as a direct conveyance THROUGHOUT, BETWEEN LONDON AND MANCHESTER, and that the arrangements will be the same as those which before obtained for it such entire and general approval. In this effort the Proprietors anxiously hope that the public will recognise and appreciate the desire to supply an accommodation which will require and deserve the patronage and support of the large and busy community on that line of road. The RED ROVER will start every evening, at a quarter before seven, by way of Coventry, Birmingham, Walsall, Stafford, Newcastle-under-Lyme, Congleton, Macclesfield, and Stockport, and perform the journey _in the time which before gave such general satisfaction_. ☞ It will also start from the ‘Moseley Arms’ Hotel, Manchester, for London, every evening, at nine o’clock. EDWARD SHERMAN, } Joint JOHN WETHERALD & CO., } Proprietors. _London, October 28th, 1837._” It was a gallant effort, but failed. Manchester men had grumbled at railway delays, but they were not sentimentalists, and when the London and Birmingham Railway was opened throughout, and an uninterrupted run through to Manchester was possible, they forsook the road, and the “Red Rover” roved no more. But still, sentiment gushed freely over the coaches in every channel of the periodical press, except, of course, in those railway journals that even thus early had come into existence. Poetry, of sorts, was lavished on the coachmen by the bucketful, and they were made to consider themselves martyrs in a lost cause. They felt themselves greatly honoured by all those attentions, and now began to perceive that they were really very fine fellows indeed. It was a proud position they now occupied in the public eye, but it had its own peculiar drawbacks. Amid all this adulation they could not but see that they were like the gladiators of ancient times, going forth to glory, it is true, but to simultaneous extinction; and as all the plaudits of the multitude must have seemed to them a hollow mockery, so did this latter hero-worship appear cheap and unsubstantial to the coachmen. Some of them assumed a pensive air, which did by no means sit well upon their burly forms and purple countenances, and was often, to their disgust, mistaken for indigestion. Here, from among a wealth of verse, is a typical ballad of the time, among the best of its kind; but even so, perhaps not altogether one that Tennyson would have been proud to father:-- THE DIRGE OF THE DRAGSMEN Farewell to the Coach-box, farewell to the Vip! By Fate most unkindly we’re cotch’d on the hip; Brother Dragsmen, come join in a general chorus, For there’s nothing at present but ruin before us.