The Waverley novels, by Sir Walter Scott, complete in 12 vol., printed from the latest English ed., embracing the author's last corrections, prefaces & notes.

348 WAVERLEY NOVELS.
Groat's House to Ladykirk and Cornhill Bridge, safe, pleasant, and cheap.
But, Mr. Piper, you, who are a shrewd arithmetician, did it ever occur to
you to calculate how many fools' heads, which might have produced an idea
or two in the year, if suffered to remain in quiet, get effectually addled by
jolting to and fro in these flying chariots of yours; how many decent countrymen become conceited bumpkins after a cattle-show dinner in the capital,
which they could not have attended save for your means; how many decent
country parsons return critics and spouters, by way of importing the newest
taste from Edinburgh? And how will your conscience answer one day for
carrying so many bonny lasses to barter modesty for conceit and levity at.
the metropolitan Vanity Fair?
Consider, too, the low rate. to which you reduce human intellect. I do
not believe your habitual customers have their ideas more enlarged than
one of your coach-horses. They knows the road, like the English postilion,
and they know nothing beside. They date, like the carriers at Gadshill,
from the death of John Ostler,* the succession of guards forms a dynasty
in their eyes; coachmen are their ministers of state, and an upset is to
them a greater incident than a change of administration. Their only point
of interest on the road is to'save the time, and see whether the coach keeps
the hour. This is surely a miserable degradation of human intellect. Take
my advice, my good sir, and disinterestedly contrive that once or twice aquarter, your most dexterous whip shall overturn a coachful of the superfluous travellers, in terrorem to those who, as Horace says, "delight in the
dust raised by your chariots."
Your current and customary mail-coach passenger, too, gets abominably
selfish, schemes successfully for the best seat, the freshest egg, the right cut
of the sirloin. The mode of travelling is death to all the courtesies and
kindnesses of life, and goes a great way to demoralize the character, and
cause it to retrograde to barbarism. You allow us excellent dinners, but
only twenty minutes to eat them; and what is the consequence? Bashful
beauty sits on the one side of us, timid childhood on the other; respectable,
yet somewhat feeble old age is placed on our front; and all require those
acts of politeness which ought to put every degree upon a level at the convivial board. But have we time-we the strong and active of the partyto perform the duties of the table to the more retired and bashful, to whom
these little attentions are due? The lady should be pressed to her chicken
-the old man helped to his favourite and tender slice-the child to his tart.
But not a fraction of a minute have we to bestow on any other person than
ourselves; and the prut-prut-tut-tut of the guard's discordant note, summons us to the coach, the weaker party having gone without their dinner,
and the able-bodied and active threatened with indigestion, from having
swallowed victuals like a Lei'stershire clown bolting bacon.
On the memorable occasion I am speaking of I lost my breakfast, sheerly
from obeying the commands of a respectable-looking old lady, who once
required me to ring the bell, and another time to help the tea-kettle. I
have some reason to think, she was literally an old Stager, who laughed in
her sleeve at my complaisance; so that I have sworn in my secret soul
revenge upon her sex, and all such errant damsels of whatever age and
degree, whom I may encounter in my travels. I mean all this without the
least ill-will to my friend the contractor, who, I think, has approached as
near as any one is like to do towards accomplishing the modest wish of the
Amatus and Amata of the Peri Bathous,
Ye gods, annihilate hut time and space,
And make two lovers happy.
I intend to give Mr. P. his full revenge when I come to discuss the more
* See the opening scene of the first part of Shakspeare's Henry IV.