Stage coaches to carry both passengers and mails were the next innovation, and they were soon running regularly during summer on three of the principal high roads of England. Nowadays, when we can travel from one end of the country to the other in a few hours, we should think the old conveyances very slow coaches indeed, but at the end of the seventeenth and during the eighteenth centuries they were thought marvels of swiftness. It took a week--only a week, people said then--to go from London to York, and the journey to Manchester could actually be made in four days. In Hogarth's pictures we can see what an early stage coach was like, with its large, clumsy wheels, high roof, and an enormous basket at the back in which baggage was carried and where passengers who wished to travel cheaply could sit. Later on this basket developed into an extra back seat, and in a picture painted in 1834 there is a coach with no less than three separate compartments, besides having seats on the roof. In 1784 sixteen coaches left London every day, and it was one of the sights of the City to see them start from the General Post Office on their journeys. Each vehicle had an armed guard, for those were the days of highwaymen, and it was no uncommon thing for travellers to be stopped and robbed by gentlemen of the road. Dick Turpin was one of these thieves, and for a long time he terrorised Epping Forest and the outskirts of London, and another famous--or infamous--robber was the young Frenchman Claud Duval, about whom many romantic tales are told. On one occasion he returned the jewels that he had stolen from a beautiful lady, on condition that she would descend from her carriage and dance a measure with him on the open road. It is difficult now to realise what our highways were like a hundred years ago and more, when coaching was at its height. Then the great roads were crowded with traffic, post-chaises, stage wagons, and pack-horses. Now it is sad to see the same roads narrowed to half their former width by broad borders of grass that have been allowed to grow. In those days there were many private travelling carriages besides the public coaches. A most interesting one is now in London at Madame Tussaud's. This is the wonderful coach which belonged to Napoleon Buonaparte. In it the great emperor rode back from Russia after the burning of Moscow, and later on from Cannes to Paris on his triumphal progress through France in 1815. It is said that Napoleon himself designed the fittings of this carriage, for it contained everything necessary for a long journey, and was intended to serve the purpose of a bedroom, a dining-room, and a kitchen. The coach was captured by a German officer after the Battle of Waterloo, the emperor making his escape on horseback; and having been purchased by a man named Bullock, it was exhibited through the whole of the United Kingdom.