Those who excel, whatever line ’tis in, Deserve applause, and ought applause to win. Pointer in coachmanship superior shone; His whip his sceptre, and his box his throne. Not skilled alone the fiery steeds to guide, For them in sickness and in health provide, He, by a thousand nice _minutiæ_, knew To win the restive, and the fierce subdue. As man and master, punctual and approved; By those who knew him best, the best beloved. Many’s the time and oft, o’er Ashdown’s plain, ’Mid show’rs of driving snow and pelting rain; When hurricanes bow’d down the lofty grove, When all was slough beneath and storms above; And oft, when glowing skies cheer’d all the scene And threw o’er Sussex plains a joy serene; When now the anecdote, and now the song Beguil’d the moments as we roll’d along; Snug at his elbow have I mark’d his skill To rein the courser and to guide the wheel; And had he Phaëton’s proud task begun, To drive the rapid chariot of the sun, Safe through its course the flaming car had run. CHAPTER XIV THE OLD ENGLAND OF COACHING DAYS This is the time, now that we have passed the threshold of a new era, when old landmarks are disappearing everywhere around us as we gaze, and the Old England that we have known is being dispossessed and disestablished by a new and strange, an inhospitable and alien England of foreign plutocrats--this is the psychological moment for a brief review of what this England of ours was like in the old days of stage-coach and mail.