g of stage-coaches,
And fear no reproaches
For riding in one;
But daily be jogging,
Whilst, whistling and flogging,
Whilst, whistling and flogging,
The coachman drives on. FARQUHAR.

Disguised in a grey surtout which had seen service, a white castor on
my head, and a stout Indian cane in my hand, the next week saw me on the
top of a mail-coach driving to the westward.

I like mail-coaches, and I hate them. I like them for my convenience;
but I detest them for setting the whole world a-gadding, instead of
sitting quietly still minding their own business, and preserving the
stamp of originality of character which nature or education may have
impressed on them. Off they go, jingling against each other in the
rattling vehicle till they have no more variety of stamp in them than so
many smooth shillings--the same even in their Welsh wigs and greatcoats,
each without more individuality than belongs to a partner of the
company, as the waiter calls them, of the North Coach.

Worthy Mr. Piper, best of contractors who ever furnished four frampal
jades for public use, I bless you when I set out on a journey myself;
the neat coaches under your contract render the intercourse, from
Johnnie Groat's House to Ladykirk and Cornhill Bridge, safe, pleasant,
and cheap. But, Mr. Piper, you who are a shrewd arithmetician, did it
never occur to you to calculate how many fools' heads, which might have
produced an idea or two in the year, if suffered to remain in quiet,
get effectually addled by jolting to and fro in these flying chariots
of yours; how many decent countrymen become conceited bumpkins after a
cattle-show dinner in the capital, which they could not have attended
save for your means; how many decent country parsons return critics and
spouters, by way of importing the newest taste from Edinburgh? And how
will your conscience answer one day for carrying so many bonny lasses to
barter modesty for conceit and levity at the metropolitan Vanity Fair?

Consider, too, the low rate to which you reduce human intellect. I do
not believe your habitual customers have their ideas more enlarged
than one of your coach-horses. They KNOWS the road, like the English
postilion, and they know nothing besides. They date, like the carriers
at Gadshill, from the death of Robin Ostler; [See Act II. Scene 1 of the
First Part of Shakespeare's Henry IV.] the succession of guards forms
a dynasty in their eyes; coachmen are their m