“Where,” asked Thackeray in _Vanity Fair_, “where is the road now, and its merry incidents of life? Is there no Chelsea or Greenwich for the honest, pimple-nosed coachmen?” No, there was not. The action of Parliament in sanctioning so many railways in so short a space of time, without making any legislative restriction or provision in favour of the coachmen whose careers were ruined by railways, seems strange to the present generation, but in no single instance were they considered. The greatest and swiftest revolution ever brought about in the methods and habits of travelling took place in the short period of time between 1837, when the effect of railways first began to be felt, and 1848, when most of the great main lines were opened. Eleven years is no great space in which to effect so sweeping a change, and it is not surprising that ruin and misery were wrought by it, not among coachmen alone, but dealt out impartially to every one of the many people and interests whose prosperity was bound up with the continuance of the old order of things. Coachmen were by no means the greatest sufferers: others felt the blow as severely, but in this chapter we have no concern with the great army of innkeepers, ostlers, post-boys and stable-helpers who so suddenly found their occupation taken away and no new means of livelihood provided. [Illustration: THE COACHMAN, 1832. _After H. Alken._ ] What became of the coachmen? In the vast majority of cases we do not, and cannot, know; for if one thing be more certain than another, it is that we are better informed in classic and mediæval lore than in the story of our forbears of two or three generations ago, and that most of the papers and documents necessary to a full and particular history of coaching have been destroyed.