spirits of Nottinghamshire, Leicestershire, and Yorkshire;
and their enterprising genius was well seconded by the fine breed of
horses for which those counties were famous. For cross-country work the
Leicestershire blades had no fellows; and had the Darlington Hunt existed
in those days, they would doubtless have been first a-field in the
morning and last on the road at night. Nor were there any reasons in
their dress, demeanour, or habits, why they should not consort with the
best of the shire either when riding to cover, or celebrating the
triumphs of the day afterward in the squire's hall, or the ale-house.
Some of these redressers of the inequalities of fortune were of excellent
houses,--younger sons, who having no profession--trade would have been
disgraceful in their eyes--grew weary of an unvarying round of shooting,
fishing, otter-hunting, and badger-baiting, and aspired, like their
common ancestor Nimrod, to be hunters of men. Others had found the
discipline of a regiment unpleasant, or had been unjust serving men. In
short, the road, about a century and a half ago, was the general refuge
of all who, like the recruits that flocked to King David at Adullam, were
in distress or discontented. Mail-coach drivers and guards travelled
armed to the teeth, booted to the hips, with bandeliers across their
capacious chests, and three-cornered hats which, in conjunction with
their flowing horse-hair wigs, were both sword- and bullet-proof.
Passengers who had any value for their lives and limbs, when they booked
themselves at London for Exeter or York, provided themselves with
cutlasses and blunderbusses, and kept as sharp look-out from the
coach-windows as travellers in our day are wont to do in the Mexican
diligences. We remember to have seen a print of the year 1769 in which
the driver of the Boston mail is represented in the armed guise of Sir
Hudibras. He carries a horse-pistol in his belt, and a _couteau de
chasse_ slung over his shoulder, while the guard is accoutred with no
less than three pistols and a basket-hilt sword, besides having a carbine
strapped to his seat behind the coach. Between the coachman's feet is a
small keg, which might indifferently contain "genuine Nantz" or
gunpowder. One of the "insides," an ancient gentleman in a Ramilies wig,
is seen through the capacious window of the coach affectionately hugging
a carbine, and a yeoman on the roof is at once caressing a bull-dog, and
supporting a