He had not the fault of most enthusiasts, who look in others for a zeal as ardent as that which animates themselves. He found it somewhat hard, indeed, to understand how any one could be indifferent to the statistics of Penny Postage, and help watching the rise in the number of letters and the postal revenue with as much interest as Englishmen, on a wet day, watch the rise in the weather-glass. But though he did not ask for the same enthusiasm in those who were set under him, he did look for the same carefulness, the same exactness, the same integrity, and the same constant thought for the public good. He forgot that they had not been trained in the same stern school with himself, and he failed to make due allowance for the weakness of man's nature. By asking too much from men he got from them, perhaps, less than they might otherwise have given. Yet the better natures were not a little raised by the high standard of duty that he ever set before them. He left behind him, in all ranks of the service, a strong sense of public duty, which has managed to outlive even the evil days which came after him. The history of his declining years I shall but touch on. His work was well-nigh done on the day when he left the Post Office; yet prolonged rest gave him back some small part of his old strength. "Much improved during the winter," he noted down at the end of his first year in retirement; "rest and cool weather suit me." In his labours as a member of the Royal Commission on Railways[252] he showed that his mind, however much it had been strained, had yet lost none of its clearness. Not less did it show its power in the years when he was employed in writing "The History of Penny Postage." He managed, he could long boast, to keep himself "_au courant_ with the progress of science and mechanical invention." For a while he had strength enough from time to time to attend the meetings of the Political Economy Club. From a short paper that he drew up I extract the following passage:--