Formerly, if you had one friend at Constantinople and another at Moscow, you would have been obliged to wait for their return before you could obtain any intelligence concerning them. At present, without either of you leaving your apartments, you may familiarly converse through the medium of a sheet of paper. You may even despatch to them by the post, one of Arnault’s sovereign remedies for apoplexy, which would be received much more infallibly, probably, than it would cure.

If one of your friends has occasion for a supply of money at St. Petersburg, and the other at Smyrna, the post will completely and rapidly effect your business. Your mistress is at Bordeaux, while you are with your regiment before Prague; she gives you regular accounts of the constancy of her affections; you know from her all the news of the city, except her own infidelities. In short, the post is the grand connecting link of all transactions, of all negotiations. Those who are absent, by its means become present; it is the consolation of life.

France, where this beautiful invention was revived, even in our period of barbarism, has hereby conferred the most important service on all Europe. She has also never in any instance herself marred and tainted so valuable a benefit, and never has any minister who superintended the department of the post opened the letters of any individual, except when it was absolutely necessary that he should know their contents. It is not thus, we are told, in other countries. It is asserted, that in Germany private letters, passing through the territories of five or six different governments, have been read just that number of times, and that at last the seal has been so nearly destroyed that it became necessary to substitute a new one.

Mr. Craggs, secretary of state in England, would never permit any person in his office to open private letters; he said that to do so was a breach of public faith, and that no man ought to possess himself of a secret that was not voluntarily confided to him; that it is often a greater crime to steal a man’s thoughts than his gold; and that su............