In his Autobiography, Mr Anthony Trollope, many years a Post-office surveyor, records how he was employed in England, for a considerable period about the year 1851, revising and extending the rural-post service; and he there mentions the frequency with which he found post-runners to be employed upon routes where there were but few letters to deliver--while in other directions, where postal communication would have been of the utmost benefit, there were no post-runners at all. This state of things had no doubt had its origin in the efforts of influential persons, at some previous time, to have the services established for their own personal benefit; while persons in other districts, having less interest at headquarters, or being less imperious in their demands, were left out in the cold, and so remained beyond the range of the civilising influence. The posts in such cases, once established, went on from year to year; and though the arrangements were out of harmony with the surroundings, very often nothing was done--for in all likelihood no one complained loud enough, or, at any rate, in a way to prove effective. But though the Department did wake up to the need for a better distribution of its favours in the country districts in 1851, there were earlier instances of surveyors attempting to lay down the posts for the general good, instead of for a select few, and in these cases the surveyors had sometimes a hard battle to fight. The following report from a surveyor in Scotland, written in the year 1800, will illustrate what is here mentioned. It is given at length, and will possibly be found worthy of perusal; for it not only shows both spirit and independence on the part of the surveyor, who was evidently a man determined to do his duty irrespective of persons, but it sheds some light on the practices of the post-runners of that period, and their relations with their superiors on the one hand, and the public on the other. It affords us, too, a specimen of official writing remarkable for some rather quaint turns and expressions. The report proceeds:-- "I am much obliged by the perusal of my Lord ----'s card to you of the 29th ultimo, with the copy of a fresh memorial from his lordship and other gentlemen upon the long-argued subject of the alteration of the course of the post betwixt Perth and Coupar-Angus. "It is certainly one of those cases which hath become of tenfold more importance by the multiplicity of writing, than from any solid reasoning or essential matter of information to be drawn from it.