The superintendent of the department sits in an elevated room, the sides of which being glazed enable him to look down on his right and left into two offices, both of which communicate on the south with the street by which parcels arrive from or depart to various parts of the metropolis, and on the north side with a branch railway leading into the main line. The floor of one of these two offices is generally covered with baskets, brown-paper parcels of all sizes, game, triangular boxes of wedding-cake, and other articles, which have just arrived by rail from all parts of England, Ireland, and Scotland; that of the other with a multitude of parcels to be forwarded by rail to similar destinations. In the daytime the down parcels are despatched from the office in the break-waggons of various passenger-trains, and the following locked-up vans laden with small parcels are also forwarded every night:-- 2 vans for Birmingham, 1 „ Manchester, 1 „ Liverpool, 1 „ Carlisle and Lancaster, 1 „ Newcastle, 1 „ Derby, 1 „ Nottingham. The number of parcels thus conveyed to and from London and the North amounted, in the year 1847, to 787,969, and in the year 1848 to 774,464; of the latter number it appears that only two were lost. The manner in which all these little parcels are circulated throughout the country is as follows:-- As soon as the empty railway vans arrive by the branch-rail close to the north side of the parcels-office, a porter, who, assisted by his comrades, has for some time previously been arranging the parcels into heaps according to their respective destinations, commencing with one set of them and rapidly taking up parcel after parcel, exclaims in a loud monotonous tone, easily enough set to music, inasmuch as it is exactly the middle note of a stout porter’s voice, and which never varies for a moment during the whole operation-- “Now _Leighton_. “A paper for Hancock, of ----, light. “A basket for Wagstaff, of ----, out 8_d._, light. “A box for Tomkins, of ----, weighs (he puts it into an index- scale at his right hand, and in about three seconds adds) 26 pounds. “A paper for Jones, of ----, out 4_d._ “Now _Leamington_. “A paper for S. on Avon (the porter never says _Stratford_) for ----, light,” &c. &c.