The first coach with glass windows--“glass-coach,” as the new vehicle was called when, many years later, it was introduced into England--was seen in Paris in 1630, brought there from Brussels by the Prince de Condé. Up to the middle of the seventeenth century no wheeled vehicles were seen in the streets of Paris except those belonging to private persons. In 1650, however, it occurred to a man named Sauvage, living in an hotel in the Rue Saint-Martin, which bore the sign of “Saint-Fiacre,” to let out horses and carriages to anyone who wanted them; and in time the name of fiacre was given to all hired carriages. Soon afterwards, about the middle of the seventeenth century, so-called “diligences” were established for conveying “with diligence” passengers in common from one part of France to another; and from the idea of conveying a number of passengers in the same vehicle from town to town was derived that of the omnibus, doing a like service within the walls of the capital. The invention of the omnibus is attributed to Pascal, the author of so many “Pensées” of a finer type. The original Parisian omnibus was called the “five sous carriage”--“carrosse au cinq sous”--five sous being required from each passenger. It held six persons, and carried as a distinctive sign a lantern at the end of an iron pole, which was fixed on the top, to the left of the driver. Until the time of the Revolution the right of letting out carriages was always made the subject of a privilege or concession, accorded to some court favourite, male or female. After the Revolution, however, when all privileges were abolished, those connected with the letting out of public vehicles came to an end. A few years afterwards, in 1800, a tariff regulating the prices payable to the drivers of hackney carriages was drawn up, when, as now, the cost of a drive, or “course,” inside Paris, was fixed at something above a franc, two francs being chargeable per hour if the vehicle were hired by time. Originally private carriages had now become public, so that at last a demand arose for carriages which might be taken by the month, the week, the day, or the half-day. Hitherto all the hackney vehicles of Paris had been of one pattern and furnished with four wheels. They seated either two or four passengers, and were drawn by one or two horses. In the year 1800 the two-wheeled “cabriolet” was introduced, containing seats for two, one of which was occupied by the driver, to whose intimate society the unfortunate passenger was thus condemned. From this period until 1830 the public vehicles of Paris were, according to a French writer, “a disgrace to the capital.” They were drawn by ruined beasts which looked unlikely to reach any given destination, and they were many of them good for nothing but firewood.