I mentioned in an earlier lecture that the Romans, during the time of the Emperors Augustus and Tiberius, established a system of public vehicles for hire. These were stationed at inns or post-houses, at intervals of five or six miles, and there were twenty or more horses kept at each inn along the great main roads of Italy, and many of the dependent countries of Europe and Asia. The chief use of the post-houses was to supply the public messengers, but they were found of such accommodation that more horses and vehicles were required for the use of travellers. The _essedum_, or two-wheeled curricle; the _cisium_, or gig; and the _rhedum_, a four-wheeled waggon, drawn by four or six mules, were the chief carriages kept at these stations. Cesarius, a magistrate in the time of the Emperor Theodosius, went post from Antioch to Constantinople, six hundred and sixty-five miles, in six days, with a speed, allowing for stoppages, of about six miles an hour. Coaches, we have already seen, were introduced into England in the sixteenth century, stage coaches in the seventeenth, mail coaches in the eighteenth, and railways in the nineteenth centuries. Each of the four last centuries had added to and improved upon the systems of passenger and commercial transit. The facilities for travelling, prior to the introduction of coaches, were afforded by saddle horses, and by cars or charettes, (vehicles without springs, as I have already described), by waggons, and by strings of pack-horses following each other laden with goods, upon which a passenger occasionally sat. For the sick, and ladies who did not ride, the litter, carried by men on two poles, or strapped to mules or horses, was generally adopted. Persons were in the habit of collecting together and travelling in company with these conveyances, or in gangs by themselves, or on horses when they had them, for their mutual protection. Old men can still recollect strings of pack horses traversing Lancashire and Yorkshire, and advertisements for companions desired by gentlemen about to ride to London. Laws for the improvement of old roads and the making of new, were passed in the reign of Henry VIII., and special mention is made of those between St. Clements Danes in the Strand, and Charing Cross, Holborn, and Southwark as being then noxious and very jeopardous. In the time of Queen Mary, in 1555, an Act of Parliament ordered the appointment of two surveyors for each parish, and that the roads should be repaired under their supervision. Towards the end of the sixteenth century the long broad wheeled waggons were introduced into England, and began to pass regularly between the great towns with goods and passengers. These long waggons first received the name of “Stages.” There are continual allusions in old books to their great convenience, although the rate of speed was small.