[129] In connection with the putting up of one receptacle in London not many years ago, a gruesome discovery was made. The ground near St Bartholomew's Hospital had been opened previous to the erection of a pillar letter-box, when a quantity of ashes, wood and human, came to light. “Bart's” looks upon Smithfield, scene of the burning of some of the martyrs for conscience' sake. No need, then, to ponder the meaning of these sad relics. They clearly pointed to sixteenth-century man's inhumanity to man. [130] The first person to post a letter under the new system is said to have been Mr Samuel Lines of Birmingham, Rowland Hill's former drawing-master, whose portrait hangs in the Art Gallery of that city. He was warmly attached to his ex-pupil, who, in turn, held the old man in high esteem, and maintained an occasional correspondence with him till the artist's death. Determined that in Birmingham no one should get the start of him, Mr Lines wrote to my father a letter of congratulation, and waited outside the Post Office till at midnight of the 9th a clock rang out the last stroke of twelve. Then, knocking up the astonished clerk on duty, he handed in the letter and the copper fee, and laconically remarked: “A penny, I believe.” [131] Another well-known literary woman, the poetess, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, according to her “Letters” recently published, wrote to an American friend earnestly recommending adoption of “our penny postage, as the most successful revolution since 'the glorious three days' of Paris”—meaning, of course, the three days of July 1830 (i. 135).