About the year 1805 the town received a very considerable improvement by the removal of the Coinage Hall from the middle of the principal street leading south-west from the middle of the town. The Editor at that time represented Helston, and had the good fortune to assist materially in promoting the negociation with the Duchy officers, in consequence of his acquaintance with Mr. Sheridan, and with others whose consent was necessary to be obtained. The Market-house is a venerable monument of former times; yet, if this also could be removed, the improvement would equal that effected by the former. Helston, in great measure unconnected with trade or with a sea port, little of a thoroughfare before the turnpike road was made, surrounded by the residences of ancient, respectable, and wealthy families, and inhabited by gentlemen of a similar description, has ever been celebrated for the superior quality of its social manners, and at the same time for an easy and familiar intercourse between all the people in their various stations; the inferior experiencing the truth of what all the histories of all nations have confirmed from the earliest periods of Greece to the recent events of our own time, Αρχαιοπλουτων δεσποτων πολλη χαρις· Ὁι δ’ ουποτ’ ελπισαντες, ημησαν καλως, Ωμοι τε δουλοις, παντα και παρα σταθμην. And the reverse of Απας δε τραχυς, ὁστις αν νεον κρατῃ. These circumstances account for the continuance of old manners and of old customs longer here than in other places. All towns appear to have adopted, on one day at least in the year, practices similar to the Roman Saturnalia; in most places, the lines of society having become broad and strongly impressed, their observances descended to the more vulgar, or rather perhaps to the vicious; and changing their character from harmless amusements to practices of outrage and violence, they have been discontinued or suppressed: but in Helston an ancient observance of this kind, refining with the refinement of the age, still continues in activity. The origins of all these customs are obscured or totally lost in their remote antiquity. That of Helston corresponded, however, precisely with its name――“a foray,” locally corrupted into furray; the young people rushed out of the town into the country early on the eighth of May, when, entering all houses without leave or ceremony, they appeared to seize whatever they wanted, and from the real nature of the transactions, whatever they wanted was sure of being found; and ultimately they returned to the town in triumph, dancing and decorated with flowers, where the scenes of the morning were, in some degree, repeated. All these practices, however, are less and less persevered in from year to year, so that the whole is rapidly tending towards the single entertainment of a ball; and if the ladies had succeeded in a classical fancy, which, some how or other, got possession of their minds, the very memory of this festival would have been lost.