is another slow coach, too, connected with the
State, to which—but I have no space—I might
advert in detail. I mean that appalling combination
of four-post bedstead, railway-truck, fire-engine,
and the trophied wall of Hampton Court
Palace guard-room, on which mountain on wheels
they put, eight years ago, a catafalque covered
with an emblazoned tablecloth, and on that again
the collin, hat, and sword, of the great Duke
of Wellington—a tinselled canopy covering all;
then, harnessing a strong team of gin-spinners'
horses, swaddled in sables and led by distillers'
draymen disguised as undertakers, to this astounding
blunder, they dragged it through the streets of
London: squads of policemen following behind
with coils of rope to hoist its wheels up, should
the funeral car happen to stick in the mire.
Wretched abortion! I saw it the other day in
a mean shed of the yard of Marlborough House,
with nine country cousins staring in a bewildered
manner at the carbines and kettle-drums, and
at the hobby-horses whose dusty black plumes
are mouldering on their wooden heads.

But the strangest and the slowest state
coaches these eyes ever beheld, were—not here,
but in a stranger city, in a far-off country, more
than a thousand miles away. I remember well
the dark dull August afternoon, the impending
thunderstorm, the hot atmosphere, the
blighting chill in the shade, the wide
stucco-façaded street, the mob of bearded men in
pink caftans, striped drawers, and long boots,
the policemen kicking, sticking, and thrusting
this mob back, and then, issuing trom the gates of
the imperial stables, a long procession of state
carriages, drawn each by six gigantic Pomeranian
horses—the largest steeds I ever saw,
and, as to their heels, sprung, every one of them.
These carriages were, some, of the twelfth-cake
waggon form; others, were like roomy Sedan
chairs on wheels; all, were painted and carved,
and gilded in the approved slow-coach fashion; but
the sun happening to pierce through the clouds
for a moment, I saw the near panels of the carriage
next me glittering in a fantastic manner
Giving a policeman some money, and not being
in beard or caftan, I was permitted to approach
close to one of these sumptuous vehicles.
I found each and every panel thickly encrusted
with devices of bits of cut glass stuck in gilt setting.
These were sham diamonds—O genius of
barbaric pomp! and I laughed till I was obliged
to bribe another policeman lest he should take me,
by my merriment, to be a malcontent, and lay me
by the heels. These were the state carriages of
his Imperial Majesty Alexander Nicolaievitch,
Tsar of all the Russias; and they were making a
trial procession, prior to being despatched per
rail to Moscow the Holy, in time for the coronation
solemnities. The majority of these sham
diamond-ornamented slow coaches had been built
in the time of the Tsarinas Anne and Elizabeth,
and one dated so far back as the time of the
great Tsar Peter, who had caused it to be
constructed for him in Vienna.

When I recal these quaint relics of a slow-coach
age, I seem to stand in a Pantechnicon of
remembrance, and not alone the bygone sheriffs'
carriages, but a whole cavalcade of the slow
coaches of the past, move sluggishly before
me. Here comes the veritable coach-and-six—
such a coach as is sculptured on the monument
of the murdered Thynne in Westminster Abbey,
such a coach as one of the six in which six
squires of high degree set out to bail the Man
of Ross when he lay under unjust accusation,
Large contrivance of wood and leather, rumbling
on broad-tired wheels, are thus drawn by long-tailed
Flanders mares with hanging footmen,
and running footmen, and containing the
lord-lieutenant of the county, my lady and her
daughters, and the chaplain in the boot. Here
comes the Cardinalitian slow coach, scarlet and
gold, very gorgeous and fit equipage for a prince
of the Church, but smelling of the rare singeing
it underwent at the hands, or rather the torches,
of the Mazzinians in 1849. Following it, comes
the large sedan, gilt and embossed, carried by
grinning lacqueys. Lady Bab shows her patched
and painted face, and flirts her fan from the
window, and anon the gilt and glazed sedan
changes into the dingy and rickety affair still
patronised by gouty valetudinarians at remote
watering-places. Here, is the mule litter of the
middle ages, with curtains blazoned with
armorial devices — curtains very closely drawn;
there may be a sick king or a languishing
princess within. There, drags on slowly in its
rear, the clumsy Turkish araba, drawn by white
oxen with gilded yokes, and crimson tassels
beneath their dewlaps. The araba has curtains,
too, but they are not so closely drawn but that
you may see the stout Turkish ladies within,
their black eyes beaming over the yashmaks'
barrier, their rosy-tipped fingers plucking flowers
to pieces. They giggle and titter, and tease the
hideous black servitors, who march, now sulky
and now grinning, by the araba's side; they are
on their way to the Valley of Sweet Waters to
enjoy coffee, and sherbet, and sweetmeats, and
the fragrance of narghile-inhaled tobacco. Next
do I catch a glimpse of a slow coach that died in
its Brobdingnagian youth, an ephemeral monstrosity,
the advertising van, frightening the second-floor
windows from their propriety with amazing
placards relating to eye-snuff, and oat-bruising,
and medicated cream. All these fade into a
watery mirage, and in my swimming sight is a
pale vision of the old French inland hoy, the
"coche" so called, which brought servants, and
milliners, and apprentices, from the provinces
to Paris during the old regime; a dream of
old diligences, and vetturini, and estafettes ,
and Eil-wagens; and of the corpulent, lazy ,
comfortable Flemish treykschuyt, full of beer
and tobacco-smoke, and fat men, fat women,
and fat children, and often of fat pork and
mutton, that was wont to float in peaceful
slow-coachdom on the waters of the Low Countries'
shallow canals. And these, again, give way
to the last slow coach of all, the HEARSE; but as
I gaze upon it with gloomy forebodings, I see
the undertaker's men who crowd its roof, swinging
their legs airily, and joking among