Methods of travelling, moreover, were altering. The stage-coaches, useful though they were, disappeared before Palmer’s mail-coaches, which held their supremacy until the era of steam revolutionised locomotion. Post-chaises were still in favour, and less dangerous than of old. Incidentally, the highwaymen were taking to less romantic pursuits. And what is true of England was also in a great measure true of Europe as a whole. North America, too, at this period was providing herself with coachbuilders, who produced distinctive vehicles peculiarly adapted to the conditions of that country.
We may consider in the first place such types of carriages as already existed. There is a whole catalogue of them, and only one of the older carriages is conspicuously absent. This was the calash—“now almost obsolete for any purpose,” comments Leigh Hunt, and indeed there is hardly a reference to it. But the others still survived, and one characteristic is immediately noticeable; the wheels of almost every sort of carriage at this time were enormously large. Consequently the carriages were generally very long. Crane-neck perches were still used, and what was called an upright spring. A coach of this period, belonging to the museum at South Kensington, is now exhibited in Edinburgh. It was built for the Lord Chancellor of Ireland. It has “a large body,” says Thrupp, describing it, “with deep panels, flat-sided, longer on the roof than at the elbow, with windows in the upper quarters; the carriage with two crane perches (easily seen in the accompanying photograph), Berlin fashion, whip springs, and very high wheels. There is no footboard, whilst a hammercloth for the footman is raised upon scroll ironwork, very well made.” Napoleon’s state coach, built at the time of his second marriage, and preserved at Vienna along with a chariot and barouche, is of a somewhat similar pattern. His travelling coach, with all its household contrivances, is now at Madame Tussaud’s exhibition, and must be familiar to all Londoners. Two Spanish coaches of the period are also to be seen at Madrid.
[Illustration: _George III’s Posting Chariot_
The Lord Chancellor’s coach was of course an exceptional carriage, and Mr. Felton is careful to give details of such lesser coaches as were being made. These he catalogues as a plain coach, a neat ornamental town coach, a landau, a travelling coach, an elegant crane-neck coach, and a vis-à-vis, which last, he says, “is seldom used by any other than persons of high character and fashion.” And, indeed, this particular carriage is to be seen in numerous plates and caricatures of the time.