The Exeter Road

HORT

the 'short stages' which were the only popular means of being conveyed between London and the suburbs in the days

jesty and the opening of the great Victorian Era, in which everything except human nature (whi

lking the seven miles, would have been to take the stage; and as these stages, starting from the City or the Strand, were comparatively few

pared with the dashing 'Quicksilver' and the{34} lightning 'Telegraph' to Exeter; but what on earth the Londoner of modest means who desired to travel to Putney or to Brentford would in those pre-omnibus times have done without those stages it is impossible to

Dog,' Strand; and the 'Bolt-in-Tun,' Fleet Street. It is to be feared that those stages were not 'Swiftsures,' 'Hirondelles,' or 'Lightnings.' Nor, indeed, were 'popular prices' known in those days. Concessions had been made in this direction, it is true, some seven years before, when the man with the extraordinary name-Mr. Shillibeer-introduced the first

SE AND G

LS STARTING FROM THE GLOUCESTER COFFEE

ROM THE GLOUCESTER COFFEE HOUSE,

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3

preferred to walk. For the same reason, they were only the comparatively affluent who co

unate company, and, paying our one-and-sixp

after a good deal more than two centuries' record for good cheer. It was originally the 'Swan and Harp,' but some irreverent wag, probably as far back

t a very different aspect. Instead of the dingy brick warehouses there will be handsome premises of some architectural pretensions, and the Hill will be considerably widened. The setts will have disappeared, to be replaced by wood pavement, and the traffic will have

AN OLD GENTLEMAN, A

MAN, A COBBETT

fortunately speedier, and we reach Hyde Park Corner in, comparatively speaking, the twinkling of an eye. Hyde Park Corner in 1837, this year of the Queen's accession, has begun to feel the great changes that are presently to alter London so marvellously. We have among our fellow-travellers by the stage an old gentleman, a Cobbett-like person, who wears a rustic, semi-farmer kind of appearance, an

: THE DUKE OF WEL

F WELLINGT

4

elgrave Square and othe

ustration of it, before it was hoisted up to that height. Beside it you see the Duke himself, in his characteristic white trousers, in company with several weirdly dressed persons. Again, over page, may be seen the Arch, with the statue on it, and the neighbourhood vastly changed from the appearance it wears in the picture of the 'North-East Prospect of St. George's Hospital.' Instead of the great hooded waggons starting for the West Country, the road is occupied with very crowded traffic, and among the vehicles m

WELLINGTON ARCH AND H

ARCH AND HYDE P

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4

EORGE'S HOSPITAL, AND TH

ITAL, AND THE ROA

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damp straw and squalid hay' which assailed the nostrils of the 'insides' when that door was shut; but in what particular year did the door vanish altogether? Alas! the straw, with the door, is gone for evermore, and passengers no longer lose their small change in it to the great gain of the conductor, w

he French said 'avenged Waterloo,' was removed to Aldershot in 1884,