The winter of 1814 was long remembered for the great and prolonged fog which disorganised traffic; the fog was followed by a singularly severe snow storm which continued for forty-eight hours; while it lasted no fewer than thirty-three mails in one day failed to arrive at the General Post Office. The Christmas season of 1836 is historical in meteorological annals for the unprecedented severity of the snowfall. The storm lasted for the best part of the week, and for ten days travelling was suspended. Christmas night was the worst, and scarcely a single coach ventured to quit London on the 26th and 27th, St. Albans was literally full of mails and stages that could not get forward; on December 27, no fewer than fourteen mail coaches were abandoned snow-bound on various roads; and the Exeter mail, on December 26, was dug out five times on the way to Yeovil. In flat and open country all traces of the roads were lost, and the coachman had to trust the safety of the vehicle to his horses’ instinct. In some places the snow drifts gathered to an enormous depth and made the roads utterly impassable. It was an article of the coaching creed to “get forward” if humanly possible; and the feats of endurance and courage accomplished by guards and coachmen in these old times prove them to have been a remarkably fine class of public servant, deserving all that has been written of them. PASSENGER FARES. Passenger fares by mail coach were higher than by the ordinary stage; on the former the rates were from 4d. to 5d. per mile for “outsides,” and 8d. to 10d. per mile for “insides”; on the stage coach the outside passenger paid from 2½d. to 3d. per mile, and the inside from 4d. to 5d. Posting cost about eighteenpence per mile, and was therefore reserved to rich men. DIFFERENCE BETWEEN STAGE AND MAIL COACH. In the early days of the century, though the actual rate of travel was about eight miles an hour by the ordinary stage coach, much time was occupied over the journey. There appears to have been no such thing as a “time bill.” The coachman would go out of his way to set down or pick up a passenger: he would wait to oblige a friend if desired, and “Nimrod” in his famous article on “The Road” cites, as an example of the leisurely fashion prevalent, the civility of “Billy” Williams, who drove the Shrewsbury-Chester coach in his school days, and took twelve hours to cover the forty miles, Two hours were allowed for dinner at Wrexham, but this obliging coachman would come into the parlour and say, “The coach is ready, gentlemen, but don’t let me disturb you if you wish for another bottle.”