developing the anarchies of my subsequent dreams, an agency which they
accomplished, first, through velocity, at that time unprecedented; they
first revealed the glory of motion: suggesting, at the same time, an
under-sense, not unpleasurable, of possible though indefinite danger;
secondly, through grand effects for the eye between lamp-light and the
darkness upon solitary roads; thirdly, through animal beauty and power so
often displayed in the class of horses selected for this mail service;
fourthly, through the conscious presence of a central intellect, that, in
the midst of vast distances,[2] of storms, of darkness, of night, overruled
all obstacles into one steady coöperation in a national result. To my own
feeling, this post-office service recalled some mighty orchestra, where a
thousand instruments, all disregarding each other, and so far in danger of
discord, yet all obedient as slaves to the supreme _baton_ of some great
leader, terminate in a perfection of harmony like that of heart, veins, and
arteries, in a healthy animal organization. But, finally, that particular
element in this whole combination which most impressed myself, and through
which it is that to this hour Mr. Palmer's mail-coach system tyrannizes
by terror and terrific beauty over my dreams, lay in the awful political
mission which at that time it fulfilled. The mail-coaches it was that
distributed over the face of the land, like the opening of apocalyptic
vials, the heart-shaking news of Trafalgar, of Salamanca, of Vittoria, of
Waterloo. These were the harvests that, in the grandeur of their reaping,
redeemed the tears and blood in which they had been sown. Neither was the
meanest peasant so much below the grandeur and the sorrow of the times as
to confound these battles, which were gradually moulding the destinies
of Christendom, with the vulgar conflicts of ordinary warfare, which are
oftentimes but gladiatorial trials of national prowess. The victories of
England in this stupendous contest rose of themselves as natural _Te Deums_
to heaven; and it was felt by the thoughtful that such victories, at such a
crisis of general prostration, were not more beneficial to ourselves than