But how different the last years of this gorgeous figure! When railways were projected, the coachman laughed at the idea. He thought himself secure on his box-seat, and witnessed the preparations for laying the iron rails with an amused confidence that his horses could run the “tin-kettles” off the road with little trouble. He kept this frame of mind even until the opening of the line that competed with him; and even when it was proved to demonstration that railways could convey passengers at least three times as swiftly as coaches, and at about a quarter of the cost, he generally professed to believe that “it couldn’t last long.” His was the faith that should have moved mountains—to say nothing of blighting locomotives; but it was no use. His old passengers deserted him. They were not proof against the opportunities of saving time and money. Who is? Nor did they come back to him, as he fondly thought they would, half-choked with cinders and smoke. He was speedily run off the road. There were those who liked him well, and, unwilling to see him brought low, made interest with railway companies to secure him a post; but he indignantly refused it when obtained; and, finding a cross-country route to which the railway had not yet penetrated, drove the coachman’s horror—a pair-horse coach—along the by-ways. Gone by now was his lordly importance. He had not even a guard, and frequently was reduced to putting in the horses himself. He grew slovenly, and was maudlin in his drink. “Tips” were seldom bestowed upon him, and when he received an infrequent sixpenny-piece, he was known to burst into tears. The familiar figure of Belisarius begging an obolus is scarce more painful. The last of him was generally in the driving of the omnibus between the railway station and the hotel; a misanthropic figure, consistently disregarded by his passengers, lingering, resolutely old-fashioned in dress, and none too civil, superfluous on the stage. [Picture: Entrance to London from Islington, 1809] VII THESE long preliminaries over, we may duly start for the North from the General Post Office, coming to Islington by way of Goswell Road. Here, at the “Peacock” or the “Angel,” travellers of a century and a-half ago were one mile from London, or from Hicks’s Hall, which was the same thing. A milestone proclaimed the fact, and its successor, with a different legend, stood until quite recently opposite the Grand Theatre, on Islington Green. Here stood the first toll-gate as you went out of London. Here also was the village pound for strayed horses and cattle. Here again, according to those who do not know anything at all about it, the bailiff’s daughter of Islington might have met her lover; only, unhappily for this Islington, the old ballad refers to quite another Islington, away in Norfolk.