This is fortunate--since elderly critics may still be seen, grouped around the door of the White Horse Cellars, prepared to institute invidious comparisons, and difficult to be won over to believe in anything but "the old times," when Sir Vincent Cotton and Brackenbury worked the "Brighton Age," when Lord Edward Thynne piloted the "Portsmouth Rocket," when "Gentleman Dean" waggoned the Bath mail, and a hundred minor celebrities glistened in the coaching sphere. Although the interval between these old coaching days and the revival was a long one, the connecting-link was never entirely broken. The "how to do it" has been handed down by some of the most brilliant coachmen of the age, gentle and simple, who, although the obituary shows their ranks to have been grievously thinned, are still warm supporters of the revival, and who, by their example and practice, have restored in an amateur form a system of coaching which is quite equal (if not a little superior) to anything in the olden times. Where so many excel it would be invidious to particularise, but I have seen the "Oxford," the "Portsmouth," the "Guildford," the "Brighton," the "Windsor," "St. Albans," and "Box Hill," as well as sundry other short coaches, leave the White Horse Cellars as perfectly appointed in every particular as anything the old coaching days could supply. Coaching in England had well-nigh died a natural death--ay, and, what is worse, been buried! Poor "Old Clarke" (supported by a noble duke, the staunchest patron of the road) fanned the last expiring spark with the "Brighton Age," until his health broke down and he succumbed. Another coach started against him on the opposite days by Kingston and Ewell, called the "Recherché" (a private venture), but it did not last even so long as the "Age." Here was the interval! The end of everything. In 1868 a coach was started to Brighton called the "Old Times,"[1] the property of a company composed of all the _élite_ of the coaching talent of the day. It proved a great success, and became very popular; especially, it may be added, among its own shareholders, who, being all coachmen, in turn aspired to the box--those who could, as well as those who only fancied they could. The initiated will at once understand how fatal this was to the comfort of every fresh team which came under their lash. At the end of the coaching season (October 30th, 1868) the stock was sold, and realised two-thirds more than had been invested in it. The goodwill and a large portion of the stock were purchased by Chandos Pole, who was afterwards joined by the Duke of Beaufort and "Cherry Angel," and these gentlemen carried on the coach for three years.