-posts, because they are to be had at all times.
But these carriages are very neat and lightly built, so that you
hardly perceive their motion, as they roll along these firm smooth
roads; they have windows in front and on both sides; the horses are
generally good, and the postilions particularly smart and active, and
always ride at a full trot. The one we had wore his hair cut short,
a round hat, and a brown jacket, of tolerably fine cloth, with a
nosegay in his bosom. Now and then, when he drove very hard, he
looked round, and with a smile seemed to solicit our approbation. A
thousand charming spots and beautiful landscapes, on which my eye
would long have dwelt with rapture, were now rapidly passed with the
speed of an arrow."

It was one of Samuel Johnson's wishes that he might be driven rapidly in
a post-chaise, with a pretty woman, capable of understanding his
conversation, for his travelling companion. The smartness of the English
postboy was emulated in France,--not, as might have been expected, by his
professional brethren, who until very recently retained their ponderous
jackboots, three-cornered hats, and heavy knotted whips, but by the
younger members of _la haute noblesse_. To look like an English jockey
or postilion, was long the object of fashionable ambition with Parisian
dandies. "Vous me crottez, Monsieur," said poor patient Louis XVI. to
one of these exquisite centaurs, as he rode beside the royal carriage
near Versailles. "Oui, Sire, a l'Anglaise," rejoined the self-satisfied
dandy, understanding his majesty to have complimented his _trotting_
(_trottez_), and taking it as a tribute to the skill of his imitation.

Pedlars and packhorses were a necessary accompaniment of bad and narrow
roads. The latter have long disappeared from our highways; the former
linger in less-frequented districts of the country, but miserably shorn
of their former importance. A licensed hawker is now a very unromantic
personage. His comings and goings attract no more attention among the
rustics or at the squire's hall than the passing by of a plough or a
sheep. The fixed shop has deprived him of his utility, and daily
newspapers of his attractions. He is content to sell his waistcoat or
handkerchief pieces; but he is no longer the oracle of the village inn or
the housekeeper's room. In the days however when neither draper's nor
haberdasher's wares could be purchased wit