The mail packets employ a force, including officers, of more than 8,000 men. In addition to these, there is a staff of thirty-three naval officers--all officers of the royal navy, though maintained by the Post-Office--employed upon such packets as those for the Cape and the west coast of Africa, and charged with the care and correct delivery of the mails. They are further required to do all they can to guard against delay on the voyage, and to report on nautical questions affecting in any way the proper efficiency of the service. Other officers, besides, are fixed at different foreign stations to direct the transfers of mails from packet to packet, or from packets to other modes of conveyance. Then, again, in growing numbers, another class of officers travel in charge of mails, such as the Indian and Australian, and on all the North American packets, who, with a number of sorters, are employed in sorting the mails _during the voyage_, in order to save time and labour in the despatch and receipt of mails at London and Liverpool respectively. There are now twenty-eight of this new class of working mail officers, who, of course, are substituted for the old class of naval agents. On the less important mail packets no naval officer is specially appointed, but the mails are taken in charge by the commander. In past years few casualties, comparatively, have occurred in this service. The loss of the mail packet _Violet_, on her journey between Ostend and Dover, in 1856, will be remembered by many. One incident in that melancholy shipwreck deserves mention here, affording a gleam of rich sunshine amid a page of dry though not unimportant matter. Mr. Mortleman, the mail officer in charge of the bags, on seeing that there was no chance for the packet, must have gone down into the hold and have removed all the cases containing the mail bags from that part of the vessel; and further, placed them so that when the ship and all in it went down, they might float--a proceeding which ultimately led to the recovery of all the bags, except one, containing a case of despatches. On another occasion, the mail master of a Canadian packet sacrificed his life, when he might have escaped, by going below to secure the mails intrusted to him. Other cases of a similar devotion to duty have, on several occasions of exposure to imminent danger, distinguished the conduct of these public officers, proving that some of them regard the onerous duties of their position in a somewhat higher light than we find obtains in the ordinary business of life.