may have a table in the centre, and a long boot
beneath, and may be as coquettish as a Stanhope
phaeton, must not be forgotten. The waggonette
is an improvement on the French char-à-banc and
the old English break, or perhaps it is an outside
car, Anglified, made solid on four wheels, and
turned outside in. The waggonette is essentially
a sociable carriage, comprehensive, and
conversational, but uncomfortable for stout middle age.

Latest of all is the sociable: a light, cheap, and
elegant edition of the family coach.

Before the rise and fall of the cabriolet, and
before the dog-cart, with its convenient
receptacle for luggage, had made its way from
tandem-driving universities into private families,
the gig, under various names, as Stanhope, Whiskey, Dennet, Tilbury, was both a fashionable and
a domestic conveyance, as may be learned from the
caricatures of the first half of this century. The
Stanhope form -- the best -- has survived the
changes of fashion. The commercial traveller's
gig is almost a thing of the past. Where these
ambassadors still use wheels, they now generally
go on four, not trusting their necks and parcels
to the safety of a horse's fore-legs.

Public hired carriages, at any rate in London,
have closely followed the changes in private
vehicles. As long as chariots and family coaches
were in common use, the dreadful jingling hackney-
coach and pair claimed its place upon the
stand. The introduction of the private cabriolet
led first to that dangerous rapid high-wheeled
cab, with its outside perch for the driver,
immortalised by Seymour in the illustration of
adventures with which our readers are familiar.
The cab that conveyed Mr. Pickwick to Charing-
cross is the ancestor of the most luxurious of
hired swift carriages, the Hansom, imported from
Naples. The private Brougham soon found its
way into the street as a four-wheeled cab, and
with its one horse killed off the pair-horse coaches.
While the Brougham is a purely British invention,
the omnibus is a foreign importation. For
some mysterious reason, the best omnibuses are to
be found in Glasgow; the best Hansoms, in
Birmingham. Leamington forty years ago rejoiced
in coquettish little open phaetons, drawn by
one horse, and ridden by boys in neat
postilion costume, but, since the advent of railroads,
these have given way to the universal cab. Can
any one explain why Ireland, with a damp climate,
adheres to that eccentric conveyance, the
outside car, while Cornwall, with a like weeping
sky, has for an unknown period travelled to
market in a covered cart, called in genteel family
circles a Coburg, and has performed stage-coach
business in a boxed-up jolting one-horsed
omnibus for ages?

It is, however, due to Ireland to admit that
the jaunting-car probably first taught us the
capabilities of a single horse, when harnessed to a
light vehicle.

A carriage is like a piano as an article of
manufacture. You cannot find out whether it is worth
its price until you have used it for some time.
Paint and varnish hide many defects, and only an
Expert can judge the value of metal-work. Before
Macadam's time, a nobleman's coach required to
be as strong as one of Pickford's vans. It was
often, on journeys to or from the manor-house,
drawn out of sloughs and quagmires. At present,
the object successfully pursued by our best
manufacturers, is to produce the minimum of
lightness with the maximum of strength. The
best mechanical arrangements have been studied;
foreign woods have, the duty being repealed,
largely replaced native produce; and the toughest
and most expensive iron and steel have superseded
the cheaper produce of Staffordshire.

The coachmaker's wood-loft contains oak, ash,
and elm, from trees which have lain a year after
falling, and which, after being cut into planks of
various thicknesses, must remain unused as many
years as they are inches thick. A certain class of
carriage-builders use green wood of any quality,
relying on paint to cover all defects, not expecting
or caring to see any customer twice. There
are some advertising fabricators of diminutive
Broughams who are especially to be avoided.

Besides European woods, there is also a large
demand for mahogany and lance-wood from the
Gulf of Mexico, Quebec pine, birch and ash from
Canada, tulip-wood and hickory from the United
States. These, for the most part, are cut ready
for use by steam saws before going into the hands
of the coachbuilder.

The first step for the construction of, say a
Brougham, is to make a chalk drawing on a brick
wall, of the same size. On this design depends
the style of the carriage. Some builders are
happy or unhappy in designing novelties; others
have a traditional design, a certain characteristic
outline, from which they will on no consideration
depart. The next step is to make patterns of
the various parts. In first-class factories, each
skilled workman has been apprenticed to, and
follows only one branch of, the trade. The leading
workmen in wood are body-makers, carriage-
builders, wheelers, and joiners -- all highly skilled
artisans, as may be judged from the fact that a
chest of their tools is worth as much as thirty
pounds.

The framework is sawn out of English oak.
The pieces, when cut by the band-saws, are
worked up, rabbeted, and grooved to receive the
panels, and thus a skeleton is raised ready for
the smith and fitter, who, taking mild steel or
homogenous iron, forge and fit a stiff plate
along the inside cart-bottom framework, following
the various curves, and bolted on so as to
form a sort of backbone to the carriage, which
takes the place of the perch: -- universally the
foundation of four-wheeled carriages before the
general adoption of iron and steel.

The frame is then covered with thin panels
of mahogany, blocked, canvased, and the whole
rounded off. After a few coats of priming, the
upper part is covered with the skin of an ox,
pulled over wet. This tightens itself in drying,
and makes the whole construction as taut as