[17] In 1822 Captain Smyth, R.N., was prepared, with the consent of Mehemet Ali, to attempt its removal, but could not procure the authority of our Government. The Pasha offered to build a pier for the embarkation of the obelisk, and to render Captain Smyth every assistance for its removal. From the London Times HISTORY AND CONDITION OF THE CHEAP POSTAGE SYSTEM. A traveller sauntering through the Lake districts of England, some years ago, arrived at a small public-house just as the postman stopped to deliver a letter. A young girl came out to receive it. She took it in her hand, turned it over and over, and asked the charge. It was a large sum--no less than a shilling. Sighing heavily she observed that it came from her brother, but that she was too poor to take it in, and she returned it to the postman accordingly. The traveller was a man of kindness as well as of observation; he offered to pay the postage himself, and in spite of more reluctance on the girl's part than he could well understand he did pay it, and gave her the letter. No sooner, however, was the postman's back turned than she confessed that the proceeding had been concerted between her brother and herself, that the letter was empty, that certain signs on the direction conveyed all that she wanted to know, and that as neither of them could afford to pay postage they had devised this method of franking the intelligence desired. The traveller pursued his journey, and as he plodded over the Cumberland fells he mused upon the badness of a system which drove people to such straits for means of correspondence, and defeated its own objects all the time. With most men such musings would have ended before the hour, but this man's name was Rowland Hill, and it was from this incident and these reflections that the whole scheme of penny postage was derived.