The Bristol Mail opened the mail-coach era by going at eight miles an hour, but that was an altogether exceptional speed, and the average mail-coach journeys were not performed at a rate of more than seven miles an hour until long after the nineteenth century had dawned. In 1812, when Colonel Hawker travelled to Glasgow, it took the mail 57 hours’ continuous unrelaxing effort to cover the 404 miles--three nights and two days’ discomfort. By 1836 the distance had been reduced by eight miles, and the time to 42 hours. By 1838 it was 41 hours 17 minutes. Nowadays it can be done by quickest train in exactly eight hours; the railway mileage 401½ miles. In 1812 it cost an inside passenger all the way to Glasgow, for fare alone, exclusive of tips to coachmen and guards, and the necessary expenditure for food and drink all those weary hours, no less than £10 8s.; about 6⅙d. a mile. To-day, £2 18s. franks you through, first-class; or 33s. third--itself infinitely more luxurious than even the consecrated inside of a mail-coach. The mails starting from London were perfection in coaches, harness and horses; but as the distance from the Metropolis increased so did the mails become more and more shabby. Hawker, travelling north, found them slow and slovenly, the harness generally second-hand, one horse in plated, another in brass harness; and when they _did_ have new (which, he tells us, was very seldom) it was put on like a labourer’s leather breeches, and worn till it rotted, without ever being cleaned. Of course, very few people ever did, or could have had the endurance to, travel all that distance straight away, and so travel was further complicated, delayed, and rendered more costly by the halts necessary to recruit jaded nature. Hawker evidently did it in four stages: to Ferrybridge, 179 miles, where he rested the first night and picked up the next mail the following; thence the 65 miles onward to Greta Bridge; on again, 59 miles, to Carlisle; and thence, finally, to Glasgow in another 101 miles. In his diary he gives “a table to show for how much a gentleman and his servant (the former inside, with 14 lb. of luggage; the latter outside, with 7 lb.) may go from London to Glasgow.” _Self._ £ s. d. £ s. d. Inside, to Ferrybridge 4 16 0 Inside, to Greta Bridge 1 12 6 Inside, to Carlisle 1 9 6 Inside, to Glasgow 2 10 0 --------- 10 8 0 _Servant._ Outside, to Ferrybridge 2 10 0 Outside, to Greta Bridge 1 2 0 Outside, to Carlisle 1 0 0 Outside, to Glasgow 1 13 0 --------- 6 5 0