icerone got down, and bade me farewell. On enquiring his name from my
fellow-travellers, a group of Sussex farmers, I found a general
disinclination to touch on the subject. Even the coachman, the
established source of information on all topics, exhibited no wish to
discuss the stranger; his official loquacity was almost dumb. "He merely
believed that he was something in the navy, or in the army, or in
something or other; but he was often in those parts, and generally
travelled to London by the Royal Sussex Stage."

No country in Europe has changed its appearance more than the greater
part of England during the last fifty years. Sussex was then as wild as
the wildest heath of Yorkshire. The population, too, looked as wild as
the landscape. This was once the very land of the bold smuggler; the
haunt of the dashing defier of the customhouse officer, who in those
days generally knew his antagonist too well to interfere with his days
or nights, the run between every port of the west of France and the
coasts of the Channel, being, in fact, as familiar to both as the
lounger in Bond Street to the beau of the day.

We passed groups of men, who, when they had not the sailor's dress, had
the sailor's look; some trudging along the road-side, evidently not in
idleness; others mounted on the short rough horse of the country, and
all knowing and known by our coachman.

On our passing one group, leaning with their backs against one of the
low walls which seemed the only enclosure of this rugged region, I,
half-laughingly, hinted to one of my neighbours, a giant of a
rough-headed farmer, that "perhaps a meeting with such a party, at a
late hour, might be inconvenient, especially if the traveller had a full
purse." The fellow turned on me a countenance of ridicule. "What?" said
he, "do you take them for robbers? Heaven bless you, my lad, they could
buy the stage, horses, passengers, and all. I'll warrant you, they will
have news from over there," and he pointed towards France, "before it
gets into the newspapers, long enough. They are the richest fellows in
the county."

"Are they smugglers?" I asked, with sufficient want of tact.

"Why, no," was the answer, with a leer. "We have nothing of that breed
among us; we are all honest men. But what if a man has an acquaintance
abroad, and gets a commission to sell a cargo of tea or brandy, or
perhaps a present from a friend--what shall hinder him from going to
bring it? I'm sure, not I.