Another result of competition was the gorgeous livery a coach on a hotly contested route would assume, and the number of places it would pretend to serve. In the illustration of the “Express” London and Birmingham coach--represented in the act of leaving the “Hen and Chickens,” New Street, Birmingham, and reproduced from a curious contemporary painting executed on sheet tin--an extraordinary number of place-names are seen; some those of towns this coach could not possibly have served. The explanation is that the “Express” made connections with other routes and booked passengers for them, whom they set down at ascertained points to wait for the connecting coach. This in itself, an early attempt at the through booking and junction system obtaining on railways, is evidence of the progress made towards exact time-keeping in this era. De Quincey, as a mail-passenger, has a scornful passage reflecting upon the gold and colour that adorned these stage-coaches, which, being furiously competitive, could not afford to be quiet and plain, like the mails. “A tawdry thing from Birmingham,” was his verdict upon the “Tally-Ho” or “Highflyer,” that overtook the Holyhead Mail between Shrewsbury and Oswestry. “All flaunting with green and gold,” it came up alongside. “What a contrast with our royal simplicity of form and colour is this plebeian wretch, with as much writing and painting on its sprawling flanks as would have puzzled a decipherer from the tombs of Luxor!” Precisely the same things might be said of omnibuses in our own days. CHAPTER VIII COACH LEGISLATION “The law,” said Mr. Bumble, “is a hass!” and scarcely ever has it appeared more asinine than in its dealings with the roads and road-traffic. Legislative traffic restrictions were very early introduced, originally on behalf of the highways; and not until the coaching age was well advanced did it appear necessary to intervene with enactments protecting the passengers as well as the road surface. There was perhaps no necessity to legislate against reckless driving in the early days of coaching; for, with the singularly bad state of the roads, the clumsy build of the original vehicles, and the exhaustion of the teams that drew them great distances without a change, it would have passed the wit of man to be a charioteer with the dashing methods attributed to Jehu, that Biblical hero, the son of Nimshi, who, we are told, “drove furiously.”