agreements were in after years the merest commonplaces of coaching history, and if we seek them here we shall probably be by way of explaining the falling-off that left its traces twenty and thirty years later in the following announcement:-- [Illustration: THE EDINBURGH STAGE-COACH, for the better Accommodation of Passengers, will be altered to a new genteel Two-end Glass Machine, hung on Steel Springs, exceeding light and easy, to go in ten Days in Summer and twelve in Winter, to set out the first Tuesday in March, and continue it from Hosea Eastgate’s, the Coach and Horses in Dean-street, Soho, LONDON, and from John Somervell’s in the Canon gate, Edinburgh, every other Tuesday, and meet at Burrow-bridge on Saturday Night, and set out from thence on Monday Morning, and get to London and Edinburgh on Friday. In the Wintera o set out from London and Edinburgh every other Monday Morning, and to get to Burrow-bridge on Saturday Night; and to set out from thence on Monday Morning, and get to London and Edinburgh on Saturday Night. Passengers to pay as usual. Perform’d, if God permits, by your dutiful Servant, HOSEA EASTGATE. Care is taken of small Parcels, paying according to their Value. COACHING ADVERTISEMENT FROM THE _EDINBURGH COURANT_, 1754.] It is noteworthy that the Sunday was still kept in this year of 1754 as a day of rest. The reference to fares, in the lack of antecedent information, leaves us in ignorance of what the passengers who paid “as usual” really did pay, but it seems that the coach itself was in that year something new and wonderful--a great improvement on what had gone before. The old conveyance, hung on leather straps and with unglazed windows, was discarded, and we have a “glass coach-machine,” on steel springs, and with two ends, whatever they may have been. Also, the coach ran winter and summer. The rough woodcut accompanying this advertisement in the _Edinburgh Courant_ for March 4th, 1754, and subsequent dates, shows us rather a coach built on the lines of the gentleman’s private carriage of that age than a stage-coach. The boasted springs are duly indicated. The driver has four horses in hand, while a postilion, with a face like an agonised turnip, has a couple of leaders. So much for 1754 on the Great North Road; but 1763 showed that retrogression was still the note of the time in that quarter, for the Edinburgh stage set out only once a month, and only when the weather was favourable did it get to its destination in less than a fortnight.