ther train--a mixed train--of reflection, occasioned by the dejected
and disconsolate demeanour of the Post-Office Guard. We were stopping at
some station where they take in water, when he dismounted slowly from the
little box in which he sits in ghastly mockery of his old condition with
pistol and blunderbuss beside him, ready to shoot the first highwayman
(or railwayman) who shall attempt to stop the horses, which now travel
(when they travel at all) _inside_ and in a portable stable invented for
the purpose,--he dismounted, I say, slowly and sadly, from his post, and
looking mournfully about him as if in dismal recollection of the old
roadside public-house the blazing fire--the glass of foaming ale--the
buxom handmaid and admiring hangers-on of tap-room and stable, all
honoured by his notice; and, retiring a little apart, stood leaning
against a signal-post, surveying the engine with a look of combined
affliction and disgust which no words can describe. His scarlet coat and
golden lace were tarnished with ignoble smoke; flakes of soot had fallen
on his bright green shawl--his pride in days of yore--the steam condensed
in the tunnel from which we had just emerged, shone upon his hat like
rain. His eye betokened that he was thinking of the coachman; and as it
wandered to his own seat and his own fast-fading garb, it was plain to
see that he felt his office and himself had alike no business there, and
were nothing but an elaborate practical joke.

As we whirled away, I was led insensibly into an anticipation of those
days to come, when mail-coach guards shall no longer be judges of
horse-flesh--when a mail-coach guard shall never even have seen a
horse--when stations shall have superseded stables, and corn shall have
given place to coke. 'In those dawning times,' thought I,
'exhibition-rooms shall teem with portraits of Her Majesty's favourite
engine, with boilers after Nature by future Landseers. Some Amburgh, yet
unborn, shall break wild horses by his magic power; and in the dress of a
mail-coach guard exhibit his TRAINED ANIMALS in a mock mail-coach. Then,
shall wondering crowds observe how that, with the exception of his whip,
it is all his eye; and crowned heads shall see them fed on oats, and
stand alone unmoved and undismayed, while counters flee affrighted when
the coursers neigh!'

Such, my child, were the reflections from which I was only awakened then,
as I am now, by the necessity of attending to matte