traits; he walks with his arms in motion, but attempts not a swagger;
his knock is unassuming, and his words, though much attended to, are
few, and to the point. Why, then, abuse him? We know not, but believe it
originates in fear. An intuitive feeling of dread--a rushing
presentiment of evil--crosses our mind, as our eye dwells on his
thread-bare coat, with its capacious pockets. News of a death--or a
marriage--the tender valentine--the remorseless dun--your having been
left an estate, or cut off with a shilling--fortune, and misfortune---
he quietly dispenses, as if totally unconscious. Surely such a man--his
round performed--cannot quietly sink to the private individual. Can such
a man caress his wife, or kiss his child, when he knows not how many
hearts are bursting with joy, or breaking with sorrow, from the tidings
_he_ has conveyed? To our mind, a postman should be an abstracted
visionary being, endowed with a peculiar countenance, betraying the
unnatural sparkle of the opium-eater, and evincing intense anxiety at
the delivery of each sheet. But these,--they wait not to hear the joyful
shout, or heart-rending moan--to know if hope deferred be at length
joyful certainty, or bitter only half-expected woe. We dread a postman.
Our hand shook, as we last year paid the man of many destinies his
demanded Christmas box.

The amount was double that we gave to the minister of our corporeal
necessities--the butcher's boy--not from a conviction of the superior
services or merit of the former, but from an uneasy desire to bribe, if
we could, that Mercury of fate.

The letter to Sir Henry, was from the surgeon of George's regiment. It
stated that George had been severely ill, and that connected with his
illness, were symptoms which made it imperative on the medical adviser,
to recommend the immediate presence of his nearest male relative.