The following story is illustrative of the strange want of common-sense which distinguishes the race, especially when posting missives. “Mr Ramsey, (missing-letter clerk),” writes Rowland Hill in his diary of 27th May 1847, “has brought me a packet containing whole banknotes to the amount of £1,500 so carelessly made up that they had all slipped out, and the packet was addressed to some country house in Hereford, no post-town being named. It had found its way, after much delay, into the post office at Ross, and had been sent to London by the postmistress.” It is not often that the head of so dignified and peaceful an institution as the Post Office is seen in a maimed condition, and that condition the result of fierce combat. Nevertheless, in that stirring time known as “the year of revolutions” (1848), a newly-appointed chief of the French Post Office, in the pleasant person of M. Thayer, arrived in this country on official business. He came supported on crutches, having been badly wounded in the foot during the June insurrection in Paris. He told us that his family came originally from London, and that one of our streets was named after them. If, as was surmised, he made a pilgrimage to Marylebone to discover it, it must have looked to one fresh from Paris a rather dismal thoroughfare. About 1849 Rowland Hill instituted periodical meetings of the Post Office Surveyors to discuss questions which had hitherto been settled by the slower method of writing minutes. These postal parliaments were so satisfactory that henceforth they were often held. They proved “both profitable and pleasant, increased the interest of the surveyors in the work of improvement, and by the collision of many opinions, broke down prejudices, and overthrew obstacles.”