As we stroll about the streets of Hastings of to-day, it is difficult, nay, it is impossible, to conjure up the past, to people these hills and dales with the ghosts of days long since gone. True, there is the Castle ruin, grimly clinging to the edge of the cliff; else there is little but aggressive modernity. Such haven as there is now gives cause rather for ridicule than pride. Few, standing at the Albert Memorial, could ever conceive that here in this Priory valley was at one time the great Port, protected on the east by the Castle hill, on the west by the White Rock, and flushed from the north by the Old Roar River. Well might our old Sussex poet, James Howell, sing: "Thou old sea-town, crouching beneath the rocks Like a strong lion waiting for his prey! Where are thy river, harbour, and the docks In which the navy of Old England lay? Why didst thou slumber, when in Pevensey Bay The Normans' mighty host profaned our soil, When thou, the Cinque-Port Queen, didst hold the key Which locked the sea-gates of this freedom-isle?" Who, standing towards the south of the old town, where now are those black, bill-plastered structures famed as "the fishermen's huts", could call to mind a great wall with a gate and portcullis defending the town on the seaward side? Yet a writer as late as 1828 could say: "Hastings was formerly defended, towards the sea, by a wall, which extended from the castle cliff across the hollow in which the town lies, to the east cliff.... A very small portion of this wall still exists, and may be traced near the Bourne's mouth, where there was a portcullis or gate; a considerable part of it is stated to have remained about forty years since." (William Herbert, the unacknowledged author of "_The History and Antiquities of the Town and Port of Hastings_", by W. G. Moss, draughtsman to H.R.H the Duke of Cambridge.) Now all has gone. Only the town remains much as before. The description penned in 1828 (_ibid._)--"The town consists principally of two streets, High Street, and All Saints Street, each about half a mile in length, running parallel nearly north and south, and separated by a rivulet, called the Bourne, which runs into Hastings in a narrow and inconsiderable stream, and empties itself into the sea. These narrow streets are intersected by various smaller ones, or, more properly speaking, alleys, which contain the dwellings of the fishermen and other poor inhabitants of the place"--might well serve for the present day, save that the inconsiderable Bourne has now entirely disappeared. For the rest, a few old timbered houses, the two churches, All Saints and St. Clements, one on each slope, form, with the Castle, the sum total of the tangible reminders of ancient days.