While money and artistic talent were lavished freely on the adornment of the carriages built for pleasure or display in London, it must not be supposed that sound workmanship was neglected. The highly decorated vehicles driven in the Park were well built, but the best and strongest work was necessarily put into carriages which were required for more practical purposes, and we must therefore discriminate between the pleasure carriage and that used for travelling. The mail and stage coaches were used by nearly all classes of society, but these worked only the main roads throughout the kingdom; therefore country gentlemen who resided off the coach routes had to find their own way to the nearest stage or posting house; moreover, wealthy men who could afford the luxury of taking their own time over a journey, were still much addicted to the use of private travelling carriages drawn by their own horses or, more often, horsed from stage to stage along the route by the post masters. For many years after Mr. McAdam’s methods had been applied to the main highways, the narrower and less used by-roads left much to be desired; and however good the roads it is obvious that lavishly adorned carriages would have been out of place for travel in all weathers. A single day’s journey through mud or dust would play havoc with ornamentation contrived of “foil stones, Bristol stones, sapped glass” and similar materials; what was required in the travelling carriage, such as that so well portrayed by the late Charles Cooper Henderson, was the combination of strength and lightness. Hence the best of the coach-builder’s art, the finest workmanship in the practical, as opposed to the decorative sense, was applied to the travelling carriage, which was constructed to secure the greatest comfort to the occupants, together with the greatest strength to withstand rapid travel over roads of all kinds with the least weight. [Illustration: _After the Picture by Chas. Cooper Henderson._ TRAVELLING POST, 1825-1835.] The picture by Cooper Henderson, from which the illustration is reproduced, refers to the period about 1825-35, and it will be observed that while the body of the carriage is hung lower than the posting carriage of seventy years earlier, the general plan is not greatly dissimilar. VARIETIES OF CARRIAGE.