Her Majesty's Mails

But we must make ready for our journey, and enter more into detail. While van after van is arriving with its heavy loads of mail-bags, we have time to notice that the train standing at the great London terminus is nearly all post-office. Two or three carriages are being filled as full as possible with made-up bags, and two more, fitted up like post-offices, are simply meant for operations similar to those we have already seen at the General Post-Office, in connexion with the unfinished work which has now to be accomplished during the journey. It is with the remaining carriage only that we have to do. Seen from the outside, the office itself may still answer to the description given of it twenty-five years ago by our authority above adverted to, although considerable improvements must have been made in its construction since that time. Though the structure is built with a very evident serviceable purpose, the large, heavily-painted, windowless vehicle, looks more as if intended for the conveyance of Her Majesty's horses than Her Majesty's mails; the roof, however, covered with glass, with other contrivances for the purposes of ventilation, soon convinces us that it is intended for some description of the genus homo. We go inside, and find it built like an ordinary saloon carriage, about twenty-two feet long, and as wide and spacious as the railway arrangements will allow.