W

7RITING is old, and so is letter-writing. We read, for instance, in II Chronicles xxx. 6: "So the posts went with the letters from the king and his princes throughout all Israel and Judah." But what were these letters? It is very instructive, if we can, to trace the origin and progress of words. It is like striking a light, if it be only that of a match, in a dark place; it reveals the hidden surroundings. How much the ancient history of Greece and Rome has been enlightened and enlivened by this more recent method, which, by a glimpse here and there, enables the historian to reconstruct, as the geologist does, a dead and buried past! Thus the word letter, from the Latin litera, probably carries us back to the time when their writing tablets were smeared or covered with wax. How slow, tedious and costly the process, first, of fixing upon the wax, with a bodkin's point, the butterfly thought; and then, of conveying it to others! Hence, the men of letters, the "lettered Rabbins," for instance, were the learned and conspicuous few, who had access to written thoughts; the source, as they accumulate and have dispersion in the world, of all culture and knowledge.

These letters, then, were conveyed by "posts"-from the Latin to place at regular intervals. Fancy one of those ancient mail boys clattering along from post to post with saddle-bags full of such tablets; or with lead leaves rolled into cylinders, as in Pliny's time; or tables of bronze, like that on which is graven the speech of Claudius, preserved at Lyons, in France! Luckily, time had not yet evolved the American Congressman, whose speeches, however much they afflict the mails by their number, have lost all weight!

That word "mail" meant originally just a spot, or spotted surface; was then applied to a net, with its spotting or mesh of holes between the threads; in turn, was applied to the chain-armor which covered and defended the knight, with its net-work of metal; and thence, passed to the iron bag which, at first, covered and conveyed the letters. The mailed

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knight is gone, with all he represented of ignorance and violence; but the word he left behind him, when he dropped his mail, represents-what a wonderful change! the transit, the world over, of knowledge; the peaceful conquests of thought; the inter-communion of separated nations and people; and by an agency, beside the plumed and caparisoned knight, how insignificant-the mail bag!

But do we realize the still more wonderful change wrought by the introduction of paper? Doubtless they might have learned to make it in Eden, from the paper-making wasps. Perhaps the wasps suggested to some human genius the original idea. But the light and fugitive folded leaves, which now cram the maw of the mails-here a love-letter, there some family or business matter-these are but of modern invention. Paper has revolutionized knowledge, and increased the civilities of life, by giving increased area to the culture of mind. As important as iron, and superseding it in some things-(for even stoves, car wheels and chimneys, are now made of paper)-its chief encomium is of a different kind. Neither iron, brass, nor ponderous marble, can make the fame, nor secure “the memorial and immortality of men;" they have not done so for Shakespeare or Bacon; but these leaves of paper, fragile as they are, the playthings of a breath, these are the true dispensers of human fame; these gathering their mails from the world's great central office, the brain, are the untiring postilions and carriers of its thought.

The New York Post-office was established in 1775. It was not the first post-office, by any means, either in city or country. Riker, in his admirable history of Haarlem, tells us of the great excitement in January, 1673, when the first monthly postman between New York and Boston drew up at the tavern, with his "portmantles" (a corruption of portmanteaux), crammed with "letters and small portable goods." This service was undertaken by the Colonial Government of New York; and was sufficient for the time, seeing that all New England had then only 120,000 inhabitants, and New York itself but 3,500; that the colonies were distinct, and did little business together. In its own individual postal service, Massachusetts was ahead of New York by 30 years; yet that first little output of postal enterprise on the part of New York was the beginning of great things. We may fancy the first Brooklyn ferryman, as he struggled across the East River in answer to the summoning horn, projecting a bridge that some day should span the shores, and carry easily its daily thousands. But his little wherry was itself the humble beginning of that bridge, which, after two hundred years of invention and progress, still striving for something better, has taken his place! And with what almost reverence