The very name has grown unfamiliar to our ears. It brings nothing to our minds, recalls no train of recollections, stirs up no dim memories. For the whole world, with the exception of a few people in Cornwall and on the east coast of England, the Packet Service is dead, like all the men who made it, and fought in it, and laid their lives down for it. It was a fighting service, yet the naval histories scarcely mention it. It was for a century and a half the regular vehicle of travellers; yet among the multitude of books which treat of the journeys of our grandfathers, few indeed take note of the fact that they sometimes crossed the ocean. Its records, containing many a story which other nations would have set with pride in the forefront of their history, have lain neglected for eighty years. Some have perished through the carelessness of three generations; some were wantonly destroyed as possessing neither use nor interest. Even in Falmouth itself, so long the headquarters of the Service, the actions which distinguished it are forgotten; and you may search for half a day before finding some old sailor, mending his nets in the stern of a boat, in whose memories those stories linger which have never been collected, and which few indeed of his fellow-townsmen have cared to remember. Seeing, therefore, that this oblivion has descended on the Service, it will be necessary at the outset to give some description of its nature and functions, of the men who constituted it, the voyages they performed, the profits they made, and so forth. This will best be done by describing the life of a single station; and, as it was at Falmouth that the largest number of Packets was stationed, and the most important business transacted, there is no other station so suitable for the purpose. The town of Falmouth was associated most intimately with the Post-Office for more than a century and a half. Indeed, it would scarcely be an exaggeration to say that the town was made by its connection with the Mail Service. Certain it is that when the Post-Office selected Falmouth in 1688 as the point of embarkation and departure for the newly established Spanish mail boats, the Department found not an old established town and port, but a place as yet of the smallest consequence, only recently incorporated, possessing hardly any trade in spite of its advantages of situation, and hampered in its growth by the jealousy of neighbouring towns. In all those traditions of the past which made the glory of Fowey, Looe, Penryn, and a dozen other ports along the coast, the Falmouth men had no share whatever. Their town was a bare hillside when the Fowey men vindicated their claim to rank among the Cinque Ports. It was nothing but a cluster of cottages when the Armada sailed up the Channel.