369¼ Dunbar ,, 11.41 ,, 380¼ Haddington ,, 12.45 P.M. 397¼ EDINBURGH ,, 2.23 ,, _Time_—42 hours 23 minutes The “up” mail was timed considerably slower, 45 hours 39 minutes. The punctuality of the mails was so great that the Glasgow and the Edinburgh mails, which went by Shoreditch and Islington respectively, and took different routes as far as Alconbury Hill, where their roads met, could always be depended upon to keep the official interval of four minutes which divided them at that point. Their route was identical between Alconbury Hill and Doncaster, where the Glasgow mail branched off to the left to Ferrybridge and Greta Bridge. This was the _ne plus ultra_ of Post Office enterprise on the Great North Road, and closes an era. V WE have seen with what extraordinary speed letters were carried in the time of Charles the First between London and Edinburgh; but how did folk travel? They rode horseback, from kings, to nobles, and down to merchants; princesses, madam, or my lady riding pillion. Private carriages—“coaches,” they were called—had been introduced in 1553, when Queen Mary rode in one, as a novelty, from London to Westminster, drawn by six horses. In 1556 Sir Thomas Hoby had one of these strange machines, and just because the fact is expressly mentioned we see how rare they were. In fact, they went out of use altogether for a time, and were reintroduced by William Boonen, Queen Elizabeth’s Dutch coachman, in 1564. On this occasion they came into better favour, and their numbers must have greatly increased, for a Bill “to restrain their excessive use” was introduced to Parliament, and rejected, in 1601. But both their make and the fearful condition of the roads forbade them being used in the country. Moreover, they had only shutters in place of windows, the first “glass coach” being that used by the Duke of York in 1661. It was in 1658 that the first stage-coach between London and Edinburgh was put on the road. It set out once a fortnight, but the length of the whole journey and just what kind of vehicle it was are unknown. Four days, however, and two pounds were consumed in travelling between London and York. The cost of the whole journey was four pounds. In 1734 things do not seem to have been much better, John Dale advertising in the May of that year that a coach would take the road from Edinburgh for London “towards the end of each week, to be performed in nine days, or three days sooner than any coach that travels that road.” After this matters went from bad to worse, and speed was slower twenty years later than it had been for a long time. The _Edinburgh Courant_ of 1754 contained the following advertisement:— THE EDINBURGH STAGE COACH,