"With spirits gay we mount the box, the tits up to the traces,
Our elbows squared, our wrists turned down, dash off at awful paces;
With Buxton bit, bridoon so trim, three chestnuts and a grey—
Well coupled up the wheelers then—Ya, hip! we bowl away."
Many most distinguished men have in our day not thought it derogatory to their dignity to work a public stage-coach, and among them may be mentioned the Marquis of Worcester, father to the present Duke of Beaufort, on the "Evening's Amusement;" and most delightful "amusement" it was to pass an "evening" by the side of the noble Plantagenet. Then there were the Earl of Harborough, on the "Monarch," Sir St. Vincent Cotton, Bart., the ex-10th Hussar, and Charles Jones, Esq., on "The Age;" the Honourable Francis Stafford Jerningham, on the "Day Mail," Sackville Gwynne, on the "Beaufort;" John Willan, Esq., on the "Early Times;" and young Musgrave, on the "Union," all of whom "fretted their hour upon the stage." One very great improvement has taken place in the dress of amateur coachmen, whose costume is as different in our day from that of the time when George the Third was king, as the brilliant gas in our streets is from the oily rays that rendered darkness visible in the metropolis.
So outrée was the costume of amateur coachmen early in the present century that it gave rise to innumerable squibs and caricatures. One squib, embodied in a popular song, ran as follows:—
"On Epsom Downs
Says Billy, 'Zounds!
That cannot be Lord Jackey.
Egad, but now