COACHES.

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Roubo, in his costly treatise on joiners’ work, has fur-nished three figures of (chars) carriages used in the time ofHenrv IV. from drawings preserved in the King’s library :from them, it is seen, those coaches were not suspended bystraps, that they had a canopy supported by ornamentedpillars, and that the whole body was surrounded by curtainsof stuff or leather, which could be drawn up. The coachin which Louis XIV . made his public entrance, about themiddle of the seventeenth century, appears, from a drawingin the King’s library, to have been a suspended carriage.

Our national chronicler, John Stow , says, coaches werefirst known in England about 1580; he says, they were firstimported from Germany , by Fitz-Allen, Earl of Arundel, in1589, (Survey of London, 1633, fol. p. 70.) Andersonplaces the period, when coaches began to be used in com-mon here, about 1605. It is remarked of the Duke ofBuckingham, that he was the first who was drawn by sixhorses, in 1619. To ridicule this pomp, the Earl of North-umberland put eight horses to his carriage.

Towards the close of the thirteenth century, when Charlesof Anjou made his entrance into Naples , the Queen rodein a carriage, called by memorialists carelta, the outside andinside of which were covered with sky-blue velvet, inter-spersed with golden lilies.; a magnificence never before seenby the Neapolitans.

At the entrance of Frederic II. into Padua, in the year1239, it appears there were no carriages, for the most ele-gantly dressed ladies who came to meet him were on pal-freys, ornamented with trappings, (sedentes in phaleratisct amhulantibus palafredis.) It is well known that theluxury of carriages spread from Naples all over Italy .

Coaches were seen, for the first time, in Spain in the year1546, according to Twiss, who does not, however, vouch anyauthority.

It is said, there were elegant coaches in the capital ofRussia so early as the beginning of the seventeenth cen-tury. 38

The Berlin , a species of coach so called, was introducedanterior to 1673, by Philip de Chiese, a native of Piedmont,a quarter-master and colonel in the service of FredericWilliam, Elector of Brandenburg, much esteemed by thatPrince for his knowledge in architecture, who caused thatcarriage to be built for a journey which he made into

18 Essai sur la Bibliotheque de 1’Academie des Sciences de S. Petersburg, parJ. Bucmei:>ier, 1776, 8vo. p 38.