Then the pedantic Doctor John Burton, who journeyed into Sussex in 1751, had no less unfortunate acquaintance with these miry ways than our _dilettante_ of Strawberry Hill. To those who have small Latin and less Greek, this traveller's tale must ever remain a sealed book; for it is in those languages that he records his views upon ways and means, and men and manners, in Sussex. As thus, for example: "I fell immediately upon all that was most bad, upon a land desolate and muddy, whether inhabited by men or beasts a stranger could not easily distinguish, and upon roads which were, to explain concisely what is most abominable, Sussexian. No one would imagine them to be intended for the people and the public, but rather the byways of individuals, or, more truly, the tracks of cattle-drivers; for everywhere the usual footmarks of oxen appeared, and we too, who were on horseback, going along zigzag, almost like oxen at plough, advanced as if we were turning back, while we followed out all the twists of the roads.... My friend, I will set before you a kind of problem in the manner of Aristotle:--Why comes it that the oxen, the swine, the women, and all other animals(!) are so long-legged in Sussex? Can it be from the difficulty of pulling the feet out of so much mud by the strength of the ankle, so that the muscles become stretched, as it were, and the bones lengthened?" A doleful tale. Presently he arrives at the conclusion that the peasantry "do not concern themselves with literature or philosophy, for they consider the pursuit of such things to be only idling," which is not so very remarkable a trait, after all, in the character of an agricultural people. [Illustration: THE "TALBOT" INN YARD. BOROUGH, ABOUT 1815. _From an old drawing._] Our author eventually, notwithstanding the terrible roads, arrived at Brighthelmstone, by way of Lewes, "just as day was fading." It was, so he says, "a village on the sea-coast; lying in a valley gradually sloping, and yet deep. It is not, indeed, contemptible as to size, for it is thronged with people, though the inhabitants are mostly very needy and wretched in their mode of living, occupied in the employment of fishing, robust in their bodies, laborious, and skilled in all nautical crafts, and, as it is said, terrible cheats of the custom-house officers." As who, indeed, is not, allowing the opportunity? Batchelor, the pioneer of Brighton coaching, continued his enterprise in 1757, and with the coming of spring, and the drying of the roads, his coaches, which had been laid up in the winter, after the usual custom of those times, were plying again. In May he advertised, "for the convenience of country gentlemen, etc.," his London, Lewes, and Brighthelmstone stage-coach, which performed the journey of fifty-eight miles in two days; and exclusive persons, who preferred to travel alone, might have post-chaises of him. [Sidenote: EARLY COACHING]