certain number of miles an hour to add another mile to his speed. The improvement could thus have been only nominal. The Post Office officials in Lombard Street, where the General Post Office was then situated, were very well content for the public service to be continued as of old. It would be idle to speculate how long the department would have lagged behind the times and seen the Post Office revenues being gradually eaten away by the growing practice of secretly sending letters by the stage-coaches, which had by this time attained a speed of about seven miles an hour, and in addition set out more frequently and at more convenient hours than the postboys. It would be idle thus to speculate, because, when the scandal was growing to noticeable proportions--when it was asserted that the Post Office lost not less than £80,000 a year by letters being conveyed by unauthorised persons, and when people grew indignant that “every common traveller passed the King’s Mail”--there came to the front a man with a plan to remedy what surely was the very absurd paradox that the Government strenuously reserved to itself the monopoly of letter-carrying, and yet provided no reasonable facilities for those letters to be conveyed, and idly watched thousands of pounds of that cherished revenue being annually diverted from their proper destination. This man with a well-matured scheme of reform was John Palmer, a native of Bath, born at No. 1, Galloway’s Buildings (now North Parade Buildings), in 1742. His father was a brewer and spermaceti-merchant, and proprietor of two highly prosperous theatres at Bath and another at Bristol. Intended by his father for the Church, his own inclinations were for the Army; but he was not suffered to follow his bent, and so was taken from school and placed in the counting-house of his father’s brewery. Wearying of that commercial routine, and still without success disputing the question of entering the Army, he set about learning the practical side of brewing, and worked among the vats and mash-tubs of his father’s establishment. Then his health gave way, and signs of consumption rendered a rest and change of air necessary. Recovering at last and returning to Bath, he entered into the conduct of his father’s theatrical enterprises, and at the time when he conceived his plan was the very busy and successful manager of all these theatres, for which his energy had secured Royal patents--a license then necessary for the presentation of stage-plays. These patents were then the only ones enjoyed by theatres out of London. [Illustration: JOHN PALMER AT THE AGE OF 17. _Attributed to Gainsborough, R.A._ ]