progress in this art, that "within a hundred years more has been accomplished in facilitating and expediting inter-communication than was effected from the creation of the world to the middle of last century." It is the design of this work to illustrate the history of the hundred years here referred to. The divisions of the volume into the Sedan, the Coach, the Canal, the Steamboat, and the Railway, might not inaccurately have been measured off into periods of quarter of a century. It might have been found roughly accurate to place the culminating point of the Sedan Chair in 1775, the development of the Stage Coach in 1800, of the Canal in 1825, of the Steamboat in 1850, and of the Railway in 1875. In that century of travel-or rather of modes of travel-few can have any conception how much is comprised, unless they have dived into the literature of the subject. The succeeding pages will be found but to skim the surface, giving an insight into the past and present condition of the art of locomotion, which, while it may suffice for the student who merely seeks to gain a general knowledge of the subject, may at the same time serve as a whet to the appetite of any one who desires to learn more than is here recorded. The generation is rapidly passing away to whom all the methods of travelling described in this volume have been familiar; but if any reader of this book should be one who has journeyed by the less rapid and less convenient methods here noticed, he will doubtless be inclined to echo the saying of the Rev. Sydney Smith, in his old age, that he was ashamed that he had not been more discontented, and utterly surprised that all these changes and inventions did not occur two centuries ago. Although a century is named, the story might be compressed into a period considerably less than the century. The writer of these words, who is still some years "on the right side of fifty," has seen sedan chairs placed for hire on the streets of Edinburgh; he has seen friends arrive or depart by the "swift boat" on the Union Canal; he has travelled by the slow paddle-steamer as well as by the swifter vessels of a later day; and while he has enjoyed in youth a day's excursion on the "Innocent Railway," between Edinburgh and Dalkeith, and travelled on the Dundee and Arbroath line while it was yet on the broad gauge, and was the only important locomotive line in Scotland, he has also done the marvellous nine hours' journey from London to Edinburgh in the "Flying Scotchman." These experiences have convinced

him that Sydney Smith took a right view of the subject when explaining his experiences in travelling :—

The good of ancient times let others state,

I think it lucky I was born so late!

The question may be asked, Is there any finality in the progress of the art of locomotion ? Its history in the past fifty years has been a succession of surprises, and it would be too much to venture on the assertion that no more surprises are in store for us or our successors. The vast and attractive subject of balloon-voyaging has not been treated in this volume, neither has the writer ventured to peer into the regions of the unknown in the hope of descrying what form of travellingelectric, aerial, or whatever it may be-is to replace the railway system, when it, too, becomes old and like to vanish away. But it is not to be concluded, because we consider sixty miles an hour a marvellous speed, that no higher velocity in travelling is possible. Progress will probably be made in the future as progress has been made in the past; and just as twelve miles an hour seemed a breakneck speed to a generation accustomed to jog on at a speed of three or four, so the time may come when the people who deem sixty miles an hour the acme of timeannihilation, will laugh at or virulently oppose some proposed method of travelling to which the speed of an express railway train will seem but the progress of a snail. In the arguments which have been frequently held on the question whether the railways of this country should not be put under State control, the probability of railways being superseded has been gravely advanced as a reason for opposing the proposition. We may agree with the Times in believing that the advent of that time is remote, and that the railway will last so long, as our principal means of internal communication, as to remove the anticipation of a change from the region of argument. Yet he would be a bold man who would assert that this must be so. The world may be

nearer than it imagines to the realisation of Hugh Miller's "Vision of the Railroad." That vision, it is true, pictured the decay of the railway as arising from the neglect of the obligation of the Sabbath rest, and not, as did some of the opponents of railways forty years ago, because it was too rapid and costly, or, as the prophets of improvement in travelling now hint, because it will become too slow and too costly. The picture

Hugh Miller has drawn, from his point of view, and which opponents of the London and Birmingham Railway also drew because they imagined the scheme would be a failure (see page 492), may yet be realised, when a more wonderful method of travelling has been discovered.

"Under the gloomy sky of a stormy evening," writes Hugh Miller, "I could mark on the one hand the dark blue of the Pentlands, and on the other the lower slopes of Corstorphine. Arthur's Seat rose dim in the distance behind; and in front, the pastoral valley of Wester Lothian stretched away mile beyond. mile, with its long rectilinear mound running through the midst, —from where I stood beside one of the massier viaducts that rose an hundred feet overhead, till where the huge bulk seemed diminished to a slender thread on the far edge of the horizon.

"It seemed as if years had passed-many years. .. All around was solitary, as in the wastes of Skye. The long rectilinear mound seemed shaggy with gorse and thorn, that rose against the sides, and intertwisted their prickly branches atop. The sloe-thorn, and the furze, and the bramble choked up the rails. The fox rustled in the brake; and where his track had opened up a way through the fern, I could see the red and corroded bars stretching idly across. There was a viaduct beside me the flawed and shattered masonry had exchanged its raw hues for a crust of lichens; one of the taller piers, undermined by the stream, had drawn two of the arches along with it, and lay adown the water-course a shapeless mass of ruin, o'ermastered by flags and rushes. A huge ivy, that had taken root under a neighbouring pier, threw up its long pendulous shoots over the summit. I ascended to the top. Half-buried in furze and sloe-thorn, there rested on the rails what had once been a train of carriages; the engine ahead lay scattered in fragments, the effect of some disastrous explosion, and damp, and mould, and rottenness had done their work on the vehicles behind. Some had already fallen to pieces, so that their places could be no longer traced in the thicket that had grown up around them; others stood comparatively entire, but their bleached and shrivelled panels rattled to the wind, and the mushroom and the fungus sprouted from between their joints."

B

THE SEDAN CHAIR.

CHAPTER I.

I love sedans, cause they do plod
And amble everywhere,

Which prancers are with leather shod,
And ne'ere disturb the eare.
Heigh doune, derry derry doune,
With the hackney coaches doune,
Their jumping make

The pavement shake,

Their noise doth mad the toune.

INTRODUCTION AND EARLY USE-HORSE LITTERS-CHAISES À PORTEURS-MEN AS BEASTS OF BURDEN-THE CHAIR OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.

INTRODUCTION AND EARLY USE.