ABSTRACT
Early on the day appointed, Carlton and I ascended as outside passengers the glorious “Defiance,” which in those times, when the railway system was yet in its infancy, was the pride and wonder of the road. Much as our comfort has been enhanced by the traction of what a modern poet has called “the resonant steam-eagles,” I am not sure that the new mode of locomotion is so hilarious as the old. In a railway train you profit little by the scenery—you dash so rapidly past town and grange that you hardly have a glimpse of their outline—and you are utterly precluded from the grand old amusement of studying character on the road. The stage-coach, on the contrary, carried you into the very heart of the country; gave you time to enjoy the scenery; brought under your notice many a curious specimen of life and manners; and enabled you, if the coachman or guard were disposed to be communicative, as was usually the case, to form a tolerably accurate estimate of the peculiarities and history of the neighbourhood. But it is of no use instituting comparisons between the living and the dead. Stage-coaches, except in a few very remote districts, are as defunct as the hand-loom or spinning-wheel, and will ere long become mere matters of tradition. I sometimes wonder what was the fate of all those gorgeous “Defiances,” “Eclipses,” “Lightnings,” “Rattlers,” and “Sohos?” Did the indignant proprietors when they found that they were fairly beaten off the road, and totally unable to compete with the screaming metallic competitors, bring together their defeated chariots, and sacrifice them as a magnificent holocaust? Or have they been consigned to the infamy and disgrace of a back-shed, therein to remain until they rot to pieces, being tenanted in the mean time by cocks and hens, for lack of better company?
