20 ON THE TRACK OF THE MAIL-COACH 



west side of the office, was crooked, inconvenient, and 

 only ten feet wide ; Abchurch Lane, on the east side, 

 little better. The coaches had to drive over the pave- 

 ment in passing each other. Finally, the Lombard 

 Street office lay east of Cheapside, while very nearly 

 three letters to one were delivered to the west of it. 



Parliament could not shut its eyes to the serious 

 inconvenience which the public sustained. It deter- 

 mined to remedy the matter, and appointed more 

 than one Select Committee to examine the question. 

 To rebuild on the Lombard Street site was to effect 

 but a partial and temporary remedy ; to move to the 

 northward, as had been proposed, was against the 

 general drift of correspondence ; to build a new 

 post-office a mile to the westward seemed the true 

 solution. That was the course agreed upon. 



Fourteen years later — i.e., on September 29, 1829 

 — to the joy of all who served under its roof, bidding 

 farewell to Lombard Street for ever, Freeling carried 

 the staff and the secretarial chair to what the Satur- 

 daij Magazine has described as ' Smirke's magnificent 

 building — the new and spacious office erected for the 

 purpose, on the site of an ancient college and sanctuary 

 in St. Martin's-le-Grand.' 



The mail-coaches had yet some years to run before 

 there came the beginning of the end. With the new 

 life which removal to the new building seems to have 

 inspired, all previous efforts were rivalled and even 

 surpassed. 



