cleared up you'd been worried out of all your
interest in it! Yes, my lads, although I would not wish to see the
return of those stirring days, I'm free to assert that the world lost
something good, and that it was not all clear gain when the old
four-in-hand Royal Mail coaches drove out of the present into the past,
and left the Iron Horse in possession of the field.

"But nothing can arrest the hand of Time. When mail-coaches were at
their best, and a new Great North Road was being laid out by Telford,
the celebrated engineer, another celebrated engineer, named Stephenson,
was creating strange commotion among the coal-pits of the North. The
iron horse was beginning to snort. Soon he began to shriek and claw the
rails. Despite the usual opposition, he succeeded in asserting himself,
and, in the words of a disconsolate old mail-coach guard, `men began to
make a gridiron of old England.' The romance of the road had faded
away. No more for the old guard were there to be the exciting bustle of
the start, the glorious rush out of the smoky town into the bright
country; the crash through hamlet and village; the wayside changings;
the rough crossing of snow-drifted moorlands; the occasional breakdowns;
the difficulties and dangers; the hospitable inns; the fireside
gossipings. The old guard's day was over, and a new act in the drama of
human progress had begun.

"The Railway Era may be said to have commenced about the time of the
opening of the Liverpool and Manchester line in 1830, though the railway
system developed slowly during the first few years. Men did not believe
in it, and many suggestions were made to accelerate the speed of mails
in other ways. One writer proposed balloons. Another--Professor
Babbage--suggested a series of high pillars with wires stretched
thereon, along which letter-bags might be drawn. He even hinted that
such pillars and wires might come to be `made available for a species of
_telegraphic communication_ yet more rapid'--a hint which is peculiarly
interesting when we consider that it was given long prior to the time of
the electric telegraph. But the Iron Horse rode roughshod over all
other plans, and finally became the recognised and effective method of
conveyance.

"During this half-century of the mail-coach period many improvements and
alterations had been made in the working of the Post-Office.

"Among other things, the mails to India were despatched for the first
time by t