this sultry afternoon, under some friendly hedge, and that the birds have had too much of their own way among the corn for the last hour or two, and that this sudden show of enthusiasm is put on for the occasion. Billy works his wooden clapper, and exercises his voice, at fourpence a day, and if he is a good boy and not caught idling or sleeping at his post, he gets a bit of supper into the bargain. The daily fourpence is a welcome addition to the scanty income of his widowed mother, who, the relict of a farm-labourer, is herself at work up on yonder slope, hoeing turnips, at which she has been ploddingly engaged ever since six in the morning. Poor Nelly Bunce's day's work is good for eightpence and a jug of skimmed milk from the dairy, which she will have to fetch, or send Billy for it when they leave off work. Perhaps the lowest of all occupants of the kingdom of labour, who have any recognised position, are these poor women workers on the farm: they are paid by the day at a minimum rate of wages; they are not paid when the weather is such as to prevent their working, and consequently they are driven to work in the face of storms and tempests which pierce them to the bones, and plague them with agues and rheumatisms, and often send them to their graves at an age when other women are yet hale and hearty. And all this they undergo for a pittance which, taken at an average, would not pay the washing-bills of a tradesman's wife. Nelly Bunce, in wet weather, wears a ragged man's coat, cropped of its buttons, over a coarse russet gown; at present the coat is laid aside, for the hot sun has thawed the rheumatism out of her for a while, and she can do with only an apron. A flat crush bonnet, and a pair of cut down man's boots, complete her visible costume; such is the uniform of her class, and Nelly has no pretensions beyond it. After all, Nelly is content-which, for all we know, may be a thing to be rejoiced at: if you talk to her she does not grumble, but takes things as they come, and is not half so solicitous about the future as you might expect her to be. She has much more apathy than sympathy in her mental constitution; and, so far, is bucklered by a benevolent Providence against the hard conditions of her lot. When Farmer Dobbs has carried all his hay and got it fairly stacked under the rick-cloths, in ricks of moderate size-for he is not a man of extremes either way--and has seen the thatching in progress, ne has time to turn his attention to a few other matters that want looking after. Now he is off to look at the corn-crops, and see that Billy Bunce with his clapper, and that other scare-crow Tom Tiles, whom he has intrusted with an old gun and a few blank charges, are diligently on the watch. If he catch them asleep, he will wake them up with his whip, maugre all laws against assault and battery. Then he is off, to look at the oxen and sheep pasturing together in the meadows by the brook; and a very satisfactory and picturesque sight it is that meets the farmer's eye at this pleasant spot. The day is fizzing hot-the July sun darting down his rays from a deep blue sky without a cloud. The sheep, after feeding full off the sweet grass, have lain | down under the shadow of the trees, to sleep off their full meal in the cool shade. As for the oxen, they have nearly all found their way into the water, where they stand enjoying the fresh bath, and swishing the flies from their sides with their long tails. Yon sturdy bull alone declines the water, preferring to cool his tough hide amidst the green bushes, into which he has backed his huge bulk out of the fierce sunshine. Dobbs is quite satisfied with their condition, and now he walks on to look at that speculation of hops, just to see what prospect there may be of a crop. The hops want pruning, having spread too freely, and he sets young Giles about that business forthwith, while the weather is hot enough to cauterize the wounds inflicted by the knife, and prevent the waste of sap. Next he turns his attention to the potatoes, in which he is more than usually interested this year, because of his new experiment; and, as they have come up well, he gives orders to have them carefully hoed, that they may get fair play. As for Mrs. Dobbs, we have only to mention that her feathered broods have all done well, and her stock of poultry of all sorts is far beyond the wants of the farm, and will have to be thinned off, dead or alive, for the Bilsbury market. Meanwhile, the affairs of the dairy go on as briskly as ever, and the store of Tangley cheese bids fair to be, as usual, excellent in quality, and more abundant than ever. Soon after the hay-harvest, the grasshoppers begin to assert themselves in a most vociferous manner. One of our favourite poets finds a charm in the song of this insect, which many people fail to recognise. It is Keats who says:— "The poetry of earth is never dead; When all the birds are faint with the hot sun, From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead;" So long as the voice runs from hedge to hedge, we have no objection to it; but when it rises in chorus incessantly from every turf in the field, we are apt to feel our teeth set on edge, and to be reminded of ten thousand garden gates whose hinges want oiling, and all on the swing at once. It requires more imagination than we possess to discern poetry in the chirping of myriads of grasshoppers: the croaking of frogs, we should think, has an equal claim to harmony, and of the two we are inclined to prefer the latter. Their song, however, must be music sweet enough to the birds, who now devour them by whole hecatombs, and to whom they doubtless afford a rich treat. It is astonishing to note how rapidly their vast swarms disappear, so soon as they commence their clamorous cry of "Come and eat me." In a fortnight there is hardly one to be found, in places where you could not have sat down without being covered with them. As a bait for fish the grasshopper is excellent, and by its skilful use numbers of trout may be killed, though a tyro will fail in handling it. Dobbs generally takes any trout that he may happen to want towards the end of July, with a grasshopper, unless the stream should have been fouled by some sudden shower, in which case he will troll with an artificial minnow with much greater success. We must not forget the field-flowers of this lic income, and the Postmaster-General is therefore encouraged to make the balance as large as he possibly can. This profit was derived from receiving and delivering 523 millions of letters, in the proportion of 428 millions to England, forty-four millions to Ireland, and fifty-one millions to Scotland; from the foreign and colonial letters, an unimportant item; and from the commission on issuing nearly twelve and three-quarters of millions sterling in money month. All the spring flowers have now disappeared, and in their place a new floral world has sprung up. The hedge-rows are now covered with climbingplants-the clematis, the wild hop, the white convolvulus, etc. In the corn-fields, the red poppy glows like a coal of fire-the purple thistle-flower blows on crags and in dry ditches-the slender hare-bell trembles on every bank-the mallow, the scabious, and the woody-nightshade adorn the roadside fences, and on the moors and downs, the frag-orders for the United Kingdom. This latter departrant blossoms of the wild-thyme and the bell-heath ment, which, in its operations, much resembles colour the surface of the soil. The fox-glove still banking, is not a portion of the postal system prorears his rows of bells, but drops them unwil-perly so called, and is conducted in a distinct buildlingly around him as the month wanes out, after which he looks as melancholy as a peacock moulted of his tail, and no longer excites attention or remark. Towards the close of the month, there is a sudden and characteristic change in the weather. Without any warning, the wind chops round to the north; those heavy-laden rain-clouds, driven up from the horizon, overshadow the whole sky; the scowl of the coming tempest blackens the air, and all at once, amid the din of reverberating thunder, down comes the storm of rain like a water-spout, flooding the lanes and low-lands of Tangley Grange a foot deep in a few minutes of time. Well for Dobbs that he has long ago foreseen this visitation and prepared for it-that his ricks are safely thatched, and that trenches are dug round them to carry off the flood. As it is, there is no small hurry-skurry at the farm, where the labourers are crowding in for shelter from all quarters, and when poor Nelly Bunce and her boy Billy, among the rest, come driving through the mud and mire, away from the bursting floods and live thunder. Along with the storm has come a chill as sudden. The temperature, which yesterday was 88° in the shade, has now fallen to 50°, and Dobbs has no sooner set affairs out-of-doors a little to rights, than he orders the maid to light a fire in the parlour, that he may sit by it and smoke a comfortable pipe, while his stormdriven dependants make themselves as cosy as they can round the common hearth. Such are the vicissitudes of our English climate, which are perhaps never seen in greater contrast than during this sweltering month of July. INSIDE THE POST OFFICE. THE Post Office presents almost the only example of a government trading establishment, conducted, perhaps, better than it could be conducted under any possible combination of private enterprise, and producing a large yearly profit that exhibits a steady increase. This profit, after paying expenses, amounted in 1858 to more than a million and a quarter sterling, which was paid into the Exchequer, as usual, in relief of the taxation of the nation. It is a question whether this money might not be judiciously expended in improving the postal system, or in reducing the postal rates; but the Chancellor of the Exchequer is not willing to give up such a large portion of the annual pub ing in St. Martin's-le-Grand. Nearly one-fourth of the whole 523 millions of letters in 1858 were delivered in London and the suburban districts; and, counting those also which were despatched, nearly one half passed through the London chief office. The number of newspapers delivered in the United Kingdom during the same year, were seventy-one millions, and the number of book packets seven millions and a quarter. One letter in every three hundred was returned to the writers, owing to the failure in the attempts to deliver them; and one newspaper in every hundred and twenty-four newspapers, for the same reason; making, in the first case, nearly one million and three-quarters of letters during the year, and in the second case, nearly six hundred thousand newspapers. The receiving-houses and post offices provided for this enormous circulation, now number eleven thousand and a quarter throughout the United Kingdom, and the pillar letter-boxes, which are gradually advancing in use and popularity, and are at present confined to the metropolis, have now reached one thousand, one hundred, and sixtyeight. From the moment that a letter leaves the hand of the sender, and falls into the box, it becomes the property of the Post Office, for purposes of delivery, and cannot be withdrawn. If it contains any hasty phrase, any bitterness of tone that the writer regrets; if its weight is considered greater than the head or heads upon its surface will carry; or if any important particular is thought to be omitted in its address, it must, nevertheless, go unaltered through all the allotted stages of its course. What this course is, from the receiving-house to the railway carriage, (supposing it to be a country letter,) it may not be uninteresting or uninstructive to explain. When Mary Jane, your intelligent maid-servant, takes your letter addressed to your aunt at Bolton, in Lancashire, her powers of reading and discrimination are exercised at the grocer's shop round the corner, where she finds two upright letter-slips in the door-post, one marked " London and twelve miles round," and the other, "Inland and colonial mails." She first of all has to consider whether Bolton comes within the range of "twelve miles round London;" and when she has decided this geographical point in the negative, either singly, or by the help of the receiving-house attendant, she then drops the letter into the compartment devoted to the colonial and country post. Supposing the After your aunt's letter, and its companions, have suffered this ring-worm disfigurement, and also the similar disfigurement of the dating stamp, they are parcelled out to be sorted into bags for the dif ferent leading towns, or into divisions for the resorting on the different lines of railway. time at which she has done this to be five o'clock | head-blotting duty, performed almost too quickly in the afternoon, and the receiving-house to be to strike the eye.* within a reasonable omnibus distance of the General Office, in about half an hour your aunt's letter will be disturbed from its short repose, and taken by a couple of faded gaudy drivers, in a more faded scarlet, hard-worked, dog-cart-looking vehicle, to St. Martin's-le-Grand. Here it will be bundled into a large hall, called the General Sorting Office, not unlike Exeter Hall, furnished with long rows of tables, desks, and shelves, at which are seated a number of active, carnest-looking, time-begrudging beings, every one engaged as if legerdemain had been his sole occupation from the cradle, and as if | he had a certain task to perform, with only another hour to live. Taskmasters are passing to and fro directing and inspecting the work, but the chief taskmaster of all is a large clear-faced clock, which watches the hurrying crowd with the calm steady look of a sphinx, and which is glanced at in its turn by some of the labourers as the conductor of an orchestra is glanced at by timid performers. Those letters that are perfect in full payment and clear handwriting, are sent to their final bag, or their temporary division, without further questioning or examination; but those corpulent documents, whose bodies have grown too big for their heads, or in whose cases two heads are officially considered to be better than one, are transferred to the weighing clerk; while those letters whose addresses are faintly conveyed in the yellowest of ink, the most cramped of cramped writings, of the most unknown of unknown tongues, are transferred to a table of officers, skilful in solving these passing dark problems, and known throughout the department as the "blind-men" of the Post Office. The weighing clerk is an officer cultivated in sight and touch, whose eye can detect, in an in Your aunt's letter is at once turned out of the bag on to the top of a large table amongst a heap of other letters-a fortuitous concourse of atoms-stant, the letter that is attempting to pass on its mixed and entangled as only a mound of letters can be entangled and mixed. Some fifty men attack them immediately, like eager bone-pickers at a virgin dust-heap, or rather, considering their playing-card shape and appearance, like maniac gamblers at a scramble when the police are knocking at the outer gate. All this activity has no other object than to "face" them, to put those troublesome letters on their backs, which are obstinately lying on their faces, and to turn those other letters round upon their legs which are at that moment standing on their heads. As fast as a pack that makes a full handful is scratched into order, it is transferred to another table, where the letters undergo another process of stamping. journey at half-price, and whose finger, by merely gliding over the surface of the doubtful letters in the process of counting them, can at once assist and confirm the judgment of the sharp and expe rienced eye. Not one letter in a dozen, perhaps, that is overweight, requires weighing, and not one half of the suspected impostors are convicted and marked with the postal double payment fine. The table of the "blind-mem" is the calmest spot in the building. Theirs is no work of mere mechanical dexterity, that can be brought by constant practice to a dazzling rapidity of execution. It requires much searching in directories, much guessing, much mental effort, to solve most of the riddles in writing and spelling that come upon this table. The irregular combinations of the alphabet This process has to obliterate the postage heads, alone present a boundless field of variety to the so that they can never be taken off and used again, ignorant and the persevering; and when the comand also to stamp the letter with a circular im- binations of christian names and surnames, names pression, containing the date and the name of of towns, and names of counties, as well as the London-the town from which the letter is about forms of letters, and the parts of a letter's proper to be despatched. This task is confided to a superscription, come to be added, arithmetic can nimble-fingered gentleman, who seems inclined to hardly convey the result. It is to this table that back himself against any steam-engine under the all those riddle-letters find their way, upon whose roof, past, present, or to come. Placing a number surface Islington is spelt and written, "East Linof letters before him in an upright position, with ton;" and the late Iron Duke is addressed, long the postage head in the upper right corner, he after his death, as the "Duk hor wellenton, Ip ark strokes them down gently but rapidly, one by one, corner, London, englent, or hulswear." The blindunder his right hand, which holds the stamping men are often called upon to decipher such directions de, and comes down with unerring precision and as the following, conveyed in the most undecided bewildering rapidity full upon the label. A of handwritings:hundred heads are damaged in a minute by this skilful operator, who requires a new die every evening; and the only partial break that occurs in his labour, is when a letter either wants a head, or contains it in the lower left hand, instead of the upper right-hand corner. Dipping the die on to the inkbrush, or stamping a paper at intervals, that stands at his side, to keep a rough record in twenties or fifties of the letters passing through the office for that night's mail, are eccentric diversions of the : "To Mrs. Slater to the Prince of wales in fits Roy place Kinteston London paid." The blindmen decide that this means the "Prince of Wales" public-house, Fitzroy Place, Kentish Town; their verdict is final. and We are indebted to Mr. Edward J. Page, the active Inspector General of Mails, at the General Post Office, and to Mr. Maclear, of the same department, for most of the information contained in this article, and for the facilities which enabled the writer to sce what he has been attempting to describo. Sometimes comic boys address their relatives in London in the rudest pictorial form, giving a good deal of trouble to the blind-men. A picture of a garden and a street, with a fancy portrait of the person for whom the letter is intended, drawn outside the note by a not very artistic youth of seven years of age, is not calculated to ease the sorting labour of the General Post Office. Addressed to "My Uncle Jon, in London;" "Wilm Stratton, commonly cald teapot Weelin;" "Mary Ann Street, Red Rive lane Luke St. next door to the ocean;" "To No. 3 Cros bsbry Row For The Female whith the Infant up Bromley Stairs;" "Ann Poror at Mrs. Winhursts No. 24 Next door to two to one;" "Mikell Goodliff at St. Nouts Printis to a Shoo Maker Mis his name not known Mrs. Cooper is grandmother to the Lad;" "elixa clarck saxton hotel saintluord hon se;" and "This fanke Taghe Warkitt ill Wise Comse Wile of Withe," with many more like them have come, and are constantly coming under the notice of this branch of the sorting department. The blind-men feel a professional artistic pride in mastering every difficulty, although the difficulty is to be taken to the land's end for the small charge of a penny. Failing all attempts to make clear that which is never to be read in this world, the interior (after the proper forms have been observed) is, at last, looked into, only to present a larger and more enigmatical surface still. The only colourable explanation that can be given of the mystery, based upon the annual average of riddles which come before the blind-men, is, that some Irish hop-picker, passing through London on his road to Kent, is anxious to communicate with a relative in some part of his native country. long shining slide into the court-yard of the building, where they meet with many companions in the shape of the first letter bags sent from the general Sorting Office, for the railway post office vans below. These bags are quickly packed in one of the dull red and black omnibus-looking vehicles waiting to receive them, and are driven off to the railway terminus, for which they have been partially sorted and packed. Your aunt's letter, being for Bolton in Lancashire, is sent to Euston Square some time before half-past eight, where it is placed with a host of companions in that series of glowing carriages which often excites the curiosity of the railway night traveller. Here much of the sorting-work of the General Post Office is merely transferred, and it goes on unceasingly through the night and morning, as well as the reception, re-sorting, and delivery of the cross-country posts, which are taken in and despatched by the way. A number of clerks and guards, who are relieved at certain stages, attend to this labour, while the carriages in which they stand are rolling along at the rate of five-and-forty miles an hour. Your aunt's letter, after being turned out of its divisional bag on to the green baize counter of this flying post office, is sorted into a pigeon-hole, where it remains until it collects a certain number of companions to form a bundle. This bundle is then tied up, and dropped into the Bolton bag, which hangs up, with a brass ticket on it, at the side of the carriage. When the time arrives for this bag to be closed, that is, when the train arrives within a few miles of the town, the despatch is sealed up, and put in a rough leather covering, and without stopping a moment or slackening one degree of a mile an hour in the speed, the Bolton letters are dropped, by the aid of some external machinery, The Sorting Office for newspapers and packets is safely into a roadside net. Here the post office upon an upper floor, and is reached by an endless authorities of the town are waiting to receive them, staircase, worked by machinery, which revolves and having dropped, in exchange, a number of full bags ascends, like the spokes of the treading mill. The bu- into a projecting net of the flying carriage, and by siness in this department is very similar to that the time the bag is opened, and your aunt's letter below, except that the sorting proceeds more slowly, is ready for delivery before she comes down to and the packets, while fewer, are much larger. The breakfast in the morning, the railway post office has "blind-man" here is chiefly engaged with the gone on catching and discharging letters along a newspapers, whose moist addresses have either come further line of two hundred miles. off, or been partially torn, and his work, like that of the department, is the heaviest on Friday night, the great newspaper despatch night of the week. He employs himself a good deal in guessing the kind of newspaper which would probably go to certain individuals, when he finds himself with a number of addresses without papers, and a number of papers without addresses. No disappointment is so bitter to the country resident as to miss his weekly budget of news and reading, when he comes down to breakfast on a Saturday morning, or to tear open the cover, and find a tory organ, which he hates, in place of the whig organ, which he loves. The newspaper blind-man performs his work as carefully as he can, and if he does make an occasional mistake in sending the wrong paper to the wrong man, his countrymen must forgive him, when they know the difficulties with which he has to contend. By a quarter past seven the first set of newspaper bags are made up, sealed, and sent gliding down a CROSSING THE TICINO: A SCENE BEFORE THE WAR. The Ti WE soon approached the Ticino, the boundary be- I was not ignorant of the hand these men had had in the suppression of the revolution of 1848, and of the ruthless tragedies they were said to have enacted in Milan and other cities of Lombardy; and I rode up to them in the eager desire of scrutinizing their features, and reading there the signs of that ferocity which had given them such wide-spread but evil renown. They sat basking themselves on a bench in front of the Dogana, with their muskets and bayonets glittering in the sun. They were lads of about eighteen, of decidedly low stature, of square build, and strongly muscular. They looked in capital condition, and gave every sign that the air of Lombardy agreed with them, and that they had had their own share at least of its corn and wine. They wore blue caps, gray duffle greatcoats like those used by our Highlanders, light blue pantaloons fitting closely their thick short leg, and boots which rose above the ankle, and laced in front. The prevailing expression on their broad swarthy faces was not ferocity, but stolidity. Their eyes were dull, and contrasted strikingly with the dark fiery glances of the children of the land. They seemed men of appetites rather than passions; and, if guilty of cruel deeds, were likely to be so from the dull, cold, unreflecting ferocity of the bull-dog, rather than from the warm impulsive instincts of the nobler animals. In stature and feature they were very much the barbarian, and were admirably fitted for being what they were the tools of the despot. No wonder that the ideal Italian abominates the Croat. The Dogana! So soon! 'Twas but a few miles on the other side of the Ticino that we passed through this ordeal. But perhaps the river, glorious as it looks, flowing from the democratic hills of the Swiss, may have infected us with political pravity; so here again we must undergo the search, and that not a mere pro forma one. The diligence vomits forth, at all its mouths, trunks, carpet-bags, and packages, encased, some in velvet, some in firdeals, and some in brown paper. The multifarious heap was carried into the Dogana, and its various articles unroped, unlocked, and their contents scattered about. One might have thought that a great fair was about to begin, or that a great Industrial Exhibition was to be opened on the banks of the Ticino. The hunt was especially for books— bad books, which England will perversely print, and Englishmen perversely read. My little stock was collected, bound together with a cord, and sent in to the chief douanier, who sat, Radamanthuslike, in an inner apartment, to judge books, papers, and persons. There is nothing there, thought I, to which even an Austrian official can take exception. Soon I was summoned to follow my little library. The man examined the collection volume by volume. At last he lighted on a number of the "Gazetta del Popolo," given me by the editors in Turin. This, thought I, will prove the dead fly in my box of ointment. The sheet was opened and examined. "Have you," said the official, "any more ?" I could reply with a clear conscience that I had not. To my surprise, the paper was returned to me. He next took up my note-book. Now, said I to myself, this is a worse scrape than the other. What a blockhead I am not to have put the book into my pocket; for, except in extreme cases, the traveller's person is never searched. The man opened the thin volume, and found it inscribed with mysterious and strange characters. It was written in shorthand. He turned over the leaves; on every page the same unreadable signs met the eye. He held it by the top, and next by the bottom: it was equally inscrutable either way. He shut it, and examined its exterior, but there was nothing on the outside to afford a key to the mystic characters within. He then turned to me for an explanation of the suspicious little book. Affecting all the unconcern I could, I told him that it contained only a few commonplace jottings of my journey. He opened the book; took one other leisurely survey of it; then looked at me, and back again at the book; and, after a considerable pause, big with the fate of my book, he made me a bland bow, and handed me the volume. I was equally polite on my part, inly resolving that henceforward Austrian douanier should not lay finger on my note-book. Refreshing it verily was to turn from the petty tyrannies of an Austrian custom-house, to the free, joyous, and glorious face of nature. Before me were the Alps, just shaking the cold night mists from their shaggy pine-clad sides, as might a lion the dew-drops from his mane. Here rose Monte Rosa in a robe of never-fading glory and beauty; and there stood Mont Blanc, with his diadem of dazzling snows. The giant had planted his feet deep amid rolling hills, covered with villages, and pine-forests, and rich pastures. Anywhere else these would have been mountains; but, dwarfed by the majestic form in whose presence they stood, they looked like small eminences, scattered gracefully at his base, as pebbles at the foot of some lofty pile. On his breast floated the fleecy clouds of morn, while his summit rose high above thesc clouds, and stood, in the calm of the firmament, a stupendous pile of ice and snow. Never had I seen the Alps to such advantage. The level plain ran quite up to them, and allowed the eye to take their full height from their flower-girt base to their icy summit. Hundreds and hundreds of peaks ran along the sky, conical, serrated, needle-shaped, jagged, some flaming like the ruby in the morning ray, others dazzlingly white as the alabaster.Wylie's "Pilgrimage to Italy.” RETIREMENT. I PRAISE the Frenchman,* his remark was shrewd, * Bruyere. |