in the House of Commons, called Young England, take this as their text-book.'-ib. p. 281. 'Liverpool Mail.-It is impossible to do anything like fair justice to the consummate ability of this work in the columns of a newspaper, for it certainly is the most useful and extraordinary production of the AGE, and if ever we envied temper and talent in any one, it is in the eloquent and erudite author of Dr. Hookwell. With the argumentative power of a Gladstone, the eloquence and fervour of a M'Neil, the soundness and safety of a Gresley, and the captivating, but far from wholesome, manner of a Bulwer, this work comes forth to shame the frivolous and fashionable, and to eclipse in interest and power the best works of the present day. Persons who do not read it will soon find themselves in an isolated position.'-ib. p. 278. &c. &c. &c. Notwithstanding the industry with which these paragraphs were scattered through the press of distant localities, and the art with which the book was recommended to different classes of purchasers. like a quack medicine that is to cure all complaints, or a quack sauce that is to suit every taste-notwithstanding, we say, this superficial diversity, it is evident-at least if we have any skill in distinguishing style or phraseology-that they are all from the same hand, and we add, with almost equal confidence, that of the bashful author himself!-Surely there is only one author alive who, to such blunders as we have specially noted, could add that of quoting Samuel Johnson as predicting the celebrity of Pope! But even if some other hand had been hired to make these daubs, there is still no escape from the conclusive fact, that by thus collecting and republishing (under his own pagination) all this obsolete and nauseous trash -whether Armitage be a pseudonyme or his real namewhether he be a beau ideal of a modest parish priest, or the bashful rector of Much Wenlock in his own proper person'the author of Dr. Hookwell' has adopted and incurred the responsibility—the ridicule—and, let us add, the discredit of endeavouring to palm off a very trite and deceptive species of book-manufacture by a most original and impudent system of puffing. We are sorry to have had to make such an exposure of a man who, apart from the morbid excess of vanity which has evidently led him into this scrape, may be, for aught we know, worthy and amiable. His exposure however is on his own head. He has ostentatiously and pertinaciously forced his ignorance, conceit, and effrontery on public notice-and our part has been little more than to record, in his own words, the manner in which he has done so. ART. ART. IV.-1. Valentine's Day at the Post Office.-Household Words, a Weekly Journal, conducted by Charles Dickens. No. 1. 1850. 2. Return of the Number of Letters passed through the London General and London District Post Office since the Reduction of Postage on 5th December, 1839; the Gross and Net Revenue arising from the Post Office Department, and of Money Orders issued and paid. Ordered by the House of Commons to be printed, 5th June, 1849. 3. Copies of any Reports or Minutes addressed to the PostmasterGeneral, showing, as regards England and Wales.-1st. The Results of the Measures recently adopted for the Reduction of Sunday Labour in the Post Office; 2nd. The anticipated Effects of the Total Abolition of such Labour. Ordered by the House of Commons to be printed, 26th March, 1850. 4. Two Letters on the late Post Office Agitation. By Charles John Vaughan, D.D., Head Master of Harrow School, and late Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. 1850. HER Majesty's Postmaster-General is the Commander-in Chief of an army of great magnitude, quartered not only over the whole surface of the United Kingdom, and in almost every portion of the British Empire, but also at many Foreign Ports. His Secretaries form his Staff; his Surveyors are Commanders of Districts, to whom Postmasters report, and from whom in most cases they receive their orders. The General Post-Office in London-his Head-Quarters-is composed of a force of 2903 persons, divided into two Departments, each of which, without further flourish of trumpets, shall now rapidly pass in Review before our readers. The INLAND and FOREIGN DEPARTMENT, commonly called the GENERAL POST. The daily labour of this office is composed of two very violent convulsions,—namely, the morning delivery and evening despatch, and two comparatively slight aguish shivers, caused by a tiny arrival and departure of letters by the day mails. Throughout the department, at any period between these paroxysms, there reigns a silence and solitude similar to that which, during the hours of divine service, so creditably distinguishes the streets of Edinburgh on the Sabbath day. The stranger, as he paces from one large hall to another, save the ticking of the great clock, hears nothing but his own footsteps; and with the exception now and then of a dark-coated clerk popping out of one door into another, of a bright red postman occasionally passing like a meteor a meteor across the floor, and of a few other over-tired men in scarlet uniform sitting and lying fast asleep in various attitudes, like certain persons in the galleries of another place,' no human being is to be seen. While therefore this well-regulated and well - worked public department is enjoying its siesta, we will endeavour to offer to our readers a rough outline of the scene of its operations. When the present London Post-Office was completely finished in 1829, it was found, after all, to be barely large enough for its business;-and accordingly its first effort to obtain additional accommodation was, in 1831, to construct upon iron canti-levers a gallery halfway between the floor and the roof of one-half of the great sorting chamber, which was originally, as indeed it still is, a vast lofty double hall 109 feet long, 80 feet 6 inches broad, and 28 feet high. In 1836, to obtain further accommodation, it was determined to eject the secretary from the building, and to appropriate his very handsome suite of apartments therein to the uses of the office. Soon after our Parliament adopted Mr. Rowland Hill's bold proposal of the penny post, the brick and mortar boot, which had always been too tight, was found to pinch so intolerably, that various expedients, one after another, were resorted to:` and it was first of all determined to construct, over the double hall we have just described, another set or suite of the same dimensions, which, instead of resting on the ceilings of the old ones, were to be suspended from a strong arched iron girder roof by iron rods. In effecting however this ingenious operation the inevitable result has been that the principal hall on the ground floor has been deprived of its sky-lights, and to the serious inconvenience of the poor fellows who work in it, and we must add to the discredit of the country, this important portion of the London, and consequently of the largest post-office in the world, is now lighted almost entirely during the whole sunshine, even of summer, by stinking gas! Then, even the increased accommodation thus obtained not fully meeting the requirements of the new system, a small hollow quadrangle, built for lighting another portion of the establishment, was on the ground floor converted into a little office; and finally, these efforts not affording sufficient room, the money-order office, president, clerks, windowmen, ledgers, documents, papers and all, were ordered to swarm or emigrate from the post-office into an immense hive or building purposely constructed to receive them. By these patchwork arrangements the office is at present sufficiently large for its duties, for the performance of which great facility has been derived by the construction at each end of the large large double halls on both floors of a very ingenious contrivance, suggested by Mr. Bokenham, called the lifting machine.' Within a set of iron bars about 3 inches asunder, and altogether about 10 feet broad, reaching vertically from the floor of the lower halls to those suspended above them, there are in strata a series of platforms 9 feet 6 inches broad by 4 feet deep. resembling the cages in which wild beasts at country fairs are usually confined, which, by the irresistible power of a steam-engine, are made on one side to rise 28 feet from the lower to the upper halls, and then. passing through a slit in the wall, to descend in like manner on the other side: the whole thus circulating like the buckets of a dredgingmachine. By this contrivance sorters and letter-carriers, accompanied by their baskets and bags, instead of having to toil up and down a steep staircase, are quickly and most conveniently trans ferred from one set of halls to the other. The floors of both stories are divided into long double desks, separated by passages between each set, averaging about five feet in breadth-each great chamber being overlooked by two elevated platforms for the Inspectors,' who, just as the Persians worship the sun, regulate the whole of their movements by the expressive but ever-varying features of the hall's huge round-faced clock. At a few minutes before 5 P.M. the whole force of the inland department, refreshed by its siesta, having assembled, the business for the evening begins by the entrance on the lower floors, from various doors, of porters and carriers bringing, in various attitudes, bags and baskets full of letters, which have either been collected by hand within the immediate vicinity of St. Martin's-le-Grand, or have been delivered into the slits or at the windows of its prepaying office. At half-past five a stranger would fancy that the force assembled for the sorting of letters exceeded its work, and especially that by some unaccountable mystery the publication of newspapers, for the despatch of which the whole of the upper halls were in readiness, had been interdicted. On looking, however, into the large bins beneath the slits for receiving letters, white packets of all sizes and shapes are observed at about this period to drop down in arithmetical progression, increasing in number so rapidly that it soon occupies the attention of a sturdy porter to keep sweeping them with a broom into a heap, which, as fast as it can be tumbled into baskets, is carried into the large sorting halls. The fluttering, flapping, and flopping of all these letterstheir occasional total cessation for a few seconds-and yet the almost awful rate at which they keep increasing, form altogether a very exciting scene. As however the clock is unrelentingly progressing towards 6 P.M. we must reluctantly beg our readers to move with us from the letter bins to an adjoining compartment for the purpose of witnessing a moving picture of still greater interest. At three quarters past five a few newspapers, only by twos or by threes at a time, are to be heard falling heavily through the broad slits into the spacious bins for receiving them, and the stranger has accordingly still reason to think that in the newspaper department of this world something somewhere must have gone wrong. In a few minutes, however, a professional, business-like tap is heard at the window, and a lean, tall, sinewy man-in-waiting within, hitherto unobserved, who, with his sleeves tucked up, has been standing like a statue on the interior sill, opening the window, receives a dirty pocket handkerchief full of newspapers which he tumbles into a white wicker basket 2 feet 3 inches cube, standing all ready beneath. He has scarcely, with rather a disdainful jerk of his hand, returned the filthy rag to its still dirtier owner, when there is pushed towards him a large long sack, which in like manner having been emptied into the basket is chucked to its proprietor. Bags, bundles, and sacks of all sizes, shapes and lengths, now arrive so rapidly, that the man-in-waiting suddenly throws open the whole of the window, and in receiving, emptying, and throwing about bags, he commences a series of gymnastic exercises which are astonishing to witness. On the night on which we beheld the operation it happened that the newspapers for the India Mail were to be added to those of the heaviest night of the week, in consequence of which the number of bags increased so rapidly, that an assistant porter of the same lean, active make, jumping on the broad sill, opened a second window. At five minutes before six these men were at times so nearly overwhelmed with bags of all colours and sizes, that most of those who had brought only large bundles chucked them themselves into the office. As the finger of the clock advanced the arrivals increased. As fast as the two men could possibly empty and eject the sacks, the baskets beneath them (each holding on an average 500 newspapers) were dragged by scarlet postmen into the lifting machine, in which on its platforms they were to be seen through the bars of their respective cages, one set after another, rising towards the upper sorting balls. At a minute before six the two window-men were apparently working for their very lives;-parcels of newspapers like barredshot hurled past them; single newspapers, mostly discharged by boys, like musketry, were flying over their heads. At last the clock mercifully came to their rescue, and though its first five strokes seemed to increase the volley, the last had no sooner struck than, before its melodious note had completely died away, both the wooden windows of the newspaper receiving-room of the |