——————

 

THE YOUTH’S CABINET.

13

 

is a square, ugly box, as you will see—
looking, for all the world, not very re-
markably unlike the picture of Noah’s
ark, as it appears in the early copies of
the New England Primer, over which I
used to expend a large fund of wonder
and amazement, in my school-boy days.
Sedans, when they were first introduced
into England, were constructed much

 

more rudely than they were in after
years. The next cut represents one of

these sedans that has a much more ele-
gant appearance than the one previously
described. ‘There are curtains on the
sides of the vehicle, as you see; and,
take it altogether, it looks as if it might
be a very comfortable mode of travel-

ing.

4

SEDAN CHAIR, OF A LATER STYLE,

But sedans, borne by men, after a
while, became, if possible, more un pop-
ular than coaches, among a certain class
of people. ‘When the Duke of Buck-
ingham came to be carried about the
streets in a chair upon men’s shoulders,”
according to the chronicles of the time,
“the clamor and noise of it were so ex-
travagant, that the people would rail on
him in the streets, indignant that men
should be brought to so servile a condi-
tion as horses.” “ The king and his
courtiers were accused of “ degrading
Englishmen into slaves and beasts of
burden.,”’

Not long after this, this style of sedan
went entirely out of use in England.
But the horse-litter still continued in
fashion, being used particularly on state
occasions. In 1638, we find it described

as used in the procession in honor of the
queen mother, Mary de Medicis, when
she visited London, to see her daughter,
the wife of the first Charles,

The popular clamor against coaches
continued among the lower classes to a
still later day, as will be inferred from
the following stanza taken from’ a ballad
entitled, “The Coaches’ Overthrow,”
published not long before the Revolu-
tion :

“ Coach-makers may use many trades,
And get enough of meanes ;
And coach-men may turne off their jades,
And help to drain the fens.
Heigh doune, derry, derry doune,
With the hackney coaches doune !
The sythe and flail,
Cart and plow tail,
Doe want them out of toune.”