t we never
recollect to have been more amused with a hackney-coach party, than one
we saw early the other morning in Tottenham-court-road. It was a
wedding-party, and emerged from one of the inferior streets near
Fitzroy-square. There were the bride, with a thin white dress, and a
great red face; and the bridesmaid, a little, dumpy, good-humoured young
woman, dressed, of course, in the same appropriate costume; and the
bridegroom and his chosen friend, in blue coats, yellow waist-coats,
white trousers, and Berlin gloves to match. They stopped at the corner
of the street, and called a coach with an air of indescribable dignity.
The moment they were in, the bridesmaid threw a red shawl, which she had,
no doubt, brought on purpose, negligently over the number on the door,
evidently to delude pedestrians into the belief that the hackney-coach
was a private carriage; and away they went, perfectly satisfied that the
imposition was successful, and quite unconscious that there was a great
staring number stuck up behind, on a plate as large as a schoolboy's
slate. A shilling a mile!--the ride was worth five, at least, to them.

What an interesting book a hackney-coach might produce, if it could carry
as much in its head as it does in its body! The autobiography of a
broken-down hackney-coach, would surely be as amusing as the
autobiography of a broken-down hackneyed dramatist; and it might tell as
much of its travels _with_ the pole, as others have of their expeditions
_to_ it. How many stories might be related of the different people it
had conveyed on matters of business or profit--pleasure or pain! And how
many melancholy tales of the same people at different periods! The
country-girl--the showy, over-dressed woman--the drunken prostitute! The
raw apprentice--the dissipated spendthrift--the thief!

Talk of cabs! Cabs are all very well in cases of expedition, when it's a
matter of neck or nothing, life or death, your temporary home or your
long one. But, besides a cab's lacking that gravity of deportment which
so peculiarly distinguishes a hackney-coach, let it never be forgotten
that a cab is a thing of yesterday, and that he never was anything
better. A hackney-cab has always been a hackney-cab, from his first
entry into life; whereas a hackney-coach is a remnant of past gentility,
a victim to fashion, a hanger-on of an old English family, wearing their
arms, and, in days of yore, escorted by men wearing their li