obstacle, imaginary or real. There is no
financial difficulty in the way; for the
increased allowance to railways, as well as
the additional carts, horses, and servants
required, would only involve an outlay
corresponding to new income derived from an
enlarged sphere of operations.

The great railway companies are opposed to
a parcels–post, upon the plea that it would
seriously reduce their revenues. Carriers, great
and small, and of every class, are likewise said
to disapprove of it. This is not remarkable.
The reply to their statements is simply this:
that in political economy it is an universally
accepted maxim, that the public weal must
be held paramount to private advantage.
The majority of social improvements have a
tendency, more or less direct, to interfere
with some existing industrial occupations.
This fact cannot, however, be for one
moment recognised as a testimony against
those who press on in the march of national
progress. The only rational course for persons
who feel their once remunerative businesses
sinking under the pressure of advancing
civilisation, is to search for gain in other
fields of honest enterprise. The roadside
innkeepers, and the stage–coach
proprietors, had an immense capital destroyed
by the introduction of the railway system.
For the sake of the public, parliament
destroyed the old travelling regime, and
granted large privileges to railway
companies. It did not, however, give them in
perpetuity a, charter authorising them to hold
for their own exclusive profit a monopoly of
the principal means of transit and conveyance
throughout the three kingdoms. Even,
therefore, if the railways were likely to suffer
somewhat by the parcels–post, it would be no
legitimate argument against the adoption of
that great social boon. But it does not
appear that railway dividends would be
placed in jeopardy. The Committee of the
House of Commons appointed to investigate
this subject, visited one night the General
Post–Oflice in Saint Martin's–le–Grand, that
they might judge for themselves as to the
character of the small packets of
miscellaneous character which are now transmitted
by post. They report, "that a large proportion
were of a sort which would not be sent
but for the facilities afforded by the Post–
Office in their distribution."

We have in the Post–Office an admirable
machinery for conveying letters, newspapers,
and books, at a very small cost, to suburban
retirements, country seats, farm–houses, and
remote hamlets, as well as to the
metropolitan palaces of the wealthy. A further
utilisation and extension of this machinery is
demanded. It is very reasonably required
that the rate of four pence per lb., now
applicable only to printed matter, or
manuscript put up in covers left open at the ends,
be extended to any description of commodity
not specially objectionable from undue size
or of offensive and dangerous material. A
parcels–post, based upon this principle, would
not only be beneficial to trade and to social
intercourse, but would likewise greatly
augment the revenue.

Something of the kind seems to have
existed within the metropolis a hundred
years ago, and its extension throughout the
country was then suggested. In seventeen
hundred and forty–eight, De Foe, speaking of
the London district post, says: "You are not
tied up to a single piece of paper as in the
General Post–Office; but any packet under a
pound weight goes at the same price." Fifty
years earlier we read of band–boxes and
heavy parcels being satisfactorily distributed
by the penny–post messengers of the
metropolis.

                          AN OLD STORY.

THE city holds high festival to–day;
The people, senate, emperor, all are met;
The circus burns with gem and gold array,
Above, close–rank'd, the surging crowd is set;
Below are gather'd, arm'd with spear and net,
They that for Rome's delight to death are come;
Afar strange sounds, heard indistinctly yet,
But heard too well, strike Hope the flatterer dumb,
The lion's hungry voice blends with th' inhuman
      hum.

But now the strife of man with man is o'er.
Take hence the dead; the unenvied conqueror
       crown;
For slave with fellow slave shall fight no more,
Nor peer with peer dispute a vile renown,
But man with beast. Down with the barriers,
      down!
And let the kingly savage come this way!
Like some dark chief, with terror–striking frown
He comes, he comes, impatient of delay,—
The dreadful lion comes, and darkens all the day.

Pale, but determined, scarce three steps aside,
Stands the proud victim, passionless as trance,
Yet inly weeps, for all his Stoic pride,
As memory throws far back her longing glance,
And where the fleet young steps once led the dance,
Again he sports a child amid the reeds,
Or plucks wild fruit by his loved lake's expanse,
Or listens while across the blowing meads,
A voice comes down the wind which chants his
      father's deeds.

He knows that voice, which calls as mothers call,
From some lost world to grief–bewilder'd men.
But hark! a roar, that might whole woods appal,
Bursts from the infuriate lord of glade and glen,
And, lo! Androclus wakes to life agen:
Resolved he turns, for it were gain to die,
And nobly heedless how, or where, or when,
Looks calmly down with sad victorious eye:
The man and lion gaze while Rome sits breathless by.

The lordly beast in baffled wonder stands,
Like to a man that seeks some haunting thought,
Some deed that, writ on Time's unresting sands,
Life's winds have rased, scarce knowing what is
      sought:
So by the sylvan king hath memory wrought;