With the dawn of the nineteenth century the service of coaches between London and Hastings begins to take some definite shape. In 1807 Robert Gray, of the “Bolt-in-Tun,” Fleet Street, horsed the Hastings Mail, and continued for many years. In 1828 it was jointly run by Gray and by Benjamin Worthy Horne, of the “Golden Cross.” Being only a “pair-horse” mail, it was, like its fellows in the same category, very slow. The Brighton, Portsmouth, and Hastings mails were, in fact, the three slowest in the kingdom, and of these the Brighton was the worst laggard. The mails, it should be explained, to correct the impression created by the eloquence of De Quincey and Hazlitt, were not _necessarily_ faster than the stage-coaches. In some instances they were: in others they were not. Everything depended upon individual cases, and much upon distance. Where great distances had to be covered the speed would be very high, as in the Bristol, Devonport (“Quicksilver”), and Birmingham mails, of which the first averaged considerably over ten miles an hour; but in cases such as these of Hastings, Portsmouth, and Brighton, all the night lay before them, and the short distance could be taken very easily with pair-horse teams; while the four-horse teams running to the West and North were always upon their mettle, to keep their time-bills. The speed of the Hastings Mail in 1837, its best period, averaged eight miles an hour; and that in itself was a great advance from 1828, when the pace was under seven miles an hour. Mail-coaches were, therefore, not always the most dashing public equipages of the King’s Highway. From about 1825, when the “fast” day-coaches and the post-coaches began to set the pace, the mail on the Hastings Road was for a time left hopelessly behind. In 1826 the “Royal William,” starting from the “George and Blue Boar,” Holborn, at 9 a.m., was at Hastings by 5 o’clock: speed rather more than eight miles an hour. Prodigious! But that rate was very poor in comparison with the stage-coaches of almost every other road, and even in 1828, the Golden Age of coaching, proprietors, in announcing “Hastings to London in Eight Hours” appear to have considered themselves wonderful fellows. Indeed, on the old coaching bills of this period, discovered in 1893, during some alterations, on the walls of a building in Castle Street, Hastings, one coach-proprietor had the impudence (as we must think it) of setting forth “Hastings to London in 9 hours!” He did well to conclude with that exclamation-mark, although he placed it there in a different sense from that in which we read it.