dead letters are the residuum, if we may so term it, of all the offices in England, as, after remaining in the local posts for a given time, they are transferred to the central office. The establishments of Dublin and Edinburgh, in like manner, collect all the same class of letters in Ireland and Scotland.

In looking over the list of articles remaining in these two letter offices one cannot help being struck with the manner in which they illustrate the feelings and habits of the two peoples. The Scotch dead letters rarely contain coin, and of articles of jewellery, such as form presents sent as tokens of affection, there is a lamentable deficiency; whilst the Irish ones are full of little cadeaux and small sums of money, illustrating at once the careless yet affectionate nature of the people. One item constantly meets the eye in Irish dead letters-'a free passage to New York.' Relations, who have gone to America and done well, purchase an emigration ticket, and forward it to some relative in the ould country' whom they wish to come over to join them in their prosperity. Badly written and worse spelt, many of them have little chance of ever reaching their destination, and as little of being returned to those who sent them, they lie silent in the office for a time and are then destroyed, whilst hearts, endeared to each other by absence enforced by the sundering ocean, mourn in sorrow an imaginary neglect.

When one considers it, the duties of the Post-office are multifarious indeed. Independently of its original function as an establishment for the conveyance of letters, of late it has become a parcel-delivery company and banking-house. In the sale of postage stamps it makes itself clearly a bank of issue, and in the circulation of money orders it still more seriously invades the avocations of the Lombard Street fraternity.

The money order system has sprung up almost with the rapidity of Jack the Giant-killer's bean-stalk. In the year ending April 1839 there were only 28,838 orders issued, representing 49,4967. 5s. 8d.; whilst in the year ending January 1849 there were sold 4,203,722 orders, of the value of 8,151,294l. 19s. 8d. The

next ten years will in all probability double this amount, as the increase up to the present time has been quite gradual. It cannot be doubted that the issuing of money-orders must have seriously infringed upon the bank-draft system, and every day it will do so more, as persons no longer confine themselves to transmitting small amounts, it being very frequently the case that sums of 501. and upwards are forwarded in this manner by means of a multiplication of orders. The rationale of money-orders is so simple, and so easily understood by all persons, that they must rapidly increase; and we do not doubt that Mr. Rowland Hill's suggestion of making them for larger amounts will before long be carried into execution, as it is found that the public cannot be deterred by limiting the amount of the order, from sending what sums they like, and the making one order supply the place of two or three would naturally diminish the very expensive labour of this department. The eight millions of money represented by these orders of course includes the transactions of the whole country, but they are properly considered under the head of the General Office, as all the accounts are kept there, and there every money-order is ultimately checked. Between twelve and thirteen thousand letters of advice are received every morning in the head office of this department, engaging until lately upwards of two hundred clerks, or a fourth of the entire number employed in the Bank of England. This number by a simplification of the accounts is now reduced, but it is still very considerable. On the sale of money-orders the Government gains 127. 10s. per thousand (in number) issued, and this more than covers the whole expense of the greatest monetary convenience for the body of the people ever established.

There is one room in the Postoffice which visitors should not fail to inquire for the late Secret Office. When Smirke designed the building he must have known the particular use to which this room would be put; a more low-browed, villanous-looking apartment could not well be conceived. It looks the room of a sneak, and it was one,-an official sneak, it

is true, but none the less a sneak. As we progress in civilization, force gives place to ingenious fraud. When Wolsey wished to gain possession of the letters of the ambassador to Charles V. he did so openly and dauntlessly, having ordered, as he

says,

A privye watche shoulde be made in London, and by a certain circuite and space aboutes it; in the whiche watche, after mydnyght, was taken passing betweene London and Brayneford, be certain of the watche appointed to that quarter, one riding towards the said Brayneford; who, examyned by the watche, answered so closeley that upon suspicion thereof, they searched hym, and founde secreteley hyd aboutes hym a little pacquet of letters superscribed in Frenche.

More modern ministers of state liked not this rough manner, but turning up their cuffs and by the aid of a light finger obtained what they wanted, without the sufferer being in the least aware of the activity of their digits. In this room the official letter-picker was appropriately housed. Unchallenged, and in fact unknown to any of the army of a thousand persons that garrisons the Post-office, he passed by a secret staircase every morning to his odious duties; every night he went out again unseen. He was, in short, the man in the iron mask of the Postoffice.

Behold him, in the latter days of his pride, in 1842, when the Chartists kept the north in commotion, and Sir James Graham issued more warrants authorizing the breaking open letters than any previous Secretary of State on record,-behold him in the full exercise of his stealthy art!

Some poor physical-force wretch at Manchester or Birmingham has been writing some trashy letters about pikes and fire-balls to his London confederates. See the springes a powerful government set to catch such miserable game! Immediately upon the arrival of the mails from the north the bags from the abovementioned places, together with one or two others to serve as a blind to the Post-office people, are immediately taken, sealed as they are, to the den of this secret inquisitor. He selects from them the letters he intends to operate upon. Before him

VOL. XLI. NO. CCXLII.

lie the implements of his craft,—a range of seals bearing upon them the ordinary mottos, and a piece of tobacco-pipe. If none of the seals will fit the impressions upon the letters he carefully takes copies in bread; and now the more serious operation commences. The tobacco-pipe redhot pours a burning blast upon the yielding wax; the letter is opened, copied, resealed, and returned to the bag, and reaches the person to whom it is directed apparently unviolated.

In the case of Mazzini's letters, however (the opening of which blew up the whole system), the dirty work was not even done by deputy; his letters were forwarded unopened to the Foreign-office, and there read by the minister himself. The abuses to which the practice was carried during the last century were of the most flagrant kind. Walpole used to issue warrants for the purpose of opening letters in almost unlimited numbers, and the use to which they were sometimes put might be judged by the following :—

In 1741, at the request of A., a warrant issued to permit A.'s eldest son to open and inspect any letters which A.'s youngest son might write to two females, one of whom that youngest son had imprudently married.

The foregoing is from the Report of the Secret Committee appointed to investigate the practice in 1844, and which contains some very curious matter. Whole mails, it appears, were sometimes detained for several days during the late war, and all the letters individually examined. French, Dutch, and Flemish enclosures were rudely rifled, and kept or sent forward at pleasure. There can be no doubt that, in some cases, such as frauds upon banks or the revenue, forgeries or murder, the power of opening letters was used, impartially to individuals and beneficially to the State; but the discoveries made thereby were so few that it did not in anyway counterbalance the great public crime of violating public confidence and perpetuating an official immorality.

Thus far we have walked with our reader, and explained to him the curious machinery which acts upon the vast correspondence of the metropolis with the country, and of the country generally, with foreign

R

parts, within the establishment at St. Martin's-le-Grand. The machinery for its conveyance is still more vast, if not so intricate. The foreign mails have at their command a fleet of steamers such as the united navies of the world can scarcely match, threading the coral reefs of the Loan Antilles,' skirting the western coast of South America, touching weekly at the ports of the United States, and bi-monthly traversing the Indian Ocean-tracking, in fact, the face of the ocean wherever England has great interests or her sons have many friends. Ere long the vast Pacific, which a hundred years ago was rarely penetrated even by the adventurous circumnavigator, will become a highway for the passage of her Majesty's mails; and letters will pass to Australia and New Zealand, our very antipodes, as soon as letters of old reached the Highlands of Scotland or the western counties of Ireland. This vast system of water-posts, if 30 they might be called, is kept up at an annual expense of 600,0007.

The conveyance of inland letters by means of the railways is comparatively inexpensive, as many of the companies are liberal enough to take the bags for nothing, and others at a very small charge. Every night at eight o'clock, like so much lifeblood issuing from a great heart, the mails leave the metropolis, radiating on their fire-chariots to the extremities of the land. As they rush along the work of digestion goes on as in the flying bird. The travelling post-office is not the least of these curious contrivances for saving time consequent upon the introduction of railroads. At the metropolitan stations, from which they issue, a letter

box is open until the last moment of their departure. The last letters into it are, of course, unsorted, and have to go through that process as the train proceeds. Whilst the clerks are busy in their itinerant office, by an ingenious, self-acting process, a delivery and reception of mail-bags is going on over their heads. At the smaller stations, where the trains do not stop, the letter-bags are lightly hung upon rods which are swept by the passing mail-carriage, and the letters drop into a net suspended on one side of it to receive them. The bags for delivery are, at the same moment, transferred from the other side to the platform. The sorting of the newly-received bags immediately commences, and by this arrangement letters are caught in transitu, and the right direction given to them, without the trouble and loss of time attendant upon the old mailcoach system, which necessitated the carriage of the major part of such letters to St. Martin's-le-Grand previous to their final despatch.

The success of Mr. Rowland Hill's system, with its double delivery, its rapid transmissions, and its great cheapness, which brings it within the range of the very poorest, is fast becoming apparent. Year by year it is increasing the amount of revenue it returns to the State, its profits for 1849 being upwards of 800,000l.; a falling off, it is true, of some 700,000l. a-year from the revenue derived under the old rates, but every day it is catching up this income, and another ten years of but average prosperity will, in all probability, place it far beyond its old earnings, with a tenfold amount of accommodation aud cheapness to the public.

ΟΥ

In solitudes

a hill-side bordered by a forest there stood an old church of small dimensions, whose slender tower contained one soft-voiced bell, which chimed forth on each successive Sabbath a gentle invitation to attend the morning service; or when, at distant intervals of time, an interment took place in the surrounding buryingground, its solemn toll gave notice of the rare occurrence. Laurisheim had fallen into comparative disuse ever since a more stately edifice had been reared some miles off, but in the same extensive parish, and with a capacious cemetery attached. The minister who officiated at the old church resided near the new one; few and scattered were the neighbouring homesteads; and a solitary cottage opening on the peaceful resting-place of the dead alone afforded evidence of the vicinity of the living, by the blue smoke which might be seen curling upwards from a chimney in the low thatched roof. This cottage was occupied by an individual, commonly known by the appellation of Johnny, or Johannellinus,' meaning the diminutive, who filled the offices conjointly of clerk and sexton, both these situations, as may be supposed, being almost sinecures at Laurisheim.

Johannellinus was the smallest specimen of humanity, to be perfectly formed, and with none of the distortions or imperfections of dwarfs, that it is possible to imagine,-he was, in short, a real pigmy; middleaged, with a charming expression of countenance, laughing blue eyes, and dancing, frisking, flibbertigibbet, will

'-the-wisp sort of ways. He was an accomplished clerk, reading sharply but distinctly, and leading the halfdozen singers with all the airs and graces of a fashionable performer; and as for his sextonship, no one could dig a grave so well and expeditiously as the agile, fairy-like Johannellinus: some persons indeed affirmed, that the little folk in green' must aid him sometimes.

When a funeral was performed at Laurisheim, it was picturesque (if such an expression may be so applied) to watch the mournful procession winding slowly up the hill-side, defile amongst crags and forest abutments, where wild roses, strawberries, and periwinkles bloomed in profusion, and the footfall was noiseless on the soft springy turf; then emerging from the wood into the open space, and entering the porch of the house of God, so beautiful in its primitive simplicity and quaint fashionings.

Very touching it was also on those summer evenings, when the dew it falleth slow,' to listen far down in the valley beneath to the distant tones of Johannellinus's flageolet, when the peasant resting from his toil, with his children sporting around, would take the pipe from his mouth and say, 'Listen, listen all,—'t is good Johannellinus piping away!' as the sweet sounds floated past on the evening breeze. Johannellinus was an universal favourite, welcomed everywhere, though his were as angels' visits, few and far between; but when he did come with his flageolet, which he rarely left behind, great was the rejoicing amongst the favoured household, young and old; neighbours flocked in, a dance was sometimes got up, and little Johnny was feted and caressed by all. Often, too, the woodman, pursuing his occupation in the forest depths, felt he was not so solitary after all, when suddenly a strain of some cheerful air re-echoed through the glades, and he said to himself, There is Johannellinus, I wonder how many orchises the manikin has found to-day!' for Johnny employed all his leisure hours, of which he had many, in searching far and wide for orchises, readily disposing of them to gardeners and

amateurs.

6

And Johnny found plenty of use for his gains, inasmuch as he was

the sole protector of an orphan nephew, whose father had perished at sea, and whose young mother, Johnny's only sister, had literally died of a broken heart for her husband's loss. Very dearly had poor little Johnny loved his sister, and very tenderly he also loved her orphan boy, thrown on the world in helpless destitution; and to give him a good education, and fit him for gaining an honest and respectable livelihood, was the worthy uncle's first wish. Johnny's sole recreation was his flageolet; and seated on the root of some old tree, he often solaced himself with its sweet strains as he rested awhile from his toils; and certainly the second wish of his guileless heart was to lead the singing at Laurisheim with that, instead of with his voice, on the Sabbath; but he dared not propose the measure, as the minister disliked all change or innovation, and Johnny stood in much awe of him.

It was on the eve of the holy Baptist's day, when Johannellinus had just seated himself to enjoy his frugal repast after a wearying day in the forest, that a pedestrian entered his cottage asking for rest and refreshment. Now there was something in the wayfarer's appearance and tone of voice which instantly prepossessed Johnny in his favour; he was a tall, attenuated man, perhaps fifty years of age, but he looked older than he was, because his long locks which flowed over his shoulders were silvery white; his stooping gait, too, might have led to the supposition of infirmity at first sight, had not the piercing glance of his dark, eagle eye, and a free agile step, altogether disproved the allegation. The request for rest and refreshment was simply made, and the words were simple enough in themselves, but Johnny's musical ear detected the pleasant intonation of a sonorous voice, for he judged by sound, as Lavater did by expression; and if ever one human being felt suddenly attracted towards another, Johnny did to the strange pedestrian. The latter carried a stout oaken staff in one hand, while the other supported a kind of wallet flung over his shoulder; but, despite dust and fatigue, little Johnny felt perfectly warranted in saying,

'I fear that a gentleman like you sir, will find it hard to put up with the sort of welcome I can give; bus my best shall be done.'

The stranger smiled in a sad sort threw down his wallet, and drew towards the table, and without more ado assisted Johnny to dispose of the humble viands. He then asked to be shown where he could sleep, and Johnny ushered him into the spare closet containing a camp bed and one chair, the single window looking full on the churchyard where the moon was rising over the dark trees, casting strange flickering shadows on the graves beneath.

Long and earnestly the stranger gazed on the scene, and then turning round and looking down on his companion, he said,-

Will you allow me to inhabit this apartment as long as I please? I will give you but little trouble, as I shall be out in the forest nearly as much as yourself.' Pointing to wards the crowded hillocks, he added, 'A draught from St. Hubert's spring will be the most delicious beverage for a thirsty soul.'

And this mention of St. Hubert's well completed Johnny's astonishment; few persons-and those only the natives of the spot-knowing t existence, hidden as it was amidst the mansions of the dead, and arched over, curtained also with ivy and other creepers.

However, Johannellinus held his peace, for there was somewhat in the stranger's voice and mien betokening both reserve and melancholy, that he durst not venture on idle questions. He knew not how to refuse the request preferred, particularly as the gentleman put down several gold pieces, thus liberally anticipating payment: so, after many deprecatory hints on Johnny's pars as to the incomplete domestic appointments of his housekeeping, ală of which were unheeded by his guest the arrangement was concluded, mueb to Johnny's own amazement at its suddenness, and at his opinions being so quietly but peremptorily overruled.

Now, although Johannellinus was far from being of a prying or inquisitive disposition, yet there was abundant reason in the present cass why curiosity might have been for