[Illustration: “A VIEW OF THE TELEGRAPH”: DICK VAUGHAN OF THE CAMBRIDGE “TELEGRAPH.” _From an etching by Robert Dighton, 1809._ ] He was not altogether a genial coachman, and held little intercourse with his brethren of the bench, to whom he considered himself, as indeed he was, superior. It was not, however, a judicious attitude to adopt, and those who drove the “Star” and “Telegraph” Cambridge coaches--Jo Walton, James Reynolds, and others--retorted by describing him as an indifferent whip. Perhaps, in fact, he was, but the “Lynn Union” was never a dashing coach, and gave no opportunity of displaying the skill demanded on others. Tommy Cross was never so pleased as when he could pick up a box-seat passenger well grounded in the classics, or interested in poetry--for poetry first, and the classics afterwards, engaged his thoughts. He drove four-in-hand all day, and when his day’s work was done retired to some solitary chamber and mounted Pegasus, who carried him on the wings of the wind to the unearthly regions where dwell the spirits of Homer and Virgil. In short, he seems altogether to have lived a fine confused unpractical life, reflected to some degree in his book, _The Autobiography of a Stage-Coachman_, an interesting but formless work, so lacking in arrangement that it is difficult from its pages to gain any very clear view of his career, and actually impossible from it to discover what was the name of the Lynn coach he drove and so constantly mentions. That it was the “Union” only independent inquiries disclose. The name “Union” must in later years have taken an equivocal and prophetic meaning to poor Thomas, for, like many another coachman, he saw with apprehension railways building all over the country and running the coaches off successive roads. He knew his own turn must come, and was early seized with fears for the future. In 1843 he published, at Cambridge, in pamphlet form, some verses in imitation of Gray’s _Elegy in a Country Churchyard_. He called it _The Lament and Anticipation of a Stage-Coachman_. It was, indeed, a very doleful production, describing what was already happening on other roads and was presently to befall on this. It is not proposed to quote the sixteen pages of this poetical effort. Let two verses suffice to show at once how, if his Muse did limp unmistakably, she was not wholly destitute of descriptive force:-- [Illustration: THE GUARD, 1832. _After H. Alken._ ] The smiling chambermaid, she too forlorn, The boots’ gruff voice, the waiter’s busy zest, The ostler’s whistle, or the guard’s loud horn, No more shall call them from their place of rest. Then comes the final catastrophe:-- The next we heard, some new-invented plan Had in a Union lodged our ancient friend. Come here and see, for thou shalt see the man Doom’d by the railroad to so sad an end.