while to think about it; for, no doubt, it will be something quite
inconceivable.

The third, or fast-coach period was brief, though brilliant. I doubt
whether fifty years have elapsed since the newest news in the world of
locomotive fashion was, that--to the utter confusion and defacement of
the "Sick, Lame, and Lazy," a sober vehicle so called from the nature
of its cargo, which was nightly disbanded into comfortable beds at
Newbury--a new post-coach had been set up which performed the journey
to Bath in a single day. Perhaps the day extended from about five
o'clock in the morning to midnight, but still the coach was, as it
called itself, a "_Day_-coach," for it travelled all day; and if it
did somewhat "add the night unto the day, and so make up the measure,"
the passengers had all the more for their money, and were incomparably
better off as to time than they had ever been before. But after this
many years elapsed before "old Quicksilver" made good its ten miles
an hour in one unbroken trot to Exeter, and was rivalled by "young
Quicksilver" on the road to Bristol, and beaten by the light-winged
Hirondelle, that flew from Liverpool to Cheltenham, and troops of
others, each faster than the foregoing, each trumpeting its own fame
on its own improved bugle, and beating time (all to nothing) with
sixteen hoofs of invisible swiftness. How they would have stared if
a parliamentary train had passed them, especially if they could have
heard its inmates grumbling over their slow progress, and declaring
that it would be almost quicker to get out and walk whenever their
jealousy was roused by the sudden flash of an express.

Certainly I was among those who rejoiced in the increased expedition
of the fast-coach period; not because I loved, but because I hated,
travelling, and was glad to have periods of misery abridged. I used to