philosophy; when crowds of earnest people, not intent only upon amusement, went there to study their country's history, or learn the humanities' in a school where the poet could dare to proclaim universal truths in an age d individual dissimulation; and when even the idle profligate might for a moment forget his habits of self-indulgence, and be aroused into sympathy with his fellows, by the art which then triumphed, and still triumphs, over all com petition. Other places of amusement were on the Bankside the Paris Garden, the Rose, and the Hope playhouses;

and in earlier times, and even when the drama had reached its highest point of popular attraction, on the same spot were the 'Bear-houses-places of resort not only for the rude multitude, but to which Elizabeth carried the French ambassador to exhibit the courage of English bull-dogs. Imagine Southwark the peculiar ground of summer theatres and circi, with no bridge but that of London, and we may easily understand that John Taylor sang the praises of the river with his whole heart :

'But noble Thames, whilst I can hold a pen,
I will divulge thy glory unto men:

Thou, in the morning when my coin is scant,
Before the evening doth supply my want.'*

But the empire of the watermen was destined to be invaded; and its enemies approached to its conquest, after the Tartarian fashion, with mighty chariots crowded with multitudes. Taylor was not slow to complain of this change. In his Thief,' published in 1622, he tells us that,

"Fulsome madams, and new scurvy squires,
Should jolt the streets at pomp, at their desires,
Like great triumphant Tamburlaines, each day,
Drawn with the pamper'd jades of Belgia,
That almost all the streets are chok'd outright,
Where men can hardly pass, from morn till night,
Whilst watermen want work,'

In a prose tract, published in the following year, Taylor
goes forth to the attack upon coaches' with great vehe-
mence, but with a conviction that his warfare will not be
successful: I do not inveigh against any coaches that
belong to persons of worth or quality, but only against the
caterpillar swarm of hirelings. They have undone my poor
trade, whereof I am a member; and though I look for no
reformation, yet I expect the benefit of an old proverb,
"Give the losers leave to speak."'t He maintains that
this infernal swarm of trade-spillers (coaches) have so
overrun the land that we can get no living upon the water;
for I dare truly affirm that every day in any term, especially
if the court be at Whitehall, they do rob us of our livings,
and carry five hundred sixty fares daily from us.' This
is a very exact computation, formed perhaps upon personal
enumeration of the number of hired coaches passing to
*Praise of Hemp-seed.
†The World runs on Wheels.

ONCE UPON A TIME.

Westminster. He naturally enough contrasts the quiet his own highway with the turmoil of the land-thoroughfar: I pray you look into the streets, and the chambers lodgings in Fleet Street or the Strand, how they are pestere with them (coaches), especially after a mask or a plays the court, where even the very earth quakes and tremble the casements shatter, tatter, and clatter, and such a co fused noise is made, so that a man can neither sleep, spea hear, write, or eat his dinner or supper quiet for the The irruption of coaches must have been as fearful calamity to John Taylor and his fraternity in those days the establishment of railroads has been to postmasters an postboys in our own. These transitions diminish someth". of the pleasure with which we must ever contemplate state of progress; but the evil is temporary and the g is permanent, and when we look back upon the past learn to estimate the evil and the good upon broad pr Iciples. Half a century hence, a London without railroads that inns and stages might be maintained, would appear & ludicrous a notion as that of a London without carriage that John Taylor might row his wherry in prosperit gladdened every day by the smiles of ladies, w ancient lodgings were near St. Katherine's, the Banksi Lambeth Marsh, Westminster, Whitefryars, Coleharbor. any other place near the Thames, who were wont to take boat and air themselves upon the water.'

Of the elder vehicles that preceded coaches, whethe rejoicing in the name of chare, car, chariot, caroch, whirlicote, we have little here to say. Their dignity not much elevated above that of the waggon; and they were scarcely calculated to move about the streets of Londo which are described in a Paving Act of 1539 as 'very and full of pits and sloughs, very perilous and noyous, & well for the king's subjects on horseback as on foot, am with carriages.' There appears little doubt that the coach

first appeared about 1564; although the question

fou

was sub

sequently raised whether the devil brought tobacco int England in a coach, or else brought a coach in a fog or

mist

of tobacco.'* Stow thus describes the introduction of this novelty, which was to change the face of English society:

In the year 1564, Guilliam Boonen, a Dutchman, became the queen's coachman; and was the first that brought the use of coaches into England. After a while, divers great ladies, with as great jealousy of the queen's displeasure, made them coaches, and rid up and down the countries in them, to the great admiration of all the beholders; but then by little and little they grew usual among the nobility and others of sort, and within twenty years became a great trade of coach-making.'

In little more than thirty years a bill was brought into Parliament to restrain the excessive use of coaches.'

One of the most signal examples we can find of the growing importance of the middle classes is exhibited in their rapid appropriation to their own use of the new luxury which the highest in the land ventured at first to indulge in, timidly, and with 'jealousy' of the queen's displeasure. It was in vain that Parliament legislated against their 'excessive use;' it was equally in vain that the citizens and citizens' wives who aspired to ride in them were ridiculed by the wits and hooted by the mob. As in the diffusion of every other convenience or luxury introduced. by the rich, the distinction of riding in a coach soon ceased. to be a distinction. The proud Duke of Buckingham, seeing that coaches with two horses were used by all, and that the nobility had only the exclusive honour of four horses, set up a coach with six horses; and then 'the stout Earl of Northumberland' established one with eight horses. Massinger, in The City Madam,' exhibits Anne Frugal demanding of her courtly admirer

'My caroch

Drawn by six Flanders mares, my coachman, groom,
Postillion, and footman."

The high-born and the wealthy soon found that those who

* Taylor.

† See Wilson's Memoirs.

.

her:

and

had been long accustomed to trudge through the mir streets, or on rare occasions to bestride an ambling na would make a ready way with money to appropriate new luxury to themselves. Coaches soon came to be hire They were to be found in the suburban districts and inns within the town. Taylor (he writes in 1623) says, " have heard of a gentlewoman who sent her man to Smit field from Charing Cross, to hire a coach to carry Whitehall; another did the like from Ludgate-hill, to be carried to see a play at the Blackfriars.' He imputes th anxiety for the accommodation of a coach to the pride the good people, and he was probably right. He gives a ludicrous example of the extent of this passion in the cas of two leash of oyster-wives,' who hired a coach to cam them to the green-goose fair at Stratford-the-Bow; they were hurried betwixt Aldgate and Mile-end, th were so be-madam'd, be-mistress'd, and ladyfied by th beggars, that the foolish women began to swell with proud supposition or imaginary greatness, and gave their money to the mendicanting canters.'* The r visitors who came to London from the country were gre employers of coaches; and Taylor tells us that the Pr· clamation concerning the retiring of the gentry out of th city into their countries' somewhat cleared the streets these way-stopping whirligigs; for a man now might without bidding Stand up, ho! by a fellow that can scarce either go or stand himself.'† It is easy to conceive th in those days of ill-paved and narrow streets the coache must have been a great impediment to the goings-on London business. Our Water-Poet is alive to all these it conveniences: 'Butchers cannot pass with their cattle them; market folks, which bring provision of victuals t the city, are stopped, stayed, and hindered; carts or with their necessary wares, are debarred and letted; t milkmaid's ware is often spilt in the dirt;' and then describes how the proud mistresses, sitting in their he cart' (Evelyn tells us this was the Londoner's name for

* World runs on Wheels, P. 239.

† Id.

Wa

wains