d for the
handling of eight hundred and fifty millions of letters and cards,
and a greater bulk of other mail-matter, under the old plan of
rates varying according to distance and number of sheets, and not
weight--stamps unknown. The introduction of stamps, with coincident
reduction and unification of rates, has been the chief factor in the
extraordinary increase of correspondence within the past thirty years;
the number of letters passing through the mails having within that
period multiplied twenty-fold. The number transmitted in the British
Islands, then three times greater than in the United States, is
now but little in excess, having been in 1874 nine hundred and
sixty--seven millions. The immense difference between the two
countries in extent, and consequently in the average distance of
transportation, is enough to account for the contrast between the two
balance-sheets, our department showing a heavy annual deficit, while
in Great Britain this is replaced by a profit. As regards post-office
progress in the United States, the question is rather an abstract one;
for there is not the least probability of an advance in rates. The
discrepancy between receipts and expenses will be attacked rather
by seeking to reduce the latter at the same time that the former
are enhanced by natural growth and by improvement in the details of
service and administration.

[Illustration: PROF. S.F.B. MORSE, THE INVENTOR OF THE
ELECTRO-MAGNETIC TELEGRAPH.]

Difficult as it is adequately to state or to measure the extension of
the mails within the century, it is far from telling the whole
story of the amplitude and celerity with which the people of our day
interchange intelligence.

Only to the last third of the period under review has the electric
telegraph been known. It is now a necessity of the public and private
life of every civilized spot upon the globe. It traverses all lands
and all seas. The forty miles of wire with which it started from
Washington City have become many millions. Its length of line in the
United States is about the same with that of the mail-routes, and a
similar equality probably obtains in other parts of the world. We have
nearly as much line as all Europe together, though the extent of wire
may not be so great. It is little to say that this continent, so
dim to the founders of the Union, has been by the invention of Morse
compressed within whispering distance, the same advantage having been
conferred on