being on the point of going off, I mounted on the outside.
The fine fluent motion of the mail soon laid me asleep. It is somewhat
remarkable that the first easy or refreshing sleep which I had enjoyed
for some months was on the outside of a mail-coach....

"For the first four or five miles from London I annoyed my
fellow-passenger on the roof by occasionally falling against him when
the coach gave a lurch to his side; and, indeed, if the road had been
less smooth and level than it is I should have fallen off from weakness.
Of this annoyance he complained heavily, as, perhaps, in the same
circumstances, most people would.... When I next woke for a minute from
the noise and lights of Hounslow (for in spite of my wishes and efforts
I had fallen asleep again within two minutes from the time I had spoken
to him), I found that he had put his arm round me to protect me from
falling off; and for the rest of my journey he behaved to me with the
gentleness of a woman, so that, at length, I almost lay in his arms....
So genial and refreshing was my sleep that the next time, after leaving
Hounslow, that I fully awoke was upon the pulling up of the mail
(possibly at a post-office), and, on inquiry, I found that we had
reached Maidenhead--six or seven miles, I think, ahead of Salthill. Here
I alighted, and for the half-minute that the mail stopped I was
entreated by my friendly companion (who, from the transient glimpse I
had had of him in Piccadilly, seemed to me to be a gentleman's butler,
or person of that rank) to go to bed without delay."

Night journeys might be very well, in a way, during the balmy days of
summer, when light airs and sweet exhalations from flower and leaf gave
pleasing features to the scenes, but in the cold nights of winter, in
lashing rain, in storms of wind and snow, the unfortunate passengers
and the guard and coachman must have had terrible times of it. It is
said of the guards and coachmen that they had sometimes, when passing
over the Fells, to be strapped to their seats, in order to keep their
places against the fierce assaults of the mountain blast.

The winter experience of travelling by mail-coach in one of its phases
is thus described by a writer in connection with a severe snow-storm
which occurred in March 1827: "The night mail from Edinburgh to Glasgow
left Edinburgh in the afternoon, but was stopped before reaching
Kirkliston. The guard with the mail-bags set forward on horseback, and
the dri