We are not exempt from human weakness: we confess that we have more than once cast a curious and a longing glance on those plethoric Jacks which daily issue from Downing Street, and the safe conveyance of which to their distant destination costs the country annually a handsome sum of money. We have often desired to dive to the very bottom of these round white leathern envelopes, which are so tenderly handled and so scrupulously guarded. What profound thoughts, what foresight, what eloquence, and what wisdom, must be contained, we have often thought, within that mysterious covering of calf, of more than aldermanic rotundity, tightly closed at the neck with whipcord, and the genius of England protecting the orifice in the form and fashion of a huge red seal. It is true that idle or blabbing clerks, and supercilious or rollicking messengers—the external “gentlemen” of the Foreign Office—are said to indulge occasionally in a laugh, whilst lounging in their waiting-room, at the reverential awe with which the vulgar are wont to look upon the “despatch bags.” Strange stories, too, are said to be current of the miscellanies which sometimes fill them, the curious _olla podrida_, the several parts of which are so well adapted to the tastes of the youthful _employés_ of our foreign embassies. Packages of pomatum, bottles of hair-dye, pots of varnish, patent-leather boots, and dress-coats, are occasionally conveyed to the capital where we are blessed with a representative who unites in his own person the conflicting tastes of dandyism and parsimony. Gossipping tongues speak of even more important cargoes—not, of course, in the bag, but outside it—that were sometimes conveyed, at her Majesty’s expense, to her “Honourable” or “Right Honourable” representative, under the care of some bustling “gentleman,” whose official character is indicated by the Windsor uniform, and a minute badge with the royal arms, and the effigy (a harmless irony) of a greyhound—the latter symbolical of the speed at which he is presumed to travel.