the modern is smashed to pieces with the velocity of the same vessel
hurled against breakers, or rather with the fury of a bomb bursting at
the conclusion of its career through the air. The late ingenious Mr.
Pennant, whose humour it was to set his face in stern opposition to these
speedy conveyances, had collected, I have heard, a formidable list of
such casualties, which, joined to the imposition of innkeepers, whose
charges the passengers had no time to dispute, the sauciness of the
coachman, and the uncontrolled and despotic authority of the tyrant
called the guard, held forth a picture of horror, to which murder, theft,
fraud, and peculation, lent all their dark colouring. But that which
gratifies the impatience of the human disposition will be practised in
the teeth of danger, and in defiance of admonition; and, in despite of
the Cambrian antiquary, mail-coaches not only roll their thunders round
the base of Penman-Maur and Cader-Idris, but

Frighted Skiddaw hears afar
The rattling of the unscythed car.

And perhaps the echoes of Ben Nevis may soon be awakened by the bugle,
not of a warlike chieftain, but of the guard of a mail-coach.

It was a fine summer day, and our little school had obtained a
half-holiday, by the intercession of a good-humoured visitor.*

* His honour Gilbert Goslinn of Gandercleugh; for I love to be precise in
matters of importance.--J. C.

I expected by the coach a new number of an interesting periodical
publication, and walked forward on the highway to meet it, with the
impatience which Cowper has described as actuating the resident in the