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Among the best of his brilliant critical essays are On the Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth , which is admirably suited to show the man's critical genius, and Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts , which reveals his grotesque humor Other suggestive critical works, if one must choose among such a multitude, are his Letters to a Young Man , Joan of Arc , The Revolt of the Tartars , and The English Mail-Coach . In the last-named essay the "Dream Fugue" is one of the most imaginative of all his curious works.
It was no uncommon sight at some tank or rock on the road, to see the mail-coach standing alone in its glory, deserted by driver and passengers alike. Of these some would be horse-hunting, and the rest tramping ahead in hope of being caught up by the coach.
I cried till I heard the mail coachman's horn, and then I ran to the gate to see the mail-coach go past. It stopped before our gate, and a gentleman got out, and the moment he saw me he took me in his arms, and kissed me, and said I was Emily Barton, and asked me why the tears were on my little pale cheeks; and I told him the cause of my distress.
Turnpike and post roads were speedily extended all over the country, and even the rugged mountain districts of North Wales and the Scotch Highlands became as accessible as any English county. The riding postman was superseded by the smartly appointed mail-coach, performing its journeys with remarkable regularity at the average speed of ten miles an hour.
As the most enlightened and communicative of the opium-eaters has observed: "Happiness may be bought for a penny, and carried in the waistcoat pocket; portable ecstasy may be had corked up in a pint bottle; peace of mind may be set down in gallons by the mail-coach."
The long whip cracked authoritatively, the postilion, a beautiful black dog, jumped to the roof, and the mail-coach of Senez, with rattle and creak, started on its scheduled run. "Houp-l
Anyhow, it was like trying to stop a mail-coach going down Mount Victoria with the brake off. So what we saw was the wretch of a mare coming along as if the devil was after her, and heading straight across the plain at its narrowest part; it wasn't more than half-a-mile wide there, in fact, it was more like a flat than a plain.
The early citizen would not have been surprised had he heard the horn of the guard merrily winding, and beheld the mail-coach of old England bowling up to the door. There were fields and open spaces about it, for it was on the edge of the city that was already reaching out upon the island. Bloomingdale!
After reading De Quincey's hyperbolical description of the English mail-coach, one cannot down the desire to place that remarkable man on the pilot of the White Mail or of the Twentieth Century. But this tremendous change in the means of locomotion meant far more than the mere rapid transit of men from place to place.
After a stay of twenty-four hours at Pau, we returned to Bayonne, from where the general despatched me and Mainville to Brest, in order to prepare his headquarters. We took seats in the mail-coach as far as Bordeaux; but there, owing to the lack of public transport, we were forced to take to the hacks of the posting houses, which of all means of travelling, is surely the most uncomfortable.
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