“THE Nelson,” I repeated to myself, as I read that illustrious name on the dicky of the vehicle—“the Nelson.” My fancy instantly converted the coach into a first-rate, the leaders and wheelers into sea-horses, the driver into Neptunus, brandishing a trident, and the guard into a Triton blowing his wreathed shell. There was room for one on the box, so I climbed up, and took my seat beside the coachman. “Now, clap on all sail,” said I, audibly, “I am proud to be one of the crew of the great Nelson, the hero of Aboukir.”

“Begging your pardon, Sir,” said the coachman, “the Hero ain’t a booker at Mrs. Nelson’s: it goes from some other yard.” Gracious powers! what a tumble down stairs for an idea! As for mine, it pitched on its head, as stunned and stupefied as if it had rolled down the whole flight at the Monument. “I have made a Bull, indeed,” I exclaimed, as the noted inn at Aldgate occurred to my memory; “but we are the slaves of association,” I continued, addressing the coachman, “and the name of Nelson identified itself with the Union Jack.”

“I really can’t say,” replied the coachman, very civilly, “whether the name of Mrs. Nelson is down to the Slave Associations or not: but as for Jack, if you mean Jack Bunce, he’s been off the Union these six months. Too fond of the Bar, Sir” (here he tipped me the most significant of winks), “to keep his seat on the Bench.”

“I alluded, my good fellow, to Nelson, the wonder of the maritime world—the dauntless leader when yard was opposed to yard, and seas teemed with blood.”

“We’re all right—as right as a trivet,” said the coachman, after a pause of perplexity; “I thought our notions were getting rather wide apart, and that one of us wanted putting straight; but I see what you mean, and quite go along with your opinion, step for step. To be sure, Mrs. Nelson has done the world and all for coaching; and the Wonder is the crack of all the drags in London, and so is the Dauntless, let yard turn out agin yard, as you say, any day you like. And as for leaders, and teams full of blood, there’s as pretty a sprinkling of blood in the tits I’m now tooling of—”

“The vehicles of the proprietress, and the appearance of the animals, with their corresponding caparisons,” said I, “have often gratified my visual organs and elicited my mental plaudits.”

“That’s exactly what I says,” replied the coachman, very briskly, “there’s no humbug nor no nonsense about Mrs. Nelson. You never see her a standing a-foaming and fretting in front o’ the Bank, with a regular mob round her, and looking as if she’d bolt with the Quicksilver. And you never see her painted all over her body, wherever there’s room for ’em, with Saracen Heads, and Blue Boars, and Brown Bears, from her roller bolts to her dicky and hind boot. She’s plain and neat, and nothin’ else—and is fondest of having her body of a claret colour, pick’d out with white, and won’t suffer the Bull, no where, except on the back-gammon board.”

I know not how much further the whimsical description might have gone, if a strapping, capless, curly-headed lass, running with all her might and main, had not addressed a screaming retainer to the coachman. With some difficulty he pulled up, for he had been tacitly giving me a proof that the craft of his Nelson was a first-rate, with regard to its rate of travelling.

“If you please, Mr. Stevens,” said the panting damsel, holding up something towards the box—“if you please, Mr. Stevens, mother’s gone to Lonnon—in the light cart—and will you be so kind as to give her—her linchpin.”

Mr. Stevens took the article with a smile, and I fancied with a sly squeeze of the hand that delivered it.

“If such a go had been anyone’s but your mother’s, Fanny,” he slyly remarked, “I should have said it was somebody in love.” The Dispatch was too strictly timed to allow of further parley; the horses broke, or were rather broken, into a gallop, in pursuit of the mother of Fanny, the Flower of Waltham; and the pin secretly acting as a spur, we did the next five mile in something like twenty minutes.

In spite, however, of this unusual speed, we never overtook Mrs. Merryweather and her cart till we arrived at the Basing-House, where we found her chirping over a cup of ale; as safe and sound as if linchpins had never been invented; in fact, she made as light of the article, when it was handed to her, as if it had been only a pin out of her gown!

“Well, I must say one thing for Mrs. Nelson,” said our coachman, as he resumed his seat on the box, “and that’s this. There’s no pinning at the Bull. She sets her face against everything but the patent boxes. She may come to a runaway with a bolter—or drop the ribbons—or make a mistake in clearing a gate, by being a little lushy—but you’ll never see Mrs. Nelson lying flat on her side in the middle of the road, with her insides gone to smash, and her outsides well distributed, because she’s been let go out of the yard without one of her pins.”

THE STAMP DUTY ON SCOTCH LINEN.