All the main roads running southwards from London would lead with more or less of a circumbendibus to Brighton; and the ideal way for a leisurely traveller might be to pass from one to another on short cross-roads, so as to pick out the best stretches of each. In Paterson's road-book (1792) the _Brighthelmston_ Road is indicated as going by Croydon, Godstone Green, East Grinstead and Lewes, fifty-nine miles, with a short-cut beyond Godstone by Lindfield, saving seven miles; but it also gives the "New Road" by Sutton, Reigate, and Crawley, fifty-four miles. A newer road by Croydon and Redhill, joining the Reigate route at Povey Cross, so as to save a mile or so, came in our time to bear the name of the Brighton Road _par excellence_, and was preferred by coaches and cycles, till the crush of Croydon traffic and tramways [Illustration: THE BOURNE, CHOBHAM.] drove them back to the Sutton route, even at the cost of facing the steep windings of Reigate Hill. This road through Sutton and Reigate seems to have been the standard one when the Prince Regent's patronage made Brighton's fortune. The lumbering stages of older days took a whole long day to go all the way round by Lewes; but early in the century lighter vehicles began to ply on a shorter route, their wheels soon greased by competition. Among the many faults Cobbett has to find with George IV.'s reign, one is that "great parcels of stock jobbers" live at Brighton with their families, who "skip backwards and forwards on the coaches" to business in the City. He speaks of at least twenty coaches running daily on three or four routes, by which the Brighton resident, "leaving not very early in the morning, reaches London by noon, and starting back two and a half hours after, reaches Brighton not very late at night." If 7 A.M. would answer to this matutinal worthy's idea of a not very early start, that allows five hours for a journey recorded to be done once, under William IV., in the exceptionally short time of three hours forty minutes. A more precise writer of Cobbett's date gives six hours as a good rate for sixteen regular coaches plying all the year--besides eight "butterflies" in summer--the "Times," the "Regulator," the "Rocket," the "Patriot," the "True Blue," and so forth. In our own day of coaching revival a record run has been a little under eight hours to Brighton and back, with the disadvantage of more thronged thoroughfares to be traversed at either end. The cyclists' record seems to be about seven hours for the double journey, which is only a little more than that of an amateur Dick Turpin on horseback. The famous Stock Exchange walk to Brighton was won in nine and a half hours. One can hardly say in what time the motor-car could devour this way, if it got a fair chance and a clear road, as the rail has for its rush of an hour or so. One of the latest appearances on the Brighton road has been a motor omnibus, that modestly professed to take four hours to Brighton.