314 ON THE TRACK OF THE MAIL-COACH 



letter, weighing five-eighths of an ounce and producing 

 a penny farthing, is very different, when viewed as a 

 remunerative item, from a bulky postal packet, weigh- 

 ing a varying number of ounces, and carried and 

 delivered for a halfpenny. 



Twenty years, nearly — eighteen, at all events — had 

 passed since Freeling's death. Mail-coaches were 

 well-nigh forgotten at the Post-Office. A new ruler, 

 who had little sympathy with the ways of those who 

 had gone before him, presided at St. Martin's-le- 

 Grand. His thoughts were bent on fiscal reform. 

 Mail-coaches, for the reasons given, could have no 

 place in the range of his mind. 



' Within these few years,' narrates a writer in the 

 late thirties, ' a plan of singular boldness and in- 

 genuity, and developed with the utmost perspicuity 

 and fairness of intention, has been put forth by Mr. 

 Kowland Hill.' He w^as necessarily intent on work- 

 ing it out by means of the rapidly-extending railway 

 system. 



So I have nothing whereby to associate Sir Eow- 

 land Hill with the older days ; he was never actually 

 on the track of the mail-coach. 



Yet in the late forties, when Hill, holding an 

 anomalous position on the establishment, had com- 

 menced duty at the Post - Ofiice, I remember an 

 effective contrast, to which he may have assented, 

 between lumbering ugliness and grace and swiftness, 

 which recalled the old glories of the road. 



Postmen were despatched on their rounds from 



