yet to be met with at railway termini, and plies
quietly for the accommodation of large families
with much luggage, coming to town from the
midland counties. The hackney-coach takes
them back again, also, to the terminus, when
their trip is at an end; at least, so I conjecture
from the appearance of one of these antiquated
caravans in a quiet street in which I lived some
two summers since, and which (this caravan)
conveyed away one father, one mother, one
grandmother (aged), a few adult sons and
daughters, a tribe of ruddy children, a confidential
housekeeper (likewise aged), a stout
housemaid, a few tons of luggage, a shaggy dog,
and a jackdaw in a wicker basket. Some time
was necessarily occupied in stowing these impedimenta
in the roomy old slowcoach; although I
entertain not the slightest doubt of its capacity to
have held besides, a chest of drawers, and a young
elephant. As I tranquilly surveyed the scene from
an upper casement opposite, the coachman, catching
my eye, or rather the lens of my pocket-glass,
produced a small card from his pocket, made
signs of tendering it to me, pointed to his
bony steeds (which were eating their nose-bags),
wagged his head violently, and stamped his foot,,
to express an idea of their surprising bone,
mettle, and speed. I was amused at the thought
that he should take me for a man who looked as
though he wanted a hackney-coach, and sent
Hannah down for the card. It looked, on closer
inspection, remarkably like a pawnbroker's duplicate,
and bore on one side the number,
and on the other the owner's address, in a
street somewhere off the Blackfriars-road: it
contained, moreover, a neat reference to glass-coaches
for wedding parties. I think the
courteous charioteer must have been the owner
of hackney-carriage 9063; and I remark that
the majority of the drivers of these rare vehicles
look like the proprietors thereof. They are staid,
grave men of subdued mien, clad in sleeved
waistcoats and mid-calf boots, are generally
advanced in years, and would decidedly have been
hired by Sir Roger de Coverley when he drove
forth to take the air with Mr. Spectator. They
wear silver watch-chains, and have a rate-paying
expression of countenance. I seek in vain for the
old jarvey with his many-caped Benjamin; the
fierce, loud, restless, horse-lacerating, passenger-bullying
ruffian of twenty-five years ago; with
his unblushing audacity of extortion and his
astounding volubility of abusive slang. There
is a word-picture of one of these fellows in a song
to the old burden of "Tamaroo"—a picture to
me positively terrific:

Ben was a hackney-coachman bold:
    "Jarvey! jarvey!" " Here I am, yer honour !"
Ben was a hackney-coachman bold,
       Tamaroo!
How he'd swear, and how he'd drive !
Number three hundred and sixty-five!
      "With a right fol loddle oddle, heigh, gee woa !

This is dreadful: this delineation of a hackney-
coachman, in all his boldness and hardened
ribaldry, swearing and driving, and yelling
"Tamaroo" all the way.

Splendour, nobility, and even royalty, have
not yet done shaking hands with slow coaches:
they come out occasionally in St. James's-street
on drawing-room days, covered with gold and
varnish, and filled with antique carmined dowagers
with slow nodding plumes: also, with purblind
peers and generals. Our good Queen gets
rid of the slow coach incubus whenever she has a
chance. See her dashing in the open carriage
with the scarlet outriders towards Ascot
Race-course, and hear the countless thousands
peal out their great joyful shout as
she and her nobles emerge from the Long
Walk, and the carriage slackens its pace, and
the horses, champing in their constrained
slowness, move along the velvet sward. See
the simple carriage that holds Royalty, swiftly
gliding to theatre or opera. At home, at
Osborne, and at Balmoral, we are told the Queen
drives a little basket pony-chaise; but Routine
must have its rights, and the slow coacheries of
our glorious constitution are not to be trifled
with. So, once or twice a year, her Majesty, and
her Masters of the Horse and Mistresses of the
Robes, are compelled to enter that huge gilded
gingerbread and glass-case of a waggon, with
the squat coachman, and the squat horses—the
old original Absurdity and Monstrosity, with
the Roman helmets, and the fasces, and the
palm-trees, and the panels painted by Cipriani
over Thornhill, and Faith, Hope, and Charity,
Gog, Magog, and the Emperor Heliogabalus
into the bargain for aught I know, sprawling
about a golden Noah's Ark. How Queen Victoria
must hate the state carriage! How the
Mistress of the Robes must abhor it, and the
Master of the Horse shake his fist at it, when
he makes a tour of inspection through the Royal
Stables! Stop: perhaps they all like it. How
do we know? Lord Chamberlain, perchance, is
fond of walking backwards. I think, myself,
that I could manage to wear a gold robe and a
cocked-hat, or lawn sleeves and a wig like a
birds'-nest — if I were well paid for it.

The Lord Mayor of London enjoys also
the possession of a state slow-coach, elaborately
carved and gilt, and equally resembling
a twelfth-cake and the car of Juggernaut. The
civic state carriage has cost some thousands of
pounds sterling in its time, and its maintenance
in a decent state of repair yet involves,
I believe, the annual expenditure of a
considerable sum of money. Its interior is, I
am afraid, inevitably affected with dry rot;
but the coach is, of course, a great civic
institution, and the corporation could no more
get on without its state carriage than without
the Mace and the Sword Bearers, the Guildhall
Giants and the City Marshal. I wonder
whether it will ever be found possible to get on
without the corporation itself! This is a levelling
age. The barge is gone, the man in brass is
gone. I tremble for the state carriage.

The Speaker of the House of Commons has his
slow coach, an angular affair very far gone in gold-leaf;
but the right honourable gentleman, to his
great good fortune, is very rarely seen in it. There