother "dragsman" in their celebrated chariot-race from Pisa to the Corinthian Isthmus, owing more to the rascality of the state coachman, Myrtilus, whom he bribed to furnish his master, the King of Pisa, with an old carriage, the axletree of which broke on the course, than to his own coaching merits. Hippolytus, too, "handled the ribbons well," but "came to grief" by being overturned near the sea-shore, when flying from the resentment of his father. His horses were so frightened at the noise of sea-calves, which Neptune had purposely sent there, that they ran among the rocks till his chariot was broken and his body torn to pieces. Virgil and Horace sang the praises and commemorated the honours of the "whips" of their day. Juvenal tells us of a Roman Consul who aspired to be a "dragsman"-- "Volueri Carpento rapitur pinguis Damasippus; et ipse Ipse rotam stringit multo sufflamine Consul." Again, I find the following lines:-- "Sunt quos curriculo pulverem Olympicum Collegisse juvat metaque fervidis Evitata rotis, palmaque nobilis Terrarum dominos evehit ad Deos." Which may be thus rendered--"The summit of some men's ambition is to drive four-in-hand." Propertius, too, exclaims against the tandem as rivalling the curricle--that is, according to some witty translators:-- "Invide tu _tandem_ voces compesce molestas. Et sine nos cursu quo sumus _ire pares_." Horace writes:-- "_Tandem_ parcas insane;" and to those who drive this dangerous vehicle the following line may not be inappropriate:-- "_Tandem_ discedere campis admonuit." In addition to the above classical names, there were, early in the present century, hundreds of whips who raised the character of coachmen to the highest pinnacle of fame. Let me instance:--