Now what was the shape of these chariots? We are able to judge from a painting of the triumph of the Emperor Maximillian I., on the walls of the Town-hall at Nuremburg, a copy of which is in the Museum at South Kensington, also from a sculpture at Orleans Cathedral [Plate 3], and from an old print of Queen Elizabeth in a chariot. It was an open vehicle on four wheels, rather higher at the back than at the sides, open in front, and containing two or three seats, what the French once called a _char-a-banc_. M. Roubo has preserved a design of a charette in his work written for the French Academy of Arts, but we cannot have a safer and more reliable model than in a Flemish car or _char-a-banc_ now in the Museum at South Kensington; this is a very small vehicle with but two seats, only four people could just sit in it, and it is suspended on leather braces, which we do not know had been introduced into England in Queen Mary’s time, but that even is not impossible or improbable. We may, therefore, fairly conclude that in this Flemish car we see an improved representation of what our ancestors used during many hundred years under the name of whirlicote car, and of different sizes, to carry from four to twelve persons. About the commencement of the sixteenth century we find that there was a remarkable revival of Coachbuilding in Italy, France, Spain, and Germany; and it has been warmly debated in which of these countries it commenced, which originated the word coach, and which first suspended a coach upon braces. I may premise that we find also a vast increase in the size of the wheels used. Up to this period wheels of 4 feet to 4 feet 6 inches seem to have been the limit; but the first coaches, and all their successors for nearly two hundred and fifty years, had wheels 5 feet and upwards in height. I can only suppose that, as soon as any large body had to be conveyed, the model of the vehicle was taken from a timber-carriage, such as must have been in use in all parts of Europe. Secondly, although at first all the wheels of a coach were similar in height, it was soon found necessary, for use in cities, that the coach must turn in a shorter space than a lofty front wheel would allow. Consequently, the front wheel was made lower, and an imperfection was caused, the effects of which have been felt by horse and vehicle to the present day. In all the claims to the origin of the coach, we must understand that by that word we mean a conveyance in which the roof forms part of the framing of the body--as distinguished from cars and biroches, above which a canopy was often placed by means of iron rods or wooden pillars. We have further to notice that the vehicles called coaches are distinguished from chariots, by the name of Hungarian coaches, by the Italian writers, and that we must consider a coach to have been not merely a covered, but a suspended vehicle, after the fashion introduced first in Hungary.