The "Night Post" coach, travelling all night, from seven o'clock to half-past seven the next morning, took an intolerable time; the "Hero," which started from the "Spread Eagle," Gracechurch Street, at eight a.m., did better, bringing weary passengers to their destination in ten hours; and the "Portsmouth Telegraph" flew between the "Golden Cross," Charing Cross, and the "Blue Posts," Portsmouth, in nine hours and a half. [Illustration: "ELEPHANT AND CASTLE," 1826.] V [Sidenote: _OLD-TIME TRAVELLERS_] Many were the travellers in olden times upon the Portsmouth Road, from Kings and Queens--who, indeed, did not "travel," but "progressed"--to Ambassadors, nobles, Admirals of the Red, the White, the Blue, and sailor-men of every degree. The admirals went, of course, in their own coaches, the captains more frequently in public conveyances, and the common ruck of sailors went, I fear, either on foot, or in the rumble-tumble attached to the hinder part of the slower stages; or even in the stage-wagons, which took the best part of three days to do the distance between the "Elephant and Castle" and Portsmouth Hard. If they had been paid off at Portsmouth and came eventually to London, they would doubtless have walked, and with no very steady step at that, for the furies of Gosport and the red-visaged trolls of Portsea took excellent good care that Jack should be fooled to the top of his bent, and that having been done, there would be little left either for coach journeys or indeed anything else, save a few shillings for that indispensable sailor's drink, rum. So, however Jack might go _down_ to Portsmouth, it is tolerably certain that he in many cases either tramped to London on his return from a cruise, or else was carried in one of those lumbering stage-wagons that, drawn by eight horses, crawled over these seventy-three miles with all the airy grace and tripping step of the tortoise. He lay, with one or two companions, upon the noisome straw of the interior, alternately swigging at the rum-bottle which when all else had failed him was his remaining stay, and singing, with husky and uncertain voice, seafaring chanties or patriotic songs, salty of the sea, of the type of the "Saucy Arethusa" or "Hearts of Oak." He was a nauseous creature, full of animal and ardent spirits, redolent of rum, and radiant of strange and most objectionable oaths. He had, perhaps, been impressed into the Navy against his will; had seen, and felt, hard knocks, and expected--nay, hoped--to see and feel more yet, and, whatever might come to him, he did his very best to enjoy the fleeting hour, careless of the morrow. He was frankly Pagan, and fatalist to a degree, but he and his like won our battles by sea and made England mistress of the waves, and so we should contrive all our might to blink his many faults, and apply a telescope of the most powerful kind to a consideration of his sterling virtues of