passage from Hand Cross, and not above four or five houses to stop at, we soon arrived at Crawley, a miserable place, the sight of which always gave me, and many other persons whom I could mention, were it necessary, the stomach-ache. At Crawley we delayed not more than was sufficient just to kick the dust from our feet, which Horace, or some other poet, mentions as a demonstration of contempt. We then bundled on to Reigate, and arrived at the White Hart,' the horses absolutely trotting up to the door as if they took a real pleasure in presenting their passengers in grand style.

"At the door of this comfortable inn there was always standing (I mean in the days of coaching) a waiter, who, after handing out the passengers, informed them that dinner was ready and would be on the table in five minutes. Every man felt hungry; for, out of the thirty-two miles which lie between Brighton and Reigate, they had walked twenty. When they entered the room where dinner was to be served, they found some other passengers, who had come by a downward coach, waiting to dine. Here, then, we were, about fifteen ladies and gentlemen of the coach-going community-and who were not coach-goers in those simple and happy days ?-about to sit down to a plain dinner, with two bottles of wine, at two o'clock in the day, at one of the best inns of the sort in the kingdom. The waiter put everything expeditiously on the table, wine and all-even et cætera and et consequentia (I don't know the Latin words for pies and tarts-I think the Romans,

"THE COACH DINES"

93

poor fellows! never knew what they were—or else I would quote the words), and said, very obligingly, Ladies and gentlemen, you have just two minutes for dinner! The coachman is putting-to his horses, and he will be round at the door immediately.' 'My friends,' said an Irishman, don't be after troubling yourselves about the botheration of the serving-man. It's all a got-up business between the innkeeper and the coachman; they wish to keep the good things for themselves. But they shan't have their own way; I'd sooner put the leg of mutton and the custards in my pocket. But let's call in the landlord and the coachman, and give them such a drubbing that they'll not quit their beds for a fortnight.' This might have been done, for bad advice is amazingly attractive-it is as catching as bird-lime-had not a Mr. Prudent, who often travelled the roads in those days, proposed to call in the coachman, that he might be argued with in two ways: firstly, to his stomach, by a tumbler of sherry; and, secondly, to his brains, by plain and solid argument. The coachman was summoned, and Mr. Prudent proved to his stomach, by a tumbler of sherry, and to his head, by a few words of good sense, that they who sit down to a dinner, and mean to pay for it, should be allowed time to eat it.' The coachman was convinced; he gave us time to eat our dinner; we paid for it, wine and all, conjointly—the ladies being considered as visitors; and then went on as fast as two horses (one of which was lame and the other

broken-winded) could carry us. The coachman, after we had quitted Reigate, entered into an able soliloquy, addressed to me, to prove that eating dinners at two o'clock and drinking heavy port wine was imprudent. I was sitting on the box, and perfectly agreed with him. He did not say anything about drinking sherry, so I did not allude to it; but when he told me that he was quite sure he should lose his place for staying so long at Reigate, we on the outside all gave him a shilling apiece; so that, by delaying ten minutes, he gained about seven shillings and a tumbler of sherry. The coachmen of those days were such honest men-not at all cunning! But those were the days of the olden time, before the slippery railroads came into fashion!"

VIII

THIS account of a coach journey and a coach dinner presents us with a charming picture of amiability, in which we see "insides" and "outsides " on an unquestioned footing of equality, but De Quincey has drawn another picture in which the spirit of social exclusiveness is quite rampant. He describes the journey of a mail coach and says, "There was a rigid rule which limited the number of passengers on a mail coach to four inside and three out, exclusive, of course, of driver and guard. The three outsides were seated, by an irrefragable regulation of the Post