THOMAS SMITH, the OLD LEWES CARRIER, being dead, THE BUSINESS IS NOW CONTINUED BY HIS WIDOW, MARY SMITH, who gets into the "George Inn," in the Borough, Southwark, EVERY WEDNESDAY in the afternoon, and sets out for Lewes EVERY THURSDAY morning by eight o'clock, and brings Goods and Passengers to Lewes, Fletching, Chayley, Newick and all places adjacent at reasonable rates. Performed (_if God permit_) by MARY SMITH. We may perceive by these early records that the real original way down to the Sussex coast was by the Croydon, Godstone, East Grinstead and Lewes route, and that its outlet must have been Newhaven, which, despite its name, is so very ancient a place, and was a port and harbour when Brighthelmstone was but a fisher-village. [Illustration: STAGE WAGGON, 1808. _From a contemporary drawing._] That is the only glimpse we get of the widow Smith and her waggon; but the "George Inn, in the Borough," that she "got into," is still in the Borough High Street. It is a fine and flourishing remnant of an ancient galleried hostelry of the time of Chaucer, and it is characteristic of the continuity of English social, as well as political history that, although waggons and coaches no longer come to or set out from the "George," its spacious yard is now a railway receiving-office for goods, where the railway vans, those descendants of the stage-waggon, thunderously come and go all day. It will be observed that the traffic in those days went to and from Southwark, which was then the great business centre for the carriers. Not yet was the Brighton road measured from Westminster Bridge, for the adequate reason that there was no bridge at Westminster until 1749: only the ferry from the Horseferry Road to Lambeth. Widow Smith's waggon halted at Lewes, and it is not until ten years later than the date of her advertisement that we hear of the Brighthelmstone conveyance. The first was that announced by the pioneer, James Batchelor, in _The Sussex Weekly Advertiser_, May 12th, 1756: NOTICE IS HEREBY GIVEN that the LEWES ONE DAY STAGE COACH or CHAISE sets out from the Talbot Inn, in the Borough, on Saturday next, the 19th instant. When likewise the Brighthelmstone Stage begins. Performed (_if God permit_) by JAMES BATCHELOR. The "Talbot" inn, which stood on the site of the ancient "Tabard," of Chaucerian renown, disappeared from the Borough High Street in 1870. What its picturesque yard was like in 1815, with the waggons of the Sussex carriers, let the illustration tell.