As these coaches are sent out for the ease and expedition of gentlemen and ladies travelling, the proprietors humbly hope for their encouragement, and are determined to spare no pains to render it as agreeable as they can. Performed (if God permits) by-- PET. SHELDON, at the Bull, Bishopsgate Street, London. THOMAS ARCHER, at the White Hart, Brentwood. CHARLES KERRY, at the Black Boy, Chelmsford. GEO. REYNOLDS, at the Three Cups, Colchester; and CHAS. HARRIS, at the Great White Horse, Ipswich. * * * * * _N.B._--The proprietors will not be answerable for any money, plate, jewels, or writings, unless entered and paid for as such. The reader will perhaps have observed that this advertisement especially mentions a convenience for carrying game, and, as a matter of fact, game and oysters were prominent from an early period in the history of Norwich Road conveyances, and, by the middle of the eighteenth century, the Norfolk and Suffolk coaches had already earned quite a distinctive character in two seasons of the year, Michaelmas and Christmas. East Anglia has always abounded in game, and its broad heaths and extensive commons have been the breeding-grounds of innumerable geese and turkeys whose careers have ended on London dinner-tables. In those two seasons it was often difficult to secure a seat on or in any of the "up" coaches from Norwich or Ipswich, for while every available inch of space on the mails was occupied by festoons of dead birds consigned by country cousins to friends in town, the whole of a stage-coach was frequently chartered for the purpose of despatching heavy consignments of these noble poultry to the London market. Christmas provided extraordinary sights along the Norfolk Road, in the swaying coaches, with parcels and geese and turkeys mountains high on the roof; with barrels of Colchester natives in the boot, and hampers swinging heavily between the axle-trees on a shelf called "the cellar"; while from every rail or projection to which they could be either safely or hazardously tied depended other turkeys or braces of fowls, booked at the last moment before starting. It was something in those days to be a turkey or a goose, before whose importance the claims of human passengers faded; but it was a fleeting elevation which the philosophic did not envy, thinking that here indeed the poet was justified in his sounding line-- "The paths of glory lead but to the grave." [Illustration: THE NORWICH COACH AT CHRISTMAS TIDE. _After Robert Seymour, 1835._] That unfortunate genius, Robert Seymour, has left us a picture of the Norwich coach nearing London at Christmas time, with its feathered load. The drawing was made in 1835, at the very height of the Coaching Age, and shows from his own observation with what ingenuity every rail and projection was used to hang the birds from.