selected for that post as if he had only received his due, and that merely in part. He had also administrative ability of no mean order; and when only twenty-eight years of age was selected by the Postmaster-General to go to Mauritius to reorganise the post office there, which through mismanagement had gradually drifted into a state of confusion, apparently beyond rectification by the island authorities. He speedily brought the office into good working order; but perhaps his Mauritian labours will be best remembered by his substitution of certain civilised stamps—like those then used in some of the West Indian isles—in place of the trumpery red and blue, penny and twopenny, productions which were the handiwork of some local artist, and which are now so rare that they command amazingly large sums of money in the philatelist world. [Illustration: By permission of the Proprietor of Flett's Studios, late London School of Photography. PEARSON HILL.] FOOTNOTES: [174] The people of to-day who have never known the old postal system can have no idea of the unanimity and strength of that voice. Memory of the former state of things was still fresh in men's minds; and, with perhaps one exception, no person wished for its return. “Hill, you are the most popular man in the kingdom,” one day exclaimed an old friend. The exception—there might have been more than one, but if so, we were none the wiser—was one of the Bentincks who, so late as the year 1857, suggested in the House of Commons a return to franking on the score that penny postage was one of the greatest jobs and greatest financial mistakes ever perpetrated. Sir Francis Baring advised Mr Bentinck to try to bring back the old postal rates, when he would see what the country thought of the proposal.—(“Hansard,” cxlvi. 188, 189.) [175] By this time Mr Wallace had retired from public life, and only a short while later became involved in pecuniary difficulties. By the exertions of his friends and admirers, an annuity was secured to him—a provision which, though small in comparison with his former prosperity, placed the venerable ex-Parliamentarian well above want. He died in 1855, aged eighty-two. [176] “Life,” ii. 9, 10. [177] “Life,” ii. 58.