There were, however, more degrees than these in the accommodation and fares for coach travellers. The proper mail coach fare was 4d. a mile, but the mails were not the _ne plus ultra_ of speed and comfort even on this road, where the ‘Quicksilver’ mail ran a famous course. Hence the 5d. a mile by the ‘Telegraph.’ But it was left to the ‘Waggon Coach’ to present the greatest disparity of prices and places. This was a vehicle which, under various names, was seen for a considerable period on most of the roads, and can, with a little ingenuity, be looked upon as the precursor of the three classes on railways. There were the first-class ‘insides,’ the second-class ‘outsides,’ and those very rank outsiders indeed, the occupants of the shaky wickerwork basket hung on behind, called the ‘crate’ or the ‘rumble-tumble,’ who were very often noisily drunken sailors and people who did not mind a little jolting more or less. Some very fine turns-out were on this road at the end of the ’30’s. Firstly, there was the ‘Royal Mail,’ between the ‘Swan with Two Necks,’ in Lad Lane, and the ‘New London Inn,’ Exeter, both in those days inns of good solid feeding, with drinking to match. It was of the first-named inn, and of another equally famous, that the poet (who must have been of the fleshly and Bacchic order) wrote:-- At the Swan with Two Throttles I tippled two bottles, And bothered the beef at the Bull and the Mouth. One can readily imagine the sharp-set and shivering traveller, fresh from the perils of the road, ‘bothering the beef’ with his huge appetite, and tippling the generous liquor (which, of course, was port) with loud appreciative smackings of the lips. Then there were the ‘Sovereign,’ the ‘Regulator,’ and the ‘Eclipse,’ going by the Blandford and Dorchester route; the ‘Prince George,’ ‘Herald,’ ‘Pilot,’ ‘Traveller,’ and ‘Quicksilver,’ by Crewkerne and Yeovil; and the ‘Defiance,’ ‘Celerity,’ and ‘Subscription,’ by Amesbury and Ilminster; to leave unnamed the short stages and the bye-road coaches, all helping to swell the traffic in those old days, now utterly forgotten. IV A very great authority on coaching--the famous ‘Nimrod,’ the mainstay of the _Sporting Magazine_--writing in 1836, compares the exquisite perfection to which coaching had attained at that time with the era [Sidenote: _A RIP VAN WINKLE_] [Illustration: THE ‘COMET.’] of the old Exeter ‘Fly,’ and imagines a kind of Rip Van Winkle old gentleman, who had been a traveller by that crazy conveyance in 1742, waking up and journeying by the ‘Comet’ of 1836. Rousing from his long sleep, he determines to go by the ‘Fly’ to Exeter. In the lapse of ninety-four years, however, that vehicle has been relegated to the things that were, and has been utterly forgotten. He waits in Piccadilly. ‘What coach, your honour?’ asks a ruffianly-looking fellow. ‘I wish to go home to Exeter,’ replies the old gentleman.