be the identical Jarvey who had been put
inside his own vehicle by the Prince of Wales,
and driven about the metropolis by thai
frolicsome and royal personage, in company
with Beau Brummell, Colonel Hanger, and
Philippe Egalité. But the hackney-coach is
now one of the things departed. There is
one — one still, I believe—stationed in the environs
of North Audley Street, Oxford Street.
I have seen it — a ghostly, unsubstantial
pageant— flit before me, among cabs and
omnibuses, like a vehicular phantom ship. The
coachman is not the rubicund, many-caped
Jehu of yore. He is a thin, weazened old man
in a, jacket (Hear it!) and Wellington boots.
The armorial bearings on the coach panels
are defaced; the springs creak; the wheels
stumble as they roll. I should like to know
the man who has the courage to call that
hackney-coach off the stand, and to ride in it.
He must be a Conservative.

What have they done with the old
hackney-coaches?  Have they sent them to Paris
as raw materials for barricades? Are their
bodies yet mouldering, as in a vale of dry
bones, in some Long Acre coach-builder's
back-shop? and some day, mounted on fresh
springs, fresh painted and fresh glazed, newly
emblazoned with heraldic lies, with flaunting
hammercloths and luxurious squabs, are they
to roll once more to courtly levee, or civic
feast, to stop the way at ball or opera, to
rattle nobility to the portal of St. George's,
Hanover Square, to be married, or follow it,
creeping, and with windows up, to be buried?

What have they done with the old cabriolets,
too—the bouncing, rattling, garishly-painted
cabs, with a hood over the passenger,
and a little perch on one side for the driver?
They upset apple-stalls often—their fares too
frequently. Their drivers were good whips,
and their horses skittish. Where are they
now? Do they ply in the streets of Sydney
or San Francisco, or have their bodies been
cut up, years ago, for firewood and lucifer-matches?

Intimately connected, in association and in
appearance, with the Jarveys, were the Charleys,
or watchmen. They went out with oil
lamps, the Duke of Wellington's ministry,
and the Bourbon family. Like the coachmen,
they wore many-caped coats; like them, they
wore low-crowned hats, and were rubicund
in the countenance; like them, they were
abusive. In the days of our youth we used
to beat these Charleys, to appropriate their
rattles, to suspend them in mid air, like
Mahomet's coffin, in their watch-boxes.
Now-a-days, there be stern men, Policemen, in
oilskin hats, with terrible truncheons, and who
''stand no nonsense;" they do all the beating
themselves, and lock us up, when we would
strive to knock them down. There is yet, to
this day, a watch-box — a real monumental
watch-box standing, a relic of days gone by
—somewhere near Orchard Street, Portman
Square. It has been locked up for years;
and great-coated policemen pass it nightly,
on their beat, and cast an anxious glance
towards it, lest night prowlers should be
concealed behind its worm-eaten walls.

And, touching great coats, are not great
coats themselves among the things departed?
We have Paletôts (the name of which many
have assumed), Ponchos, Burnouses,
Sylphides, Zephyr wrappers, Chesterfields,
Llamas, Pilot wrappers, Wrap-rascals,
Bisuniques, and a host of other garments, more
or less answering the purpose of an over-coat.
But where is the great coat — the long,
voluminous, wide-skirted garment of brown or
drab broad-cloth, reaching to the ankle,
possessing unnumbered pockets; pockets for
bottles, pockets for sandwiches, secret pouches
for cash, and side pockets for bank-notes?
This venerable garment had a cape, which,
in wet or snowy weather, when travelling
outside the Highflyer coach, you turned over
your head. Your father wore it before you,
and you hoped to leave it to your eldest son.
Solemn repairs—careful renovation of buttons
and braiding were done to it, from time to
time. A new great coat was an event — a
thing to be remembered as happening once
or so in a lifetime.

There are more coaches and coats that are
things departed, besides hackney-coachmen
and long great coats. Where are the short
stages? Where are the days when we went
gipsying, in real stage-coaches, from the
Flower Pot, in Bishopsgate Street, to Epping
Forest, or to Kensington, or to the inaccessible
Hampstead? The time occupied in those
memorable journeys now suffices for our
transportation to Brighton—fifty-two good English
miles. Where is the Brighton coach itself?
its four blood horses; the real, live baronet,
who coached it for a livelihood; and, for all
the " bloody hand " in his scutcheon, sent
round his servant to collect the gratuitous
half-crowns from the passengers.

Things departed are the pleasant view of
London from Shooter's Hill, the houses on
the river, and, over all, the great dome of
St. Paul's looming through the smoke. What
is the great North Road now? one of the
Queen's highways, and nothing more; but,
in those days, it was the great coaching
thoroughfare of the kingdom. Highgate
flourished; but, where is Highgate now?
I was there the other day. The horses
were gone, and the horse-troughs, and the
horse-keepers. Yet, from the window of the
Gate-house I could descry in one coup d'oeil,
looking northwards, thirteen public-houses. The
street itself was deserted, save by a ragged
child, struggling with a pig for the battered
remnant of a kettle. I wondered who
supported those public-houses now; whether the
taps were rusty, and the pots dull; or,
whether, in sheer desperation at the paucity
of custom, the publicans had their beer from
one another's houses, and, at night, smoked
their pipes and drank their grog in one