elegant-looking billets that escape from its post-bag. And thus interested and observing, we are rapidly reaching our destination. We are at the terminus at last. The office is emptied of all its contents, and the bags, securely made up, are forwarded under care of other officers in different trains, proceeding far and near. Nor have we forgotten our own letter. In the vast mass of letters it holds a well-secured place, being safely ensconced in one of these very bags; and we will endeavour to be present when the bag is opened, that we may verify our assertion. Out of the carriage and once on _terra firma_, we feel a sensation of dreamy wonder that nothing has happened to us; that, considering the noise and the whirl, and the excitement of the work we have witnessed, our brain is not tied up in a knot somewhere in the head, instead of only swimming. Dusty, tired, and sleepy, we hurry through the streets for refreshment, if not repose, while the day is just breaking. Of course, this Post-Office machinery, which we have attempted to describe, is necessarily delicate and liable to derangements, inasmuch as it has to depend to a great extent on the proper carrying out throughout the country of an infinite number of railway arrangements. Its successful working is doubtless primarily due to the special time chosen for the conveyance of mails. The ordinary traffic disposed of, the mail-trains take its place, and through the long night the best part of the Post-Office work is accomplished. The good or bad management of railway companies may assist or retard the efficiency of the Post-Office to an almost incalculable extent. The railway post-office is like a gigantic machine, one part interdependent on another, and all alike dependent on the motive power of the different contracting parties. Railway accidents are fruitful sources of discomfiture to the Post-Office Department. The mail-trains have, within the last two or three years, enjoyed an immunity from any very serious calamity of this nature: yet even when this is not the case, it very seldom happens that the Post-Office arrangements suffer, except on the particular journey wherein the accident occurred. Fresh supplies of men and _matériel_ are summoned with a speed that would, or ought to, surprise some other commissariat departments, and the work proceeds the next day or night as if the equilibrium had never been disturbed.