people calling out 'Frenchman! why don't you get a coach?'" The fact was,
that the hackney-coachmen and the chairmen, joining with the true _esprit
de corps_, were clamorous against this portentous rival. This footman, in
1778, gives us further Information:--"At this time there were no umbrellas
worn in London, except in noblemen's and gentlemen's houses, where there
was a large one hung in the hall to hold over a lady or a gentleman, if it
rained, between the door and their carriage." His sister was compelled to
quit his arm one day, from the abuse he drew down on himself by his
umbrella. But he adds that "he persisted for three months, till they took
no further notice of this novelty. Foreigners began to use theirs, and
then the English. Now it is become a great trade in London."[A] The state
of our population might now, in some degree, be ascertained by the number
of umbrellas.

[Footnote A: Umbrellas are, However, an invention of great antiquity, and
may be seen in the sculptures of ancient Egypt and Assyria. They are also
depicted on early Greek vases. But the most curious fact connected with
their use in this country seems to be the knowledge our Saxon ancestors
had of them; though the use, in accordance with the earliest custom,
appears to have been as a shelter or mark of distinction for royalty. In
Caedmon's "Metrical Paraphrase of Parts of Scripture," now in the British
Museum (Harleian MS. No. 603), an Anglo-Saxon manuscript of the tenth
century, is the drawing of a king, who has an umbrella held over his head
by an attendant, in the same way as it is borne over modern eastern kings.
The form is precisely similar to those now in use, though, as noted above,
they were an entire novelty when re-introduced in the last century.--Ed.]

Coaches, on their first invention, offered a fruitful source of
declamation, as an inordinate luxury, particularly among the ascetics of
monkish Spain. The Spanish biographer of Don John of Austria, describing
that golden age, the good old times, when they only used "carts drawn by
oxen, riding in this manner to court," notices that it was found
necessary to prohibit coaches by a royal proclamation, "to such a height
was this _infernal vice_ got, which has done so much injury to Castile."
In this style nearly every domestic novelty has been attacked. The
injury inflicted on Castile by the introduction of coaches could only
have been felt by the purveyors of carts and oxen for a morn