A feeble effort made about 1739 to expedite travelling on the Exeter Road seems also to have done little. The Exeter “Flying Stage” of that year, purporting to inform the journey in three days, generally took six. In 1752 it was announced that the “‘Exeter Fast Coach,’ for the better conveyance of travellers, starts every Monday from the ‘Saracen’s Head,’ Skinner Street, Snow Hill.” This also, although it promised to get to Exeter in three days and a half, usually took six days in winter. Its programme was thus set out:-- MONDAY.--Dines at Egham; lies at Murrell’s Green. TUESDAY.--Dines at Sutton; lies at the “Plume of Feathers,” in Salisbury. WEDNESDAY.--Dines at Blandford; lies at the “King’s Arms,” in Dorchester. THURSDAY.--At one o’clock, Exeter. It carried six inside, but no outsides. But let us be just to the coach-proprietors whose fate it was to work the Exeter Road at that time. In that very year a correspondent wrote to the _Gentleman’s Magazine_ pointing out the dreadful character of that road. “After the first forty-seven miles from London,” he said, “you never set eye on a turnpike.” There were turnpikes, and, by consequence, well-kept roads, on the way to Bath, and he declared that every one who knew anything at all about road-travelling went to Exeter by way of Bath. As for the country along the Exeter Road, it was reputed to be picturesque, but the state of the road forbade any one making its acquaintance. “Dorchester is to us a _terra incognita_, and the map-makers might, if they pleased, fill the vacuities of Devon and Cornwall with forests, sands, elephants, savages, or what they please.” Meanwhile, manufacturing England was coming into existence, and the growing necessities of trade had brought about an increase of coaches in other directions. Thus Birmingham, whose first direct communication with London has already been shown in existence in 1679, and again in 1731, had set up a “Flying Coach” in 1742, followed in 1758 by an “Improved Birmingham Coach,” with the legend “Friction Annihilated” prominent on the axle-boxes. This the _Annual Register_ declared to be “perhaps the most useful invention in mechanics this age has produced.” Much virtue lingered in that “perhaps,” for nothing more was heard of that wonderful device. It was not until 1754 that Manchester and London were in direct communication. The desire of the provinces to get into touch with the metropolis has always been greater than that of London to commune with the country towns, and thus we see that it was an association of Manchester men who set up the “Flying Coach,” just as the citizens of Oxford and the good folks of Shrewsbury’s desire to travel to London established conveyances for that purpose, and just as that early railway, the London and Birmingham, was projected and financed at Birmingham, and should, strictly speaking, have been inversely named. But hear what the Manchester men of 1754 said:--