ip, with the
leer of a true amateur.

These coachmen are a class by themselves. They have no concern with
grooming the horses, and keep the reins for a certain number of relays.
They dress in a particular way, without being at all in livery or
uniform, like the continental postilions, talk in a particular way, and
act in a particular way. We changed this personage for another, about
half the distance between Southampton and London. His successor proved
to be even a still better specimen of his class. He was a thorough
cockney, and altogether the superior of his country colleague, he was
clearly the oracle of the boys, delivering his sentiments in the manner
of one accustomed to dictate to all in and about the stables. In
addition to this, there was an indescribable, but ludicrous salvo to his
dignity, in the way of surliness. Some one had engaged him to carry a
blackbird to town, and caused him to wait. On this subject he sang a
Jeremiad in the true cockney key. "He didn't want to _take_ the
_bla-a-a-ck-bud_; but if the man wanted to _send_ the _bla-a-a-ck-bud_,
why didn't he _bring_ the _bla-a-a-ck-bud_?" This is one of the hundred
dialects of the lower classes of the English. One of the horses of the
last team was restiff, and it became necessary to restrain him by an
additional curb before we ventured into the streets of London. I
intimated that I had known such horses completely subdued in America by
filling their ears with cotton. This suggestion evidently gave offence,
and he took occasion soon after to show it. He wrung the nose of the
horse with a cord, attaching its end below, in the manner of a severe
martingale. While going through this harsh process, which, by the way,
effectually subdued the animal, he had leisure to tell him that "he was
an _English_ horse, and not an _out-landish_ horse, and _he_ knew best
what was good for him," with a great deal more similar sound
nationality.

Winchester was the only town of any importance on the road. It is
pleasantly seated in a valley, is of no great size, is but meanly built,
though extremely neat, has a cathedral and a bishop, and is the shire-town
of Hampshire. The assizes were sitting, and Southampton was full of troops
that had been sent from Winchester, in order to comply with a custom which
forbids the military to remain near the courts of justice. England is full
of these political mystifications, and it is one of the reasons that she
is so much in arrears