All this while the stages had gone their journeys with the same horses from end to end, and travel was necessarily slow. To the superficial glance it would seem that neither the dictates of humanity towards animals nor even the faintest glimmering perception of the possibilities of speed in constant relays had then dawned upon coach-proprietors; but it would be too gross an error to convict a whole class of stupidity so dense and brutal. It is not to be supposed that, at a time when ten-mile relays of saddle-horses for gentlemen riding post were common throughout the kingdom, the advantages of frequent changes and fresh animals were hidden from men whose daily business it was to do with coaches and horses. The real reasons for the bad old practice were many. They lay in the uncertainty of passengers, in the extreme difficulty of arranging for changes at known places of call, and, above all, in the impossibility of those coaches changing whose route between given starting-point and destination was altered to suit the convenience of travellers. The first hint of quicker travel and of a better age for horses is obtained in this advertisement of the Newcastle “Flying Coach,” May 9th, 1734:-- “A coach will set out towards the end of next week for London, or any place on the road. To be performed in nine days, being three days sooner than any other coach that travels the road: for which purpose eight stout horses are stationed at proper distances.” This, we may take it, was a rival of the old once-a-fortnight London and Edinburgh stage, travelling those 396 miles in fourteen days, and, as we infer from above, reaching Newcastle in twelve. At the same time John Dale came forward with a statement that a coach would take the road from Edinburgh for London, “towards the end of each week,” also in nine days; so that rivalries evidently existed on the great road to the north at that period. No conceivable change can satisfy everyone, and these accelerated services alarmed the innkeepers, who thought they saw their business of lodging and entertaining travellers thus doomed to decay. It was obvious that when the Edinburgh stage travelled an average of forty-four miles a day instead of a mere twenty-eight or twenty-nine, and lay on the road only eight nights instead of thirteen, innkeepers on that route must have lost much custom in the course of the year. Other innkeepers on other roads gloomily heard of these improvements, thought the times moved a great deal too rapidly, and talked of the good old days when travelling was safe and respectable, and an honest licensed victualler could earn a living. All these good folks were, no doubt, greatly relieved when this sudden burst of coaching enterprise died away, as it presently did, either because the proprietors had undertaken to perform more than they could do, or possibly for the reason that they had come to an agreement not to force the pace or cut the fares. Such rivalries and such subsequent