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THE LONDON POST-OFFICE.

HER Majesty's Postmaster-General is the Commanderin-Chief of an army of great magnitude, quartered not only over the whole surface of the United Kingdom and in almost every portion of the British Empire, but also at many Foreign Ports. His Secretaries form his Staff; his Surveyors are Commanders of Districts, to whom Postmasters report, and from whom in most cases they receive their orders. The General Post-Office in London-his Head-Quarters-is composed of a force of 2903 persons, divided into two Departments, each of which, without further flourish of trumpets, shall now rapidly pass before our readers in Review.

THE INLAND AND FOREIGN DEPARTMENT.
(COMMONLY CALLED THE GENERAL POST.)

The daily labour in London of this Office is composed of two very violent convulsions,—namely, the morning delivery and evening despatch; and two comparatively slight aguish shivers, caused by a tiny arrival and departure of letters by the day-mails.

At any period between these paroxysms, there reigns

throughout the department a silence and solitude similar to that which, during the hours of divine service, so creditably characterizes the streets of Edinburgh on the Sabbath-day. Save the ticking of the great clock, the stranger, as he paces from one large hall to another, hears nothing but his own footsteps; and with the exception now and then of a dark-coated clerk popping out of one door into another, of a bright red postman occasionally passing like a meteor across the floor, and of a few over-tired men in scarlet uniform sitting and lying in various attitudes,-like certain persons in the galleries of "another place," fast asleep-no human being is to be seen. While therefore this well-regulated and wellworked public department is enjoying its siesta, we will endeavour to offer to our readers a rough outline of the scene of its operations.

When the present London Post-Office in 1829 was completely finished, it was found, after all, to be not large enough for its business;-and accordingly its first effort to obtain additional accommodation was, in 1831, to construct upon iron cantilevers a gallery halfway between the floor and the roof of one-half of the great sorting chamber, a vast lofty double hall 109 feet long, 80 feet 6 inches broad, and 28 feet high. In 1836, to obtain further accommodation, it was determined to eject the Secretary from the building, and to appropriate his very handsome suite of apartments therein to the uses of the Office.

Nevertheless, as soon as Parliament adopted Mr. Rowland Hill's proposal of the Penny Post, this brick

and mortar boot, which had always been too tight, was found to pinch so intolerably, that various expedients, one after another, were resorted to. First it was determined to construct, over the double hall we have just described, another set or suite of the same dimensions, which, instead of resting on the ceilings of the old ones, were to be suspended from a strong, arched, iron-girder roof by iron rods. In effecting however this ingenious operation, the inevitable result has been that the principal hall on the ground floor is deprived of its skylights, and to the serious inconvenience of the poor fellows who work in it, and we must add, to the discredit of the country, this important portion of the London-and consequently of the largest Post-Office in the world-is now lighted almost entirely during the whole sunshine, even of summer, by stinking gas! But the increased accommodation thus obtained not fully meeting the requirements of the new system, a small hollow quadrangle, built for lighting another portion of the establishment, was on the ground-floor converted into a little office; and, finally, these efforts not affording sufficient room, the Moneyorder Office, president, clerks, windowmen, ledgers, documents, papers and all, were ordered to swarm and emigrate from the Post-Office into an immense hive or building purposely constructed to receive them.

Besides these patchwork arrangements there has been constructed at each end of the large double halls on both floors, a very ingenious contrivance, suggested by Mr. Bokenham, called "the lifting machine." Within a set of iron bars about three inches asunder, reaching verti

cally from the floor of the lower halls to those above them, there are in strata, a series of platforms nine feet six inches broad by four feet deep, resembling the cages in which wild beasts at country fairs are usually confined, which, by the irresistible power of a steam-engine, are made on one side to rise twenty-eight feet, from the lower to the upper halls, and then, passing through a slit in the wall, to descend in like manner on the other side the whole thus circulating like the buckets of a dredging-machine. By which contrivance sorters and letter-carriers, accompanied by their baskets and bags, instead of having to toil up and down a steep staircase, are quickly and most conveniently transferred from one set of halls to the other.

On the floors of both stories are arranged long double desks, separated by passages between each set, averaging about five feet in breadth-each great chamber being overlooked by two elevated platforms for the "Inspectors," who, just as Persians worship the sun, regulate the whole of their movements by the expressive but ever-varying features of the hall's huge round-faced clock.

At a few minutes before five P.M. the whole force of the Inland Department, refreshed by its siesta, having assembled, the business for the evening begins by the entrance on the lower floors, from various doors, of porters and carriers, bringing, in various attitudes, bags and baskets full of letters, which have been either collected by hand within the immediate vicinity of St. Martin's-le-Grand, or delivered into the slits or at the windows of its prepaying office.

VOL. II.

At half-past five a stranger would fancy that the force assembled for the sorting of letters exceeded its work, and especially that by some unaccountable mystery the publication of newspapers, for the despatch of which the whole of the upper halls were in readiness, had been interdicted. On looking however into the large bins beneath the slits for receiving letters, white packets of all sizes and shapes are observed at about this period to drop down in arithmetical progression, increasing in number so rapidly that it soon occupies the attention of a sturdy porter to keep sweeping them with a broom into a heap, which, as fast as it can be tumbled into baskets, is carried away into the large sorting halls.

The fluttering, flapping, and flopping of all these letters -their occasional total cessation for a few seconds-and yet the almost awful rate at which they keep increasing, form altogether a very exciting scene.

As however the clock is unrelentingly progressing towards six P. M. we must reluctantly beg our readers to move with us from the letter-bins to an adjoining compartment, for the purpose of witnessing a moving picture of still greater interest.

At three-quarters past five a few newspapers, only by twos or by threes at a time, are to be heard falling heavily through broad slits into the spacious bins for receiving them, and the stranger has accordingly still reason to think that in the newspaper department of this world something somewhere must have gone wrong. In a few minutes, however, a professional, business-like tap is heard at the window, and a lean, tall, sinewy man-in

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