The Londoner little imagined--because his imagination on any subject is small--when he looked dully upon these old conveyances, and the old inns to which they came, that he was gazing upon a survival of the age of Elizabeth; and while he was thus failing to realise the exquisite interest of what he saw, the “common stage waggons,” as they were technically named by Act of Parliament, ceased altogether off the face of the earth, and nearly all the old galleried inns were swept away. CHAPTER VI THE EARLY MAIL-COACHES Long before the last quarter of the eighteenth century dawned, the time was ripe for Post Office reform in the carrying of the mails; but, as a matter of course, no one within that department saw any necessity for change, and although the Post Office revenue was suffering severely from correspondence being sent in a clandestine manner by stage-coach, the slow and uncertain old methods had been retained. Reform had, as always, to come from without, just as when Ralph Allen of Bath planned his service of postboys in 1719. He had, against much opposition, introduced his system of messengers riding with the mails at a speed of “not less than five miles an hour,” then considered great expedition, and comparing very favourably with the average stage-coach speed of something less than four miles, including stops. Allen’s postboys were at that time the fastest travellers on the road, with the exception of the highwaymen, whose blood mares, according to tradition, were faster still. No one could grumble at the course of post in those days on the score of comparison with the journeys made by other travellers; but, like many other reforms, Allen’s postboys, excellent at the beginning, did not wholly succeed in keeping abreast of the times. Roads improved: everyone and everything went at a much greater rate of progression, save the Post Office postboys, who for forty-six years continued to go at the same speed as that of their predecessors of an earlier generation. They were, indeed, sent out more frequently on certain routes on which business had increased, and on the more frequented roads the mails were, from June 1741, despatched six days in the week, instead of twice and thrice, as had formerly been the case; but up to the time of Allen’s death, in 1764, speed remained what it had always been, and it was not until the following year that the postboys’ regulation rate of travelling was raised by Act of Parliament from five to six miles an hour, inclusive of stops. The post-horses were, however, of the same inferior kind as of old. The best animals were, very naturally, kept back by the postmasters--who were generally the innkeepers also--for their customers, and for the Post Office the worst nags in the stable were invariably reserved. An Act of Parliament, backed by the power of the executive, is a very dread thing, but it has not the power of compelling a horse incapable of going more than a