Travellers from Scotland to London about the middle of the eighteenth century were accustomed to advertise for a companion. Thus, in the _Edinburgh Courant_ for January 1st, 1753, we find:-- “A GENTLEMAN sets off for LONDON Tomorrow Morning, and will either post it on horses or a Post-Chaise, so wants a Companion. He is to be found at the Shop of Mr. Sands, Bookseller.” It was then generally found cheap, and sometimes profitable as well, to buy a horse when starting from Edinburgh, and to sell him on arrival in London. Prices being higher in the Metropolis, the canny travellers who adopted this plan often got more for the horse than they had given. This method had, however, the defect of not working in reverse, and so those Scots who returned would have had to hire at some considerable expense, or buy dear to sell cheap, a thing peculiarly abhorrent to the Scottish mind. Dr. Johnson would have characteristically brushed this argument away by declaring that the Scot never did return. During many long years Scots travelling in their own country followed an equally economical plan. “The Scotch gentry,” said Thomas Kirke in 1679, “generally travel from one friend’s house to another; so seldom require a change-house. Their way is to hire a horse and a man for twopence a mile; they ride on the horse thirty or forty miles a day, and the man who is his guide foots it beside him, and carries his luggage to boot.” The “change-house” was, of course, an inn; and from this custom, when every man’s house was an hotel, the Scottish inns long remained very inferior places. Fielding throws a very instructive light upon the device hit upon by any two travellers who wished to go together and yet had only one horse between them. This was called “Ride and Tie.” He says: “The two travellers set out together, one on horseback, the other on foot. Now, as it generally happens that he on horseback outgoes him on foot, the custom is, that when he arrives at the distance agreed on, he is to dismount, tie the horse to some gate, tree, post, or other thing, and then proceed on foot; when the other comes up to the horse, he unties him, mounts, and gallops on, till, having passed by his fellow-traveller, he likewise arrives at the place of tying. And this is that method of travelling so much in use among our prudent ancestors, who knew that horses had mouths as well as legs, and that they could not use the latter without being at the expense of suffering the beasts themselves to use the former.” Not until the first decade of the nineteenth century had gone by did the horseman wholly disappear from the road into or on to the coaches. Let us attempt to fix the date, and put it at 1820, when the fast coaches began to go at a pace equal or superior to that of the saddle-horse. The curious may even yet see the combined upping-blocks and milestones placed for the use of horsemen on the road across Dunsmore Heath.