an hour, and the passengers were often obliged to walk up hills. Thus all classes were brought to promoter had a hundred cars at work, giving employment to thirteen hundred horses, and performing in all journeys amounting together, and I have felt much pleaabout one and a quarter million sure in believing that the intermiles annually. Bianconi con- course thus created tended to inspire ducted his establishment upon such the higher classes with respect strictly honourable principles as and regard for the natural good to win golden opinions from all qualities of the humbler people, who encountered him. The sob- which the latter reciprocated by riety and honesty of his drivers a becoming deference and an anwas a matter of constant remark, xiety to please and oblige. Such it being his principle to encourage a moral benefit appears to me to truthfulness by the rule of instant be worthy of special notice and dismissal of any man who was de- congratulation." The Irish car is tected in a falsehood. It may be one of the most thoroughly demonoticed, as characteristic of his cratic of all known modes of consystem, that no purely passenger veyance, having no "outsides" cars run on Sundays, the traffic on that day being limited to the cars which carried mails. "Truth, accuracy, punctuality, sobriety, and honesty, being strictly enforced, formed the fundamental principle of the entire management." In a short speech made at the Social Science meeting in Dublin in 1861, Mr. Bianconi made special reference to a result from the establishment of his cars similar to what we have observed in reference to public vehicles generally, namely the advantages of personal intercourse and knowledge of different classes it promoted. But Bianconi put it on a singular footing, namely, the fact of passengers having at times to walk up hill when the road was too steep for them to be dragged up on the cars. "The state of the roads," he said, “ was such as to limit the rate of travelling to about seven miles and "insides " to regard each other with mutual jealousy, no arbitrary divisions into first, second, or third classes, like our iron railways, or anything like the "coloured car," of the United States. EFFECT OF RAILWAYS ON THE With the advent of the railway system in Ireland, everybody but Mr. Bianconi thought his system of conveyances doomed to extinction. It had, however, been his principle to believe there was room enough for all, and he welcomed "the great civilisers of the age," not as rivals who were to destroy him, but as fellow-labourers in the work of improving and developing the country. The result is thus sketched by Mr. Smiles in the articles already quoted :— "When the railways were ac tually made and opened, they ran | travelling through the country for right through the centre of Bianconi's long-established system of communication; they broke up his lines, and sent them to the right and left. But though they greatly disturbed him, they did not destroy him. In his enterprising hands the railways merely changed the direction of his cars. He had at first to take about 1000 horses off the road, with 37 vehicles, travelling 2446 miles daily. But he remodelled his system so as to run his cars between the railway stations and the towns to the right and left of the main lines. He also directed his attention to those parts of Ireland which had not before had the benefit of his conveyance. And in thus still continuing to accommodate the public, the number of his horses and carriages again increased until in 1861 he was employing 900 horses travelling over 4000 miles daily, and in 1866, when he resigned his business, he was running only 684 miles below the maximum run of 1845, before the railways had begun to interfere with his traffic." In an interview with Mr. Bianconi in 1873, which is detailed by Mr. Smiles, the venerable gentleman said "The secret of my success has been promptitude, fair dealing, and good humour. And this I will add, what I have often said before, that I never did a kind action but it was returned to me tenfold. My cars have never received the slightest injury from the people. Though about sixty years, the people have throughout respected the property entrusted to me. They have passed through lonely and unfrequented places, and have never, even in the most disturbed times, been attacked." That Mr. Bianconi thought was a remarkable testimony to the high moral character of the Irish people; and certainly the fact that at all times and through the centre of the most disaffected districts, his cars were allowed to proceed, carrying the mails, without molestation, presents a striking contrast to the period Wakefield speaks of, and shows that the Irish, when trusted and treated with good humour and fair dealing, are, if not the "finest peasantry," certainly a people who show many excellent traits. Charles Bianconi, who was naturalised in 1831, and had the honour of being appointed a magistrate and deputy-lieutenant in his adopted country, died at his residence in Ireland on 15th September 1875, within a few days of completing his 88th year. In 1843, Signor Mayer, addressing the British Association at Cork, expressed the pride with which he heard his countryman eulogised, and said the Italians would ever hail him as one whose industry and virtue reflected honour on the country of his birth; and in the Report of the Irish Railway Commission, Thomas Drummond refers to the enterprise of Bianconi, holding that the results he achieved were the more striking, because done in a district which | have travelled upon them, would had long been represented as the focus of unreclaimed violence and barbarism, where neither life nor property could be deemed secure. "At the Dublin Exhibition of 1853, one of Mr. Bianconi's compact and inexpensive four-wheel outside cars was shown, than which, says Mr. Hooper, "few contrivances are more suitable for conveying a large number of passengers on a minimum weight of carriage." Though somewhat unsuitable as regards shelter in bad weather, they possessed many advantages over the conveyances in London and elsewhere as omnibuses. The weight was kept low, thereby affording safety in case of collision or breakage in any part, and the seats being low were easily accessible for passengers to mount and alight quickly; if the passengers got wet, they at least had what is of infinite importance to human beings-fresh air. These conveyances have been copied and used with much success on the temporary railway annually laid down at the National Rifle Association camp at Wimbledon." THE CAR-DRIVERS. The humour, the blarney, unfailing and irrepressible, of the Irish car-driver, have formed the theme of many anecdotes, but considerations of space forbid that we should be tempted into this attractive field. The adventures experienced upon these cars, and the reminiscences of those who themselves make a bulky volume ; while the misadventures and miseries under which the complaining class of travellers have suffered are equally numerous. We must be content with one anecdote, published in the Gentleman's Magazine in 1876, and in which a distinguished literary lady-to wit, Mrs. Jamesonplays a conspicuous part :— 66 - a Making my way from pleasant house in the Golden View to that of another acquaintance on the south bank of the Suir, I had to cross part of the range, flattered with the name of mountains, that divides Cork from Tipperary. Part of the ascent was tediously steep, especially as the road not long before had had a new grey coat of broken stone. The only vehicle they could afford me was a rough jaunting car, on which I was nearly jolted to death. I bore it in silence as long as I could. At length my patience gave way, and I pathetically reproached the driver with having brought me into so sad a plight. In a voice full of concern, but with a lurking gleam of merriment in his eye, he said, 'What's the matter with you, ma'am?' 'Matter!' I cried, half-sobbing with pain and vexation, for it was getting dark, and I knew I had some miles to travel, 'why, you horrible man, I shall never recover from the effects of this thing you call a car!' 'Don't be angry, ma'am ; but what is it ails the car?' With this my rage came CHAPTER VI. Whoe'er has travell'd life's dull round, SHENSTONE.-Written at an Inn at Henley. INNS AND HOTELS-THE TABARD AT SOUTHWARK-VARIOUS CHARACTERS OF OLD INNS- EFFECTS OF IMPROVED COACHING-IRISH HOTELS- GREATER COST OF MODERN HOTELS-THE GRUMBLING TRAVELLER-THE LAW AS REGARDS INNS-THE REVIVAL OF COACHING-HISTORY OF THE REVIVAL-THE FOUR-IN-HAND CLUB -THE COACHING CLUB-THE SCARBOROUGH AND BRIDLINGTON COACH-THE STRATHPEFFER COACH. INNS AND HOTELS. A BOOK on coach travelling, with out a chapter, however brief, upon inns, would be incomplete, and a few pages must be devoted to that interesting subject. Since there have been travellers there have been inns, and the translators of our Authorised Version, finding no other suitable word in the English language, used that word to signify the caravanserai in which the Saviour was laid in Bethlehem. In treating of inns, there is quite an embarras de richesses, for it is a subject of almost inexhaustible fertility, and the literature of our country, both old and new, is filled with it, from the time of the Tabard and Chaucer's Pilgrims down to the days of Bradshaw and Cook's Tourists. THE TABARD AT SOUTHWARK. The Tabard is, or was till recently, in existence, on the very spot, if not indeed preserving the identical building from which Chaucer and his nine-and-twenty companions set forth on their famous pilgrimage. This was the oldest inn in Britain, surviving in its decay many other houses which have become famous and have ceased to exist since it was built. Stow, in writing two centuries after Chaucer's time, says, that "in Southwark be many fair inns for the receipt of travellers, amongst the which the most ancient is the Tabard, so called because of the sign, which, as we now term it, is of a jacket or sleeveless coat, whole before, open |