Nothing in nature or art can be so abominable as those vehicles at this
hour. We are quite satisfied that, except an Englishman, who will endure
any thing, no native of any climate under the sky would endure a London
hackney coach; that an Ashantee gentleman would scoff at it; and that
an aboriginal of New South Wales would refuse to be inhumed within its
shattered and infinite squalidness. It is true, that the vehicle has its
merits, if variety of uses can establish them. The hackney coach conveys
alike the living and the dead. It carries the dying man to the hospital,
and when doctors and tax-gatherers can tantalize no more, it carries
him to Surgeons' Hall, and qualifies him to assist the "march of mind"
by the section of body. If the midnight thief find his plunder too
ponderous for his hands, the hackney coach offers its services, and is
one of the most expert conveyances. Its other employments are many, and
equally meritorious, and doubtless society would find a vacuum in its
loss. Yet we cordially wish that the Maberley brain were set at work
upon this subject, and some substitute contrived. The French have
led the way, and that too by the most obvious and simple arrangement
possible. The "_Omnibus_,"--for they still have Latin enough in
France for the name of this travelling collection of all sorts of human
beings--the Omnibus is a long coach, carrying fifteen or eighteen
people, all inside. For two-pence halfpenny it carries the individual
the length of the Boulevard, or the whole diameter of Paris. Of those
carriages there were about half-a-dozen some months ago, and they have
been augmented since; their profits were said to have repaid the outlay
within the first year: the proprietors, among whom is Lafitte, the
banker, are making a large revenue out of Parisian sous, and speculation
is still alive.--_Monthly Mag_.
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