travelling by them in those days; for to show the gigantic nature
of the evil he was contending against, he averred that between
London and the three principal towns of York, Chester, and Exeter,
not fewer than eighteen persons, making the journey in five days,
travelled by them weekly the coaches running thrice in the week),
and a like number back; "which come, in the whole, to eighteen
hundred and seventy-two in the year." Another great nuisance,
the writer alleged, which flowed from the establishment of the
stage-coaches, was, that not only did the gentlemen from the
country come to London in them oftener than they need, but their
ladies either came with them or quickly followed them. "And when
they are there they must be in the mode, have all the new fashions,
buy all their clothes there, and go to plays, balls, and treats,
where they get such a habit of jollity and a love to gaiety and
pleasure, that nothing afterwards in the country will serve them ,
if ever they should fix their minds to live there again; but they
must have all from London, whatever it costs."

Then there were the grievous discomforts of stage-coach travelling,
to be set against the more noble method of travelling by horseback,
as of yore. "What advantage is it to men's health," says the
writer, waxing wroth, "to be called out of their beds into these
coaches, an hour before day in the morning; to be hurried in them
from place to place, till one hour, two, or three within night;
insomuch that, after sitting all day in the summer-time stifled
with heat and choked with dust, or in the winter-time starving and
freezing with cold or choked with filthy fogs, they are often
brought into their inns by torchlight, when it is too late to sit
up to get a supper; and next morning they are forced into the coach
so early that they can get no breakfast? What addition is this to