the place of coachmen and guards; turretships and ironclads have swept away our glorious line-of-battle ships and beautiful frigates; engineers are in demand instead of able seamen. The Continent can produce just as good engineers as our own, whether it be to drive the mails or work in the engine room. Stokers and pokers belong to every clime; but the smart drivers of her Majesty's mails, and the old salts sung by Dibdin, belong to the historic past, and we are placed on the same level as all nations, with the same monotony of qualifications. The earliest postmaster-general and post agents had not an easy time of it. The mails were so irregular, and the complaints so constant, that the ill-paid duties of the former became very onerous; and the post agents, especially the packet agents, in time of war were placed in situations not devoid of danger. The instructions to all the packet agents, who were practically in command of the boats, were, "You must run when you can, fight when you can no longer run, and throw the mails overboard when you can not fight." We must refer our readers for most interesting anecdotes of the mail packet service to The Royal Mail," in the chapter headed "Mail Packets." The vessels were clearly not of a high order of excellence, for one report says: "We doe find that in blowing weather they take in soe much water that the men are constantly wet through, and can noe ways go below, being forced to keep the hatches shut to save the vessel from sinking." So perilous was the service, that there was a scale of pensions for wounds. The loss of an eye was £4, both eyes 12. Nor were the letters better protected than their carriers. "We are concerned," says one agent, "to tell you that we find the letters brought by the boat are so consumed by the ratts we cannot find out to whom they belong." All government let ters were carried free. Even within our memory very curious articles have been sent by the Foreign Office messengers, but we do not imagine such commodities as the following were ever franked: Imprimis. "Fifteen couple of hounds going to the King of the Romans with a free pass." Item. "Two maidservants going as laundresses to my lord ambassador.' Item. "Doctor Chrichton, carrying with him a cow and divers necessaries." Item. "Two bales of stockings for the use of the ambassador." In those days members signed large pack ets of covers at once, and sold them to their friends; and so little care was taken, that thousands of letters passed with forged signatures. The changes from the post riders to mail coaches, and from mail coaches to railways, are not more remarkable than the vast change made in our postal sys tem by the introduction of the penny postage. Sir Rowland Hill has always been considered the originator of the penny postage; but in fact the idea had been started by Professor Babbage some years before, in his work on economy of machinery and manufactures, in which he demonstrated that if the cost of carriage could be reduced, the result would be a cheaper rate of postage, and a great increase in the number of letters. It was, however, Sir Rowland Hill who devoted his time to the completion of the scheme; and in 1837 he embodied it in the pamphlet entitled "Post-office Reform, its Importance and Practicability." This created a great sensation, more especially in the mercantile world. He proved that while the population was rapidly increasing, the post-office revenue was diminishing, and this was chiefly owing to the high rate of postage, and the temptation which it held out for smuggling - whole bales of letters being sent from one town to another as ordinary goods. While in his able pamphlet the subject was exhausted, he maintained that the seventy-six millions of letters, the number which passed through the post-office in 1839, was capable of a large increase; "that it should form a distinguished part in the great work of national education, and of becoming a benefaction and a blessing to mankind." He concluded with proposing-(1) a reduction in the rate to a penny a letter, weighing not more than half an ounce; (2) increased speed in the delivery of letters; (3) more frequent opportunities for the despatch of letters; (4) simplification in all the arrangements with the view to economy. After an examination by a Royal Commission, and a full investigation by a committee of the House of Commons, Mr. Hill's plan was adopted by the Legislature in 1839, and came into opera tion in 1840, when the number of letters increased from seventy-six to one hundred and sixty-nine millions. The new scheme was received with general ap proval by the country; but not so by the government and the post-office authorities, who regarded if as suicidal, and most probably likely to be very injurious to the revenue. And certainly these views were not unreasonable. The average charge inaccessible parts of our country, the nooks and crannies of the land, will possess the rural postman." When we recollect the work done in the post-offices, it is something quite extraordinary. The postoffice is not only responsible for all home and foreign correspondence; but every postmaster has charge of the book-post department, the telegraph, the moneyorder office, the savings bank, and now the parcel post. A postmaster or mis. tress now, in any considerable village, must find their day pretty well occupied, and have little to devote to the shop in which formerly it was in general situated - placed so that those who came to post letters or buy stamps were induced to make purchases. In France the bureaux de tabac are an important part of the government patronage: the pay is about six hundred francs a year. But a bureau de tabac is considered worth from £300 to for a letter in 1837 was tenpence: it was evident, therefore, that to arrive at the same result when reduced to a penny, the number of letters must increase tenfold whereas in the first year they had only doubled; and even now that the letters have increased to the enormous amount of thirteen hundred and thirty-three millions, it is a question whether, when we consider the increase of population and popular education, the revenue has not suffered by the change, although the net revenue is this year £2,687,000. But in 1837 the change was dreaded by the authorities for other than financial reasons. Lord Lichfield, the postmaster-general at that time, described the scheme as "wild, visionary, and extravagant." The walls of the post-office, he added, would burst; the whole area on which the building stands would not be large enough to receive the clerks and the letters. In the first instance a fourpenny rate was pro-£400 a year. The owners have a monopposed; but this did not meet the views of either party, and in 1840 a uniform penny rate was adopted. That the penny postage has added to the happiness and comfort of the nation, and greatly benefited all the commercial classes, cannot be doubted; and yet it took many years before its opponents were fairly convinced of its advantages. While the number of letters increased rapidly, the expenses of the post-office at first increased still faster. The walls of the post-offices did not burst, as Lord Lichfield predicted, but everywhere enlarged accommodation had to be found. Railways supplanted the mails, at an enormous additional expense. For instance, in 1844, a coach-proprietor in the north of England actually paid to the post-office department the sum of £200 annually for what he considered the privilege of conveying the mail twice a day between Lancaster and Carlisle; now the post-office pays the Lancaster and Carlisle Railway £18,000 annually for the same service, and the entire sum paid to the railway companies in 1863 does not fall far short of the whole of the post-office expenses in 1839. The progress of the post-office since the final establishment of the penny post has exceeded all the most sanguine expectations. Between 1839 and 1880, day mails, rural posts, and free deliveries were established on an enlarged scale. In 1840 the number of rural post-offices was three thousand; they now exceed eight thou sand. As to free deliveries, it has been promised that soon the "most remote and oly of the sale of stamps, and they therefore attract custom; for those who purchase stamps or post orders frequently remain to smoke, or lay in a stock of snuff or tobacco. Among the sights of London the Gen. eral Post-office is the most remarkable. No department of the public service conveys a grander idea of the vast enterprise, the commercial greatness, and social requirements of the empire. Throughout the whole day every part of the extensive building presents a busy scene; but it is about six in the evening that the great excitement commences. Now it is, that small boys of eleven and twelve years of age, panting Sinbad-like under the weight of large bundles of newspapers, manage to dart about and make rapid sorties into the other ranks of boys, utterly disregarding the cries of the official policemen, who vainly endeavor to reduce the tumult into something like post-office order. They will whizz heads, now and then sweeping off hats and their missiles of intelligence over other people's caps with the force of shot. The gathering every moment increases in number; arms, legs, sacks, baskets, heads, bundles, and woollen comforters- for who ever saw a newspaper boy without that appendage? -seem to be getting into a state of confusion and disagreeable communism, and yet "the cry is still they come." (The Royal Mail, p. 356.) At that hour, instead of the wide slits for letters and papers, the shutters themselves are thrown open, to receive the storm of letters and papers which are thrown in. Every opening is besieged with an impetuous crowd of men, women, and boys, who defy all the efforts of the police to keep order, in their anxiety to rid themselves of the huge bundles with which they are laden before the last stroke of the hour of six. Those who are prevented approaching the windows hurl their packages over the heads of others who bar the approach. Sacks and baskets of letters are shovelled into the spaces prepared to receive them. When the clock commences to strike six, the rush becomes greater and greater, the interest more and more intense. One, two, three -the struggle of the outsiders is desperate - four, five, six. And at the stroke the windows fall simultaneously, and all is over. A sudden stillness approaching to awe falls on the multitude. Those who are behindhand may consign their charge calmly into any post-office they pass by, where it will be stamped with the ominous words "Too late!" any letter. Those become the property of the crown. thousand one hundred letters were posted without any address; that seventy-eight thousand stamps were picked up loose; that not unfrequently letters were put into water-hydrants by mistake for letterboxes; a live snake escaped from a postal packet, and a live horned frog reached Liverpool from the United States. The report does not state whether it subsisted on the contents of the letter. In the same report we learn that postmen must be peculiarly obnoxious to dogs; for in one town alone twenty per cent. of the lettercarriers were bitten by dogs in that year. In 1855 the first annual report of the post-office was presented to Parliament; and there are no blue-books which afford so much interest. This interest is communicated to all the chiefs of the depart ment and to the body of the officials, for there is none in which there exists such a hearty esprit de corps. The whole nation has gratefully recognized the indefatiga. ble zeal and great ability of the late Mr. Fawcett: it would be sufficient praise to say that he adequately filled the place of Lord John Manners, who left amid universal expressions of regret, leaving be hind him pleasant memories, not only political, but personal. Lord John Manners's reports are especially full of valuable information. In that of 1877 he states that, during fifteen months, the number The interest of the post-office is now of letters received in the returned-letter transferred to the interior of the building. office was five million eight hundred and There in large halls may be seen hun-ninety-seven thousand; that thirty-three dreds of clerks lifting, arranging, stamping piles of letters. Heaps of correspondence and papers are lying on the floors and raked into large baskets, and carried by lifts or on rails to various parts of the establishment. A number of officers are employed all this time in endeavoring to restore wrappers to newspapers which have been carelessly tied up. Unfastened and torn letters are conveyed to a different part of the building, and the greatest care is taken to endeavor to find out their proper destinations. It is incredible the number of letters that are posted open, without any address whatever. Then there are letters insufficiently stamped and fastened, which contain every variety of female ornament and fashion, jewellery, fans, feathers; not to mention medicines, pill-boxes, many of which fall on the floor when handled by the clerks, and, with as much care as is possible, are replaced in their proper cases. We are called, and are rather proud of being so styled, a practical, careful people: the lost luggage in cabs and at stations testifies that we are exactly the contrary. From £12,000 to £14,000 in money, with no address, or misdirected, and bank government bills, money orders, bills of exchange, that pass through the office which has to rectify blunders, amounts to a very large sum. The trouble it is to discover the owners may well be imagined. In some cases it is impossible: so the report tells us that many presents, such as rings, brooches, various ornaments, never reach their destination, as they are unaccompanied by These details are curious, but there is a deeper interest connected with the postal service. It has been already remarked, nowhere are the fraternité and egalité principles carried out so consistently as in the letter-box; the coronet of the earl jostles with the pauper's wafer; letters of all shapes and colors; tidings of life and death, hope and despair; protestations of affection, indignant refusals, demands for urgent payments, supplications for delay, announcements of birth, last wills and testaments, love-sonnets and sermons, affections and hatreds, blessings and railings, — all the varied complicated relations of a vast artificial society, mingle in the letter-box and mail-bag. Do we ever think, when we see a mail rushing through space, what heart-mysteries and life-interests it carries with it? If to the thoughtful mind the mere presence of a mail-train is so suggestive, it may well be imagined how many tales of sorrow and romance are forced upon the attention of the post office authorities or even subordinate em Obern Yenen, ployees; what anxieties arise when a is by a stroke of the pen converted into foreign mail is overdue. Moreover, to write in haste and repent at leisure is the experience of many an impetuous correspondent, who is ignorant or oblivious of the rule that a letter once posted can never Holborn Union. Ann Megs, Oileywhite, Amshire. Isle of Wight, For Mister Willy wot brinds de Baber in Lang puzzled the officers, until it was discovered Qeen Vic Tory at Winer Casel, entertaining applications made to the Lord John Manners gives a great many office, and extraordinary letters received. May, 1878. be taken out of the box, that it becomes It is seen that Ann Megs resides in the the property of the postmaster-general until it is delivered to the person to whom it is addressed. The reports give many instances of the painful results of haste and carelessness: "On one occasion a gentlemanly-looking person called and expressed a fear that he had enclosed two letters in wrong envelopes, and that all his prospects in life depended on his having his letters back, and correcting the mistake; inasmuch as they revealed plans which he had adopted to save two mercantile houses in the same line of business, whose interests clashed at every point." A similar blunder occurred in a more delicate affair, when a young lady was most urgent to have her letters returned, as she had accepted the wrong offer of marriage. The local postmaster was unable to resist her earnest entreaties, and thus prevented a painful catastrophe. But a whole romance might be written on the following incident: A young lady, who had been engaged to a prosperous young manufacturer, was informed, a few days before the marriage was fixed for, that the firm was insolvent. Not a moment was to be lost, and a letter was written and posted, breaking the engagement; when, within two hours, it was discovered that the report was entirely unfounded. The report continues: "The daughter with her parents rushed to the post-office, and no words can describe the scene the appeals, the tears, the wringing of hands, the united entreaties of the family, to have the fatal letter restored, but, alas! all was vain, the rule admitted of no exception." The blind office is perhaps the part of the building of the greatest interest to visitors. Here a number of clerks, selected from the most efficient of the officers, have to decipher addresses, which to the inexperienced would seem utterly illegible or unintelligible. He should find it diffi cult what bag to place the enclosed in, Coneyach Lunentick A Siliam. MY LORD, I ask you for some information about finding out persons who are missing. I want to find out my mother and sisters who are in Australia I believe. If you would find them out for me please, let me know by return of Post, and also your charge at the lowest. Yours, &c. January 14, 1878. We heard in the paper about 12 months back, Mary Ann, the servant girl in London was dead. Please send it to the Printers office by return of post whether there was a small fortune left for SPRINGFIELD ILLINOIS U.S. 1 Jan. 1878. Mr. Postmaster if you would be so kind as to seek for us work as we are two colored Illinois, and would like to young men of come to England and get work as Coachmen or race horse trainers, as we have been exif any further information about it we can perance for twelve years practicesing training be reckemend to any one that wish to hire us, pleas to advertise it in the papers for us. KANSAS Feb 16-1878. HONERAD SIR, - My Grandfather Mr. John made a will on or about 22 Oct. 18dated at leaving to his son, my Father, £1000, the interest to be paid to him halfyearly, the prinsaple to be divided among his children at his death. My father died on the last leaving myself and one brother who wishes you to look up & collect the money for us. SIR, -i rite a Line two see if you hard Enny thing of my husband that was left at ill. pleese will you rite back by return with the assistance of some philanthropic of post as we are in great trobble. J'ai cinquante trois ans. Veuillez être assez bon de me faire réponse pour me donner des résultats sur l'existence de Madame -? Si parfois elle était toujours veuve je voudrais lui faire la proposition de lui demander sa main d'après que j'en aurais des nouvelles. En attendant, Monsieur, votre réponse. — J'ai l'honneur d'être, &c.* and benevolent ladies, furnished rooms in different localities, where temporary rest and shelter is provided for the postmen during the brief respite from their daily toil, and where they can appreciate these generous efforts of kind and sympathizing friends. And certainly no class of public servants are worthier of kindness and sympathy, while of all our State departments there is none of which we may be justly prouder. Time is passing rapidly. We have visited the principal offices. The hall-clock when the bags must be all sealed and is silently approaching the hour of eight, ready to leave. At five minutes to eight all is bustle and activity; at five minutes after eight the halls are silent and deserted, the bags have been collected and placed in the mail-vans, which dash off to the different railway stations. A few minutes more and the mail-trains - those messengers of joy, of sorrow, of hope, rest and unrest will be rushing through the darkness to their several destinations. From Macmillan's Magazine. UNEXPLAINED. "For facts are stubborn things." 1. (continued.) SMOLLETT. The Ulrichsthal. the meeting-place gentlemen had arrived there quite an hour before; so they had ordered luncheon, or dinner rather, at the inn, and thoroughly explored the ruin. But dinner discussed, and neither Frau von Walden nor I objecting to pipes, our cavaliers were amiably willing to show us all there was to be seen. WE had delayed longer than we inAnecdotes connected with the post-tended at the china manufactory, and in office abound in many recent works. We consequence we were somewhat late at may mention especially the autobiographies of Anthony Trollope and Edmund Yates, both of these distinguished littérateurs having filled important posts in that department: it is remarkable how many men of genius have commenced life in St. Martin's le-Grand. And we may add how deeply the sympathies of noble and generous ladies have been interested in the welfare of the excellent subordinates in this The ruins were those of an ancient public department. While Mr. Fawcett monastery, one of the most ancient in Ger. devoted his wonderful energies to the de- many, I believe. They covered a very velopment of the machinery and the work-large piece of ground, and had they been ing of all branches of the service, Mrs. Fawcett gave all her heart to the improvement of the homes of those who are toiling for our benefit. Lady John Manners has, In addition to the above extracts from the bluebooks, in The Royal Mail" will be found a chapter, headed "Curious Letters addressed to the Post-office,' which contains a fund of amusing anecdote. The whole volume is really the romance of a public office. in somewhat better preservation they would have greatly impressed us; as it was, they were undoubtedly, even to the unlearned in archæological lore, very interesting. The position of the monastery had been well and carefully chosen, for on one side it commanded a view of surpassing beauty over the valley through which we had travelled from Seeberg, while on |