Hudson, to whom Carlyle once alluded as “the big swollen gambler,” lived on to the early ’seventies, an annuity having been purchased for his benefit by some friends only a few years before. In his prosperous days the “railway king” used to entertain very lavishly at his house at Albert Gate. This mansion, together with the one opposite to it, was built by Cubitt, and the two houses used to be called the “two Gibraltars,” it being prophesied that they never would or could be taken; however, as has been said, Mr. Hudson soon falsified this prediction. The house is now the French Embassy. Previous to the construction of the railway between London and Norwich, several experiments had been made in Norfolk with steam carriages to run upon the roads—the precursors of our modern motor cars. As early, indeed, as 1842, a Mr. Parr had patented a steam carriage to run for hire between Norwich and Yarmouth, whilst in the following year a steam coach was experimentally put upon the Yarmouth road. This vehicle, however, did not answer its inventor’s expectations, as its wheels refused to revolve unless lifted up from the road, when, as a contemporary somewhat quaintly put it, they at once flew round with alarming velocity. As far back as 1831 a Parliamentary Committee had decided that carriages weighing three tons, propelled by steam and carrying fourteen passengers, could travel on the ordinary roads at an average speed of ten miles an hour with perfect safety. The first steam omnibus, constructed by Mr. Hancock, ran from the Bank at Paddington in April 1833; it could attain a speed of from ten to fifteen miles an hour, carrying some twenty-five passengers, and consumed a sack of coke every eight miles. Two years later Mr. Hancock ran what was called a “steam-engine coach” between Whitechapel and his house at Stratford. Colonel Macirone and Sir Charles Dance also ran steam cars, as did Mr. Gurney, whose coaches averaged about nine miles an hour. Though these early motor cars were by no means inefficient, they were for some reason or other put down by legislative interference, and a great industry was thus held in abeyance for some forty or fifty years.