When travelling on the Continent in old days we drove most of the way in our own carriages, which, when we came across the few railways which then existed, were hoisted up on to trucks. This practice was not very agreeable, for one was exposed to many discomforts, and I had always supposed that it had long been totally extinct. This, however, appears not to be the case, for such a mode of railway travelling has been seen in England as recently as the summer of 1889, when, I am informed, the nieces of the late Archdeacon Hindes Groome (the friend of Edward FitzGerald, and a most delightful character, who remembered the rejoicings after Waterloo), saw at Bournemouth Station a large open barouche standing on an ordinary truck at the end of a train which had just arrived. In the carriage sat—quite at their ease with their sunshades up—two elderly ladies. A coachman and footman met the train; the carriage was drawn on to the platform with the ladies still in it, and from thence it was hauled outside the station, where, a pair of horses being quickly harnessed, the whole party, with the addition of a maid who had travelled in a second-class compartment, drove off. Another curious survival was also witnessed by Miss Hindes Groome, who, when staying at Cheltenham in the early ’sixties, was told by her mother one cold Sunday morning in the winter: “I shall send for a Sedan-chair so that we can go to church in comfort. Perhaps they still have them at the place where in former days I remember that they could be hired.” The message was sent, and to the surprise of the household the Sedan-chair, borne by two men, duly arrived. The chair was brought into the house, the front door being shut, and Mrs. Hindes Groome and her little girl got in, being carried to Trinity Church, into a sort of inside lobby, in which, after the service, they once more entered the chair, and were carried home and deposited in the hall, being on both journeys completely protected from the outside air and quite immune from draughts. It may be assumed that this was about the last time that a public Sedan-chair was made use of for ordinary purposes, though I believe that at certain health resorts invalids still make occasional use of a somewhat similar conveyance. Mrs. Hindes Groome, it appears, was rather surprised, though very pleased, when she saw the men bringing up the old chair, which revived in her memory many recollections of a past age. She always declared that no modern vehicle could match a Sedan-chair for comfort in wet or rough weather. This lady’s father, who had been born in 1779, remembered the first stage-coach which ran from Cheltenham to London, at which time it was considered a wonderful improvement, for, previous to its introduction, everything came across the hills on pack-horses.