She was a peacemaker, eminently a peacemaker, but was she justified in the method she employed to make peace? THE OLD POST-BOY THE OLD POST-BOY One of the most characteristic and interesting features of old English life has passed away beyond recall—the post-boy. Whatever his age he was always a boy, for he always wore the short jacket. His _confrère_ the postillion has lasted on somewhat longer on the Continent, but he also is nearly gone. He was a picturesque feature, very different from the dapper English post-boy. The latter figures in most old English romances. He took a part in all elopements, and was concerned in the conveyance of Queen’s Messengers with despatches; he was suspected of affording information to and furnishing opportunities for highwaymen. Who does not remember the flight of Jingle with Miss Rachel, in “Pickwick,” and the pursuit by Mr. Wardle and Mr. Pickwick? But the post-boy has taken more than a subsidiary part in a story, he is the hero in Smollett’s “Humphry Clinker,” and he figures as a leading part in the opera of “Le Postillon de Longjumeau.” His place now knows him no more. He is as extinct an animal as the dodo or the great auk. The last I knew was fallen from his old estate—a slim, grey-haired man, who drove a hired carriage, but no longer mounted one of a pair of post-horses. At weddings the post-boy made his final appearance, with a white beaver hat, a yellow jacket and white breeches and top-boots, a showy individual, and poor old George Spurle, whom I knew, had appeared in his proper character on many such occasions before leaving the saddle altogether to mount the box. His jacket was of a buttercup yellow, but other colours were indulged in by these servants of the public. Humphry Clinker wore “a narrow-brimmed hat with gold cording, a cut bob [wig], a decent blue jacket, leather breeches, and a clean linen shirt, puffed above the waistband.” Old George, like every other post-boy I have known, loved his horses. In his old age he loved them too well, spared them so much as to annoy those whom he was conveying, and who proved impatient at his walking them up the least hill, and at his frequent dismounting to ease his brute. There was a grey mare he was specially fond of, and one night the grey got her halter twisted about her neck and was found strangled. George Spurle sat down and fairly cried. The landlord seeing him so cut up endeavoured to comfort him.