At last the solid mass of four-horse coaches began to dissolve. The drivers gathered up their reins and settled themselves down in their seats, cracked their whips, and swore at their horses; the grooms cleared out the best way they could; the passengers shouted and hurrahed; the teams in front set off at a gallop; the rest followed them as soon as they got room to start, and chevied them up the street, all in a body, for about half a mile, when, as soon as we got out of town, we spread out in all directions to every point of a semicircle, and in a few minutes I found myself one of a small isolated community, with which four splendid horses were galloping over the plains like mad. No hedges, no ditches, no houses, no road in fact--it was all a vast open plain, as smooth as a calm ocean. We might have been steering by compass, and it was like going to sea; for we emerged from the city as from a landlocked harbor, and followed our own course over the wide wide world. The transition from the confinement of the city to the vastness of space was instantaneous; and our late neighbors, rapidly diminishing around us, and getting hull down on the horizon, might have been bound for the uttermost parts of the earth, for all we could see that was to stop them. To sit behind four horses tearing along a good road is delightful at any time, but the mere fact of such rapid locomotion formed only a small part of the pleasure of our journey. The atmosphere was so soft and balmy that it was a positive enjoyment to feel it brushing over one’s face like the finest floss silk. The sky was clear and cloudless, the bright sunshine warmed us up to a comfortable temperature; and we were traveling over such an expanse of nature that our progress, rapid as it was, seemed hardly perceptible, unless measured by the fast disappearing chimney tops of the city, or by the occasional clumps of trees we left behind us. The scene all round us was magnificent, and impressed one as much with his own insignificance as though he beheld the countries of the earth from the summit of a high mountain.