tain 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 ii 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 any letter. Those become the property of the Crown.
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 department and to the body of the officials – for there is none in which there exists such a hearty esprit de corps. The whole nation have gratefully recognised the indefatigable 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 behind him pleasant memories, not only political, but personal. Lord John Maiiners's reports are especially full of valuable information. In that of 1877 he states that, during fifteen months, the number of letters received in the Returned Letter Office was 5,897,000; that 33,100 letters were posted without any address; that 78,000 stamps were picked up loose; that not unfrequently letters were put into water-hydrants by mistake for letter-boxes; 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 20 per cent of the letter-carriers were bitten by dogs in that year.
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 colours; 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 employees; what anxieties arise when
