triumph two years earlier than it otherwise could have done. All this is easy to believe; for penny postage lends itself to all knowledge and to every reform. Others wrote with rapture of its operations. The accomplished naturalist, Professor Henslow, of Cambridge, rejoiced over its “importance to those who cultivate science,” and pictured the satisfaction of the humble people about his country parsonage “at the facility they enjoy of now corresponding with distant relatives,” together with what he calls “the vast domestic comfort which the penny postage has added to homes like my own, situate in retired villages.” Miss Martineau described its social benefits. Rowland Hill himself, showing how much it had done for the poor, said, “The postman has now to make long rounds through humble districts where heretofore his knock was rarely heard.”[71] And from the outlying Shetland Islands a visitor in May, 1842, reported: “The Zetlanders are delighted with penny postage. The postmaster told me that the number of letters was astonishing.”[72] But perhaps the heartfelt exultation was never better expressed than by the accomplished traveller, Mr. Laing, when, after describing the Prussian system of education, and giving the palm to penny postage as “a much wiser and more effective educational measure,” destined to be “the great historical distinction of the reign of Victoria I.,” he proceeds to say, that “every mother in the kingdom, who has children earning their bread at a distance, lays her head upon her pillow at night with a feeling of gratitude for this blessing.”[73] Such was the unbought tribute from all quarters,--alike the cottage of the lowly and the home of the professor, the counting-house of the merchant and the activities of benevolence, business in its various forms, and the commanding efforts of the political reformer, all, all confessing their debt to penny postage.[74]