ish stage,
Now in eight hours with ease, the post
Reaches from Newgate Street our coast."

In the years 1837 and 1838 the Portsmouth mail coach was despatched at
7.5 p.m., from Bristol Post Office--then located at the corner of
Exchange Avenue. The posting of letters without fee was allowed up to
6.35 p.m., and, with fee, paid and unpaid letters alike up to 6.50 p.m.
The coach started from the White Lion coach office, Broad Street, at
6.45 p.m., so as to be in readiness at the Post Office to take up the
mails at the appointed time. The arrival of the mail at Portsmouth from
Bristol was at 6.45 a.m. These times are an improvement upon the service
in operation in 1836. At that time the coach left Bristol at 5.30 p.m.,
with a posting up to 5.0 p.m. without fee, and with fees paid, up to
5.15 p.m. On the inward journey the Coach did not arrive until 8.9 a.m.

It will be appropriate here to enumerate certain interesting incidents
connected with the carrying on of the Mail Coach system.

On Saturday, Jan. 5, 1805, the London Mail of Friday se'nnight, had not
arrived at Swansea where it was due early in the morning, till eleven
o'clock that night, having been detained seventeen hours at the New
Passage, in consequence of such large shoals of ice floating down the
Severn as to render it unsafe for the mail boat to cross until Friday
morning.

Thursday se'nnight, an inquest was held at Swansea on the body of John
Paul, driver of the mail coach between that place and Caermarthen which
on Sunday was overturned about two miles from Swansea, while proceeding
with great rapidity down a hill, it being supposed the coachman's hands
were so benumbed with cold that he could not restrain the horses' speed,
the consequence of which was that he was so much bruised as to occasion
his death on Wednesday night. The guard was slightly hurt, but the
passengers escaped uninjured. Verdict, accidental death.

Very few details exist of that exceptional season, in 1806, when Nevill,
a guard on the Bristol mail, was frozen to death; but the records of the
great snowstorm that began on the Christmas night of 1836 are more
copious.

A valuable reminiscence of that night--Dec. 27, 1836--is Pollard's
graphic picture of the Devonport mail snowed up at Amesbury. Six horses
could not move it, and Guard F. Feecham was in parlous plight. Pollard's
companion picture of the Liverpool mail in the snow near St. Alban's on
the same night is equally i