Perhaps, if we except his scientific and political labors,—labors which won him a name while living and honored when dead,—there was no other department wherein business and tact were so united to effect a great national reform as in that of the post-office. And yet historians pass over that portion of his life with a mere dash of the pen, and seem to consider it a dry episode in his otherwise eventful career. Had they gone into the history of this connection, the business of the postal department would have loomed up before them a splendid subject to descant upon. It would have shown them how out of chaos came forth, under Franklin’s control, a form perfect in shape and gigantic in its proportions. It would tower a giant above the many lesser subjects he wrote pages upon, and give to the world a leaf in our book on political economy which is now—at least as far as this department is concerned—a blank page. Benjamin Franklin, at the head of the postal department under the colonial government, was the great pioneer in the cause of _letters_: he mapped the length and breadth of their extent; brought distant places together by the speed of horses, as he did in after-years by electric power the lightning from the surcharged clouds to our very feet. And when at the head of the department, under the _States united_ forming a Union that has made us a nation among nations, to be honored, respected, and _feared_, he carried out his plans, based upon a principle that has governed the operations of the postal department to this day. Franklin died April 17, 1790. In his will, dated July 17, 1788, he simply expressed his wish to have his body buried with as little expense or ceremony as might be. But in the codicil, dated June 23, 1789, but a few months before his death, we find this clause:— “I wish to be buried by the side of my wife, if it may be, and that a marble stone, to be made by Chambers, six feet long, four feet wide, plain, with only a small moulding round the upper ledge, and this inscription:— +----------------------------------------+ │ BENJAMIN } │ │ AND } FRANKLIN. │ │ DEBORAH } │ │ 178-. │ +----------------------------------------+ to be placed over us both.” In the graveyard belonging to Christ Church in this city, situated at the southeast corner of Arch and Fifth Streets, this plain slab, with the above inscription, is still to be seen.