axle improvements, and knife and
monkeyboard improvements. The imagination
of Long Acre had in fact run riot in
devising vehicular novelties; and there
were models in design as eccentric as that
strange prodigy, invented and patented by
the Polish sage, with the unpronounceable
name, which suddenly appeared in the
streets a few months back, and wagged and
nodded its bizarre head for a brief season on
the macadam. Where did it go to? Where is
it now—Mr. Somethingowsky's omnibus, with
its uncouth proportions and its arrangements
in little isolated stalls and doors, reminding
one distressingly of a pawnbroker's shop
turned inside out? It is gone where the old
coaches go! Does it slumber in the same
coach-house of oblivion as the Car of Juggernath,
Borneo Coates's cockle-shell, our grand-
fathers' postchaises, Mr. Thurtell's gig, and
the sledge on which criminals used to be
drawn to execution? I should like to see
Somethingowsky's omnibus again. It must
be haunted, by this time, for sure.

On a careful survey of all these models, it
did not, I am advised, appear to the judges
to whom the award was entrusted, that any
one vehicle in particular otfered such special
features of novelty in design or increase in
convenience, to warrant the immediate
construction of a class of omnibuses for public
use on its plan. An award of the stated pre-
mium for the best design—as a design—has
however been made. If it be found suitable
to all present requirements, it is understood
that it will be at once adopted by the
Revolutionary Company; if not, they will take
from it what is best in detail and arrangement,
and seek for further improvement at
any cost. I must do, however, the ingenious
body of modellers whose works I witnessed,
the justice to confess, that I did not see any
one model of an omnibus among the fifty
exhibited, in which the trifling requirement
of a door had been omitted, or the insignificant
desideratum of wheels accidentally left
out; nor were there any carriages without
seats or windows. Such or analogous errors
in construction are understood to fall within
the peculiar province and prerogative of the
architects of houses of parliament, clock
towers, churches and theatres.

It is apparent, nevertheless, that the
perfection of omnibusality is yet to be sought
for. " We want," say those who have made
it their duty and interest to study the
locomotive requirements of the public, " a vehicle
weighing not more than twenty hundred
weight." A ton is surely a heavy load enough
for two horses to draw; when a full weight of
passengers are added. " Our omnibus must
be strong enough to bear the wear and tear of
the streets, and the jerks of constant starting
and pulling up; and it must be light enough,
when either full or empty, not to overpower
or strain the horses. We want, specially, a
facility of ingress and egress: the inside
passenger must be enabled to pass to his seat, or
leave it, without disturbing his fellow-
travellers. We wish to render things of the
past, all the corn-crushing, rib-bruising, boot-
soiling, skirt-tearing, eye- (by umbrella ferule)
endangering, temper-exacerbating and
grumbling, to which the entrance and exit of an
omnibus passenger ordinarily gives rise.
Each passenger, having the full sixteen
inches to which the act of parliament entitles
him, we wish yet to study the variation of
breadth of beam in omnibus-using human
nature—to make allowances for the lean
Cassius and the portly Lablache—for the
ladies' wide-spreading skirts and the life
guardsman's long legs. We do not want our
passengers to be cabined, cribbed, and confined
—stifled and huddled up like a forçat
in his atrocious voiture cellulaire, or La
Balue in his cage, or Xit in the Scavenger's
Daughter. We want them to be comfortable.
There are, of course, difficulties, not
insurmountable, but at least puzzling, in the way
of these ameliorations. A fixed separation
of the seats, either by an. arm or a compartment,
has been found inconvenient. Its
abandonment is already commencing in the
first-class carriages on railways. The breadth
of an omnibus, too, between the wheels,
cannot easily be increased, unless by some
change in the mode of padding. Iron plates
have been tried, and have failed. Again, as
to height; if too lofty, the omnibus catches
the wind, and runs in danger of being
capsized; if too low, it becomes at once an
ambulatory Black Hole of Calcutta, or a
Little Ease. Next, as to light and air. If the
windows are fixed, there is too much heat;
when movable, unpleasant persons (and
they are by no means unfrequent travellers
in omnibuses) insist on pulling the windows
up and down, distribute colds, catarrhs, stiff
necks, and tic-douloureux among their
companions, and play the very Doctor Reid in
the way of ventilation. We want, too, for
the outside passenger, equal comfort and
convenience: an easy and ready step for the
foot; a hold for the hand firm in ascending;
while in dismounting there should be nothing
in the way to prevent the quick descent.
Hence, the light iron ladder, which would be
of so much assistance in making one's way to
the roof, or knifeboard, as it is popularly
though inelegantly termed, is discarded as a,
vicious barker of the shins of those coming
down; while the handrail at the top, if
raised high enough to afford security from
falling, is a serious obstruction to getting off.
We seek further many further improvements
as regard the carriage, the perch, the rocker,
the locking apparatus, and many other points
of detail, too purely technical to be understood
by the general public, but not the less
indispensable to their comfort and safety;
and, till we have perfected and constructed
vehicles uniting all the available elements of
this proposed perfectibility, you must be