L.

* * * * *

ORIGINS OF PRESENT PENNY POSTAGE.

Many of your readers have, I doubt not, perused with interest the vivid
sketch of the origin of the Penny Postage System, given by Miss Martineau
in her _History of England during the Thirty Years' Peace_, vol. ii. p.
425., and have seen in the incident of the shilling letter delivered to the
poor cottager, somewhere in the Lake district--refused by her from
professed inability to pay the postage--paid for by Mr. Rowland Hill, who
happened most opportunely to be passing that way--and, when opened, found
to be blank (this plan being preconcerted between the woman and her
correspondent, to know of each other's welfare without the expense of
postage). A remarkable instance of "how great events from little causes
spring," and have bestowed much admiration on the penetration of Mr. Hill's
mind, which "wakened up at once to a significance of the fact," nor ever
rested till he had devised and effected his scheme of Post-office Reform;
though all the while an uncomfortable feeling might be lurking behind as to
the perfect credibility of so interesting a mode of accounting for the
initiation of this great social benefit.

I confess to having had some suspicions myself as to the trustworthiness of
this story; and a few days since my suspicions were fully confirmed by
discovering that the real hero of the tale was not the Post-office
Reformer, but the poet Coleridge; unless, indeed, which is surely out of
the range of ordinary probabilities, the same event, _corresponding exactly
as to place and amount of postage_, happened to two persons at separate