Her Majesty's Mails

Undoubtedly, the first thing which will strike an observer placed in circumstances like ours, is, that the Post-Office is eminently a democratic establishment, conducted on the most improved fraternité et égalité principles. The same sort of variety that marks society, here marks its letters; envelopes of all shades and sizes; handwriting of all imaginable kinds, written in all shades of ink, with every description of pen; names the oddest, and names the most ordinary, and patronymics to which no possible exception can be taken. Then to notice the seals. Here is one envelope stamped with the escutcheoned signet of an earl; another where the wax has yielded submissively to the initials of plain John Brown; and yet another, plastered with cobbler's wax, with an impression that makes no figure in Burke or Debrett, but which, indeed, bears many evidences of having been manufactured with hob-nails. Then to think that Queen Victoria, and John Brown, and the cobbler aforesaid, must each find the inevitable Queen's head, without which no letter of high or low degree can pass unquestioned! Here they are--these letters--mingling for a few hours at any rate in silent but common fellowship, tossed about in company, belaboured with the self-same knocks on the head, sent to their destination locked in loving embrace, and sometimes, as in the case of the cobbler's, exceedingly difficult to part.