At Vienna there is also to be seen a horse litter of this period [Plate 21], which is interesting as another specimen of a small _vis-à-vis_ coach with glass windows. In shape it exactly resembles the coaches on the arms of the Coach and Coach-harness Makers’ Company of the City of London. [Plate 22.] It is a singular instance of the length of time that some old patterns exist, that this horse-litter exactly resembles the shape of the sedan chairs still in use at the public baths at Ischl, in Austria--that is, if this litter were cut in half, you would have two sedan chairs. It is said that the Spanish wife of the Emperor Ferdinand III. rode in a glass carriage, so small as to contain two persons only, as early as 1631. It is possible that this horse-litter may be the carriage spoken of. Glass was in common use then for windows; but plate-glass, such as was used for State coaches in 1700, was not made at all in England until 1670. Towards the end of the seventeenth century, among the wealthier classes, decoration was applied to coaches to an extent that would surprise us now-a-days. Wheels were again ornamented, as in the times of the old Roman empire; the spokes were shaped and carved, the rims moulded, and the naves highly embossed. The panels had beautiful paintings upon them; sometimes the whole was the subject of a picture in which a landscape and figures appeared, sometimes surrounded with a continuous ribbon border of flower work, or the panels were divided into squares or diamonds of diaper work, each little partition bearing a flower or device. The inside linings were of brocaded silk or velvet. But all this century the use and number of coaches in England was increasing, and at length the value of springs in lessening the weight of coaches was fully understood; and this demands a short explanation. First it was found that when the body was suspended upon springs, the vibration, and consequently the wear and tear of not only the body, but in a degree of the underworks or carriage, was reduced, and the entire amount of timber used could be safely diminished, and with it the load behind the horses. And secondly, when the wheels had to be pulled over an obstacle or out of a ditch, the weight of the entire coach had not to be lifted as formerly, since the elasticity of the spring allowed the wheel to rise without lifting all the body and its passengers with it. It is of importance to understand this clearly, and anyone may convince himself by watching the motion of two loaded carts over a bad road, one having springs and the other being without them.