"in five days an answer of a letter may be
had from a place three hundred miles distant
from the writer! " Mr. Chamberlayne, now
in a state of irrepressible excitement,
continues his list of wonders:—" Moreover, if any
gentleman desire to ride post to any principal
town of England, Post-horses are always in
readiness (taking no horse without the consent
of his owner), which in other kings' reigns was
not duly observed; and only three-pence is
demanded for every English mile, and for
every stage, to the post-boy four-pence for
conducting. Besides this excellent
convenience of conveying letters, and men on
horseback, there is of late such an admirable
commodiousness, both for men and women of
better rank, to travel from London to almost
any great town of England, and to almost all
the villages near this great city, that the like
hath not been known in the world; and that
is by stage-coaches, wherein one may be
transported to any place, sheltered from foul
weather and foul ways, free from endamaging
one's health or body by hard jogging, or over-
violent motion; and this, not only at a low
price, as about a shilling for every five miles,
but with such velocity and speed, as that the
posts in some foreign countries make not
more miles in a day; for the stage-coaches—
called flying-coaches—make forty or fifty
miles in a day, as from London to Oxford or
Cambridge; and that in the space of twelve
hours, not counting the time for dining,
setting forth not too early, nor coming in too
late."

Mr. Chamberlayne's enthusiasm falls oddly
upon the ears of Mr. John Bull, of 1852, who
has eaten a large slice of melon with his
breakfast this morning in the Maison d'Or
on the Boulevards, and is now about to
discuss the quality of a late chop in Fleet
Street; and to let his friends in Paris know,
by to-morrow morning, of his whereabouts
in the British metropolis. Yet we have
pitched upon the wrong Mr. Bull for our
contrast.

Mr. Bull, taking his chop in Fleet Street, is
very loud about the discrepancies of our postal
arrangements. He has two friends—one who
lives at Penzance, and the second who has
chosen for his residence the most northerly
point of Scotland: these can communicate
by letter by the payment of one penny;
yet Mr. Bull (who has also a friend at
Dover, who transacts business with a firm at
Calais) is compelled to pay ten-pence for the
twenty miles which his letters travel. It costs
two shillings and two-pence to send a letter to
Spain; yet one may be despatched any day to
New Zealand for one shilling; and the
emigrant in the backwoods of Canada pays but
one shilling and two-pence for his letter of
good tidings to his friend in London. Thus,
crossing the Channel only costs two-pence less
than the voyage to the Antipodes. Therefore
Mr. Bull grumbles; and talks about a
convention for the equitable adjustment of the
post-offices of the world. He would not be
sorry to see delegates from the different
countries of the world assembled here in
London to discuss the rates at which it is the
duty of all honest states to enable the nations
of the earth to interchange friendly greetings.
So much has been done in England, that he
thinks a little co-operation on the part of
foreign countries would be a mere act of
common honesty, and he proudly points to the
great results of Victoria's Penny Post-bag:
a vulgar bag it is considered, perhaps, by
those who measure gentility by the length of
the purse, and very unbecoming the dignity
of the Queen to receive copper coinage; but
it contains more treasure, more kindly human
emotions, more cordial confidences, than the
bag of any other sovereign on the face of the
earth. We should like the shade of Mr.
Chamberlayne to rise, and take just one peep
into it.

Mr. Bull, of London, serenely contemplating
the working of the penny inland postage, and
objecting to embarrass himself with the
wrongs of his Dover friend, whose daily ten-
pences rankle at his heart, proudly, we repeat,
refers to the recent history of the Post-office.
The inflated pride of Mr. Chamberlayne, with
his post-office farmed on behalf of the then Duke
of York for the annual sum of thirty thousand
pounds, raises a sneer on Mr. Bull's lip, as he
surveys the present balance-sheet issued from
St. Martin's-le-Grand. And Mr. Bull has
some reason to be satisfied. Let us look at
the facts he can place before us.

In 1839, her Majesty Queen Victoria's
Post-bag received eight million four hundred
and seventy thousand letters. On the fifth
day of December in that year, the famous
reduction in the Post-office charges came in
force. The effect of the change was
instantaneous. Victoria's Post-bag was too small to
bear the vast increase — every corner was
crammed; and the Postmaster-General, with
all his secretaries, found it a difficult matter
to manage the unwieldy mass. In 1840, no
less than one hundred and seventy million
letters were crammed into Queen Victoria's
Post-bag. The ghost of Mr. Chamberlayne
has a terrible look of wonder and awe, as
Mr. Bull, of 1852, announces the fact—
talking of millions with the utmost
unconcern.

We allow Mr. Bull to skip forward from the
year 1840 to the year 1845, and then once
more pause to hear him. In this year, we
are informed, two hundred and seventy-one
million and a half of letters were
absolutely stuffed into the Britannic Post-bag!
Mr. Bull's eyes gleam with uncontrollable
satisfaction as he rolls the numbers out of his mouth,
and becomes dreadfully excited as he wanders
about later years; till, with dilated orbs, his
hand clenched upon the table, and his voice
raised to its most sonorous pitch, he declares
the total number of letters that passed through
the Post-office in the year 1850 to have been