days when we “called a coach, and let a coach be called, and he that calls it, let him be the caller,” as it stands written in a page almost as much (but far less deservedly) forgotten as the hackney coach. Already in my boyhood “Oxford Road” was beginning to be called “Oxford Street.” But my father and his contemporaries always used the former phrase. At the end of Oxford Street was Tyburn turnpike; not a mere name, but a veritable barrier closing not only the continuation of the Oxford Road but also the Edgware Road, turning at right angles to the north of it. And there stood _one_ turnpike-man to receive the toll and give tickets in return for the whole of the Oxford Street traffic! I can see him now, with his low-crowned hat, a straw in his mouth, his vigilant eye, and the preternatural quickness and coolness, as it seemed to me, with which, standing in the centre between his two gates, he took the halfpence and delivered the tickets. He had always an irreproachably clean white apron with pockets in the front of it, one for halfpence and one for tickets. I have spoken of my delight in the spectacle of the coaches starting from and arriving at the White Horse Cellar in Piccadilly. But there were many other aspects of London life in the days before railroads in which the coaches made a leading feature. One of the sights of London for country cousins was to see the mails starting at 8 P.M. from the Post Office. To view it under the most favourable circumstances, one went there on the anniversary of the king’s birthday, when all the guards had their scarlet coats new, and the horses’ heads were all decked with flowers. And truly the yard around the Post Office offered on such an occasion a prettier sight than all the travelling arrangements of the present day could supply. Of course I am speaking of a time a little subsequent to my earliest recollections. For I can remember when the huge edifice in Saint Martin’s le Grand was built; and remember well, too, the ridicule and the outcry that was raised at the size of the building, so enormously larger, it was supposed, than could possibly be needed! But it has now long since been found altogether insufficient for the needs of the service. A journey on the box of the mail was a great delight to me in those days--days somewhere in the third decade of the century; and faith! I believe would be still, if there were any mails available for the purpose. One journey frequently performed by me with infinite delight was to Exeter. My business was to visit two old ladies living there, Miss Mary and Miss Fanny Bent. The Rev. John Bent, rector of Crediton, had married the sister of my grandmother, the Rev. William Milton’s wife. Miss Mary Bent was his daughter by a second wife; but her half-sister, Fanny Bent, as we and everybody else called her, was thus my mother’s first cousin, and the tie between Fanny Milton and Fanny Bent had always from their earliest years been a very close one.