It is to the farmer, the artisan, and the merchant that art and science are indebted to their position among the most brilliant things of earth. It is to them that commerce owes wings to fly to the remotest parts of the civilized world, laden with the handiwork of art and the richness of a nation’s growth. Society becomes more dignified, man more ennobled. It is to this power that kings, emperors, and lords owe their positions; for one word from that class will bring the loftiest head to the block, if by word or action the attempt should be made to lessen or destroy that power which elevated him or them to eminence. The commercial power of England is its rule, and to it that nation owes all its present greatness. The politics of England is its disgrace; its commerce, its honor. The king and Parliament are at the head of the one,—the hewers of wood and drawers of water at that of the other. We have already alluded to the postal system organized by the Emperor Charlemagne in the year 807. Yet in China posts had existed from the earliest times. These were called _Jambs_, and were established at a distance from each other of twenty-five miles. This mode of conveying letters was by horses; and it is stated by Marco Polo, the Venetian traveller, that there were frequently as many as three or four hundred horses in waiting at one of these places. He also states that there were ten thousand stations of this kind in China, some of them affording sumptuous accommodation to travellers. Two hundred thousand horses are said to have been engaged in the service. Louis XI. first established post-houses in France. Post-horses and stages were first introduced into England in 1483. The mounted posts in France were stationed at distances of four miles apart, and were required to be ready day and night to carry government messages as rapidly as possible. Private correspondence, however, was carried on very differently. The students of a university in Paris established a postal institution in the eleventh century. A number of pedestrian messengers were employed, who bore letters from its thousands of students to the various countries of Europe from which they came, and brought to them the money they needed for the prosecution of their studies. The great development of commerce following the Crusades, and the geographical discoveries of the Italians, Portuguese, and Spaniards, created a necessity for a more extended business-correspondence about the beginning of the sixteenth century. In Peru, in 1527, the Spanish invaders found a regular system of posts in operation along the great highway from Quito to Cuzco, and messages as to the progress of the invasion, as well as on other subjects, were forwarded to the Inca by fleet-footed runners, who wound around their waists the _quipu_, a species of sign-writing, by means of knotted cord.