resque or so pleasant, as they were in the simple days of the middle of the Nineteenth Century, when the impossible, but immortal, "Gig Lamps" early in the fifties drove, with his papa, to the Mitre in High Street, from the Manor Green in Warwickshire, upon the coach called "the Royal Defiance," which first brought him into personal intercourse with the unquenchable Little Mr. Bouncer, and with the famous Mr. Four-in-Hand Fosbrooke; or when Mr. Tom Brown was carried, by Mr. Tom Hughes, to the mythical" St. Ambrose," a year or two earlier.
Anthony Wood speaks of making at least two trips between Oxford and London on the "Flying Coaches" which have given their names to the modern crawling, creeping "Fly." And some of the early coaching-laws show that the fare each way was not to exceed ten shillings for each passenger; that the journey, and return, was to be made in two days, starting "over against All Souls College in Oxford, and at the Sign of the Swan, at Holborn Bridge, or at the Saracen's Head without Newgate," in London. There was to be no favoritism in the disposal of seats; and the postage on letters, left for the students at the door of the Buttery-hatches of their respective colleges, was not to exceed one half-penny-loaf, paid on delivery.
