Identifier: lecturesdelivere13youn (find matches)
Title: Lectures delivered before the Young Men's Christian Association
Year: 1846 (1840s)
Authors: Young Men's Christian Association (Great Britain)
Subjects: Young Men's Christian Association (Great Britain) Religion
Publisher: London : James Nisbet and Co.
Contributing Library: Princeton Theological Seminary Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Internet Archive

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Text Appearing Before Image:
turned out, and ready to be yoked,
to dash off, without five minutes delay, on the next stage.
We remember the incidents on the road, the occasional
entire somnolence of a toll-keeper who had carefully
closed his gate, and had to be roused from his bed to throw
it open, happy at times if he escaped the application of the
whip intended only for the horses. Some can remember
that beautiful part of the road from Matlock to Buxton,
where—with the hills on the left rising nearly precipitously,
covered with foliage, the steep slopes on the right leading
to the beautiful Derwent, which meandered in the valley
below—Chatsworth just passed, glanced at from a distance,
Haddon Hall full in sight—the old guard of the Peveril
would suddenly wind his horn, and the echoes of the
chamber where the Scottish Queen once slept would pro-
long the sound, until fainter and fainter the music sighed
itself away amidst some of the finest scenery in Derbyshire.
All this was very charming: so was the well-kept road-side
Text Appearing After Image:

THE STAGE COACH OF 1830

PROGRESS; LIFE OP GEORGE STEPHENSON. 421

inn, with its snow-white table-cloth, its substantial hospi-
tality, its chimney fire, its jovial host, its handsome landlady,
its hearty welcome—all this, when cold had been suffi-
ciently experienced, and you were beginning to feel the
journey sufficiently long—this was a sight to inspire the
most pleasurable emotion, and was only marred by the
guard's announcement as you crossed the threshold, " Only
twenty minutes for dinner, gentlemen !"
Some of us remember well the aristocratic drivers to
Brighton. Baronets and sons of peers who frequently
drove the " Age," or the " Times," and who gracefully
touched their hats for the accustomed gratuity. The remi-
niscences are pleasant ones—for the roads were the finest
in the world, the coaches well equipped, the cattle unsur-
passed, and the coachmen and guards became at last a race
of intelligent and agreeable men.
We can quite sympathise with those who would like just
once a-year to revive an old coach ride, as it was in the last
and best days of coaching ; stipulating, however, only for a
few hours, for a fine day — and for a picturesque road : for
there were such days as loet days in the " good old coach
ing times;" — days when if you did not receive the drip
pings in your neck from your neighbour's umbrella, it was
simply because you favoured him with a water supply from
your own — days when wet, cold, shivering, you sat on the
top of a coach pressed upright by the luggage behind, your
feet cramped lest you should hurt your neighbour — days
when nature all in tears, or mist, refused you a sight of
the landscape or denied you enjoyment of it — days when
fellow-travellers were gloomy or worse; when coachmen
ceased to be civil, and guards actually growled, and inn
keepers looked serious ; and yet on such days you had to
press on to your journey's end, paying a heavy fare, paying
frequent fees, and paying the penalty of sitting in wet

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