clothes for hours, in an attack of severe cold or acute rheumatism. After all, "say not that the former times were better than these."

Before we quite leave the "old coaching times," one reminiscence more; the procession of mail coaches on the birth-day of the Sovereign. Then the horses had new harness, the men new scarlet liveries, and at 12 o'clock they proceeded from Lombard-street to Millbank, where coachmen, guards, general postmen, and postboys dined in honour of the day. Thence, at about 5 in the afternoon, the procession was arranged to return to the City; the general-postmen went first on horseback, the mails followed them filled with the wives and children, relations and friends of the coachmen and guards, while the post-boys, sounding their bugles or cracking their whips, brought up the rear. The bells of the various churches rang out a merry peal as the procession passed through Parliament-street, the Strand, Fleet-street, Ludgate-hill, and Cheapside, to what was at that time the General Post Office, in Lombard-street.

What splendid horses were turned out that day! how perfectly groomed! how well the coachmen looked, each with his nosegay of flowers in his bright scarlet coat-how punctually at 8 p.m. were the bags put in the boot, and the guard's lips applied to his horn, while at the well-known signal, Jehu raised his whip, jerked his reins, and the horses bounded off to convey intelligence through the kingdom!

No wonder the starting of the mails attracted every night crowds of gazers-it was one of the sights of London!

This is now a thing of the past; within thirty years the whole course of public traffic and postal communication has been changed.

Before referring more especially to the life of the great

practical agent in this change, let us glance at the history of the system which has banished the old stage travelling waggon, has superseded the old stage-coach and the royal mail, and while it has left the canal in full activity, and not very much injured in profits, has provided for the business of the country, for which waggons, coaches, and canals, had proved wholly inadequate.

RAILWAYS AND THEIR PROGRESS.

Doubtless we owe all our railways to the coal trade, and the inventions rendered necessary to facilitate the transport of coal from the mine to the place of shipment. Upwards of 200 years ago wooden tramways existed in the north.

First a line of wooden rails was laid down, then these were improved, and a thin plate of iron nailed on the wood; time wore on, and cast-iron rails were used; then, at length (and it is within forty years), malleable iron rails were found superior to any other, and these have been everywhere used on our railroads. Various improvements have been made in their form and manufacture, and we seem at last to have arrived at a point in which but little remains to be desired in the construction of our iron roads.

Who invented the rail we know not; but after cast-iron rails were adopted, Mr. Benjamin Outram used (in 1800) stone props instead of timber for supporting the ends and joinings of the rails. The plan was pretty generally adopted; the roads became known as "Outram roads;" but men who work hard do not like long names, and the colliers dropping the first syllable called them" tram-roads;" from these our railroads sprang.

To whom we owe the first locomotive engine seems matter of dispute; it is most probable that the man who first projected the idea of moving ships and carriages by steam was Solomon de Caus, a Norman. He represented his

project to the French king, and not succeeding with Royalty, he tried the Church, and followed a cardinal so perseveringly, that he was sent to a madhouse. "Marion de Lorme went in company with the English Marquis of Worcester, in 1641, to visit this madhouse. A frightful face appeared behind the bars, and a hoarse voice exclaimed, 'I am not mad! I am not mad! I have made a discovery that would enrich any country that adopted it.'

"What has he discovered?' was asked.

"Oh!' answered the keeper, shrugging his shoulders, 'something trifling enough-you would never guess it; it is the use of the steam of boiling water; to listen to him you would imagine that, with steam, you could navigate ships, move carriages-in fact, there is no end to the miracles which he insists upon it could be performed. He has even written a book about it.'"

Poor Solomon de Caus! he appealed to the cardinal-the priest treated him as a madman. No wonder! for when did ecclesiastical Rome ever favour one useful discovery in art or science ?

A little more than one hundred years after, the thought of moving carriages by steam on common roads occupied many minds in England; but the first model of a steam carriage, of which we have any written account, was constructed by Cugnot, a Frenchman, who exhibited it before Marshal de Saxe, in 1763.

Some of our transatlantic cousins claim the invention for Oliver Evans, born in the State of Delaware, in 1755; but when he was four years old, Dr. Robinson and James Watt were projecting a steam carriage, and when he was eight years old, Cugnot had exhibited one. At the Great Exhibition of 1851, there was a model made by Mr. Murdoch, of James Watt's Locomotive Engine of 1785. A similar engine was tried on the common roads in Cornwall, in 1785