At this period the public found themselves swiftly flying where they had formerly slowly and laboriously crawled, and generally compared ancient travelling with modern, greatly to the advantage of modern times. But if the coach-proprietors who were at such pains to compete with one another in establishing these swift and well-appointed coaches were of opinion that in so doing they were earning the admiration of the entire travelling public, they were very soon undeceived, and those weaker brethren who could not command the influence and the capital by which only could a fast coach be appointed and established, found that, after all, there was no immediate prospect of their being run off the road, and that a considerable section of the public actually preferred to travel in slow coaches, and would by no means consent to be whirled through the country at eleven miles an hour, with only hurried intervals for meals. “The art of travelling,” said an anonymous writer in 1827, “has undergone great alterations in the course of the last thirty years; these are not altogether improvements.” One of these changes for the worse, in the opinion of this unknown scribe, was that in the thunder of ten miles an hour there was no opportunity for conversation. That must be a powerful tongue, he thought, which could make itself heard amid the reverberations of such incessant and intemperate whirlings. He could not help looking back with some regret to the good old times when five or six miles an hour was the utmost speed. _Then_ there was something sober and sedate in the fit-out and the set-out. All the faces in the inner-yard were so grave and full of importance, and there was some seriousness in taking leave. (Good reason, too, for such gravity and seriousness, think we of later ages.) How scrupulous and polite were the inside passengers, in making mutual accommodation of legs and arms, band-boxes, sandwich-baskets and umbrellas! Then, too, says this delightful snob, there was some difference between the inside and the outside passengers: the gentlefolks within were not confounded with the people on the outside. Distinctions were then better observed, and preserved. Older stage-coach conversation, he continued, was apt to be conducted with caution, for a false opening might make an ill companion on a long journey. So approaches were made skilfully, and with deliberation. A man was thought excessively forward and talkative if he had got into politics before he had well cleared the outskirts of London, and the first half-hour was generally occupied with the light skirmishings of talk, with reconnoitrings of one’s opposite neighbour’s countenance, and a variety of all-round questions and answers put and returned merely to ascertain how far the passengers were to be companions. These had to be framed with the utmost discretion. With what vivacity and air of pleasant expectation would one then ask an agreeable-looking person,