To fully appreciate the enormous value of Macadam’s work it must be considered in conjunction with that of Telford the engineer, and with knowledge of the earlier methods of road-making. The original high-roads in England were the tracks made by travelling chapmen or pedlars, who carried their goods on pack horses. These naturally selected routes over the hills when they sought to avoid the bogs and quagmires of low-lying ground; and these routes, becoming in time the regular coach roads, left much to be desired in point of gradient and contour. Telford cut through the hills to obtain an easier ascent, and when Macadam had “made” the new road thus outlined it was as widely different from the original track it replaced as it is possible to conceive. “Nimrod,” writing in 1826, said, “Roads may be called the veins and arteries of a country through which channels every improvement circulates. I really consider Mr. Macadam as being, next to Dr. Jenner, the greatest contributor to the welfare of mankind that this country has ever produced.” With good, firm and level roads the speed of the mail and stage coaches increased, and the endeavour to combine speed with safety brought about numerous minor but important improvements in coach-building, proprietors sparing neither pains nor money to insure the best materials and workmanship. The greatest improvements, says Mr. Thrupp, were those begun in 1820 by Mr. Samuel Hobson. He reduced the height of the wheels to 3 feet 3 inches in front, and 4 feet 5 inches behind, lengthened the coach body to better proportions and hung it lower, so that a double step would give access to the door instead of a three-step ladder. He wrought great improvements in the curves of the carriage, and did much to strengthen the details of the underworks. FAST COACHES. Coach driving became a favourite occupation among men of good birth who had run through their patrimony and could turn their hands to nothing more congenial. “Horsing” coaches was a business to which all sorts and conditions of men devoted themselves, and which did much to promote the spirit of rivalry that made for good service. Innkeepers and others contracted to supply horses for one, two, three, or more stages of a journey, and thus acquired a personal interest in the coach. The best coaches now ran at ten or ten and a half miles an hour, and faster over favourable stretches of road. The Quicksilver mail from London to Devonport, “Nimrod” tells us, was half a mile in the hour faster than most of the coaches in England, and did the fastest stage of the journey, four miles near Hartford Bridge, in twelve minutes. This coach on one occasion accomplished its journey of 216 miles in twenty-one hours, fourteen minutes, including stoppages.