[14] These epistles of Solomon and Hiram are those in 1 Kings v. 3-9, and in 2 Chronicles ii. 3-16.
[15] Letters were generally in the form of rolls, round a stick, or, if a long letter, round two sticks, beginning at each end and rolling them until they met in the middle. Books of every size were called rolls. Our word volume means just the same thing in its original signification. Jer. xxxvi. 2; Ps. xl.; Isa. xxxiv. 4. The roll, book, or letter was commonly written on one side: that which was given to Ezekiel, in vision, was written on both, within and without.—Ezek. ii. 10. Letters then, as is the custom in the East at present, were sent in most cases without being sealed; while those addressed to persons of distinction were placed in a valuable purse, or bag, which was tied, closed over with clay or wax, and so stamped with the writer’s signet. The Roman scrinium, or book-case, a very costly cabinet, shows how these rolls were preserved. They were put in lengthwise, and labeled at top.
[16] The mail was carried on horseback with the ancient pack-saddle, vulgarly called “saddle-bags.” In passing along, he announced his approach by blowing a “ram’s horn.”
[17] The number of letters annually transmitted throughout the kingdom is estimated at about 77,000,000; the gross receipts for postage (1837) were £2,339,737 18s. 3d.; the total cost of management and transportation, £698,632 2s. 2d.,—leaving a balance of £1,641,105 10s. 1d. as the revenue received by the government from the department. The number of franked letters was 7,000,000,—and 44,500,000 newspapers, which were free of postage.
[18] Since the text was written,—namely, on the evening of Monday, the 6th of June,—the Lord Chancellor in the one house and Viscount Palmerston in the other communicated a message of the queen of her majesty’s gracious intention to confer on Sir Rowland Hill a sum of £20,000, and asking her faithful Commons to make provision for the same.
[19] Condensed from a work entitled “Her Majesty’s Mails: an Historical and Descriptive Account of the British Post-Office.” By William Lewins. London, Sampson Low, Son & Marston, 14, Ludgate Hill. 1864.
[20] “He fills his mind with a vain or idle picture;” or, “He feeds his mind with empty representations. He dwells with eagerness upon the painted semblance,” &c.
[21] “A mind regardless of life [if sacrificed in a good cause].”
[22] Hinton.
[23] That such scenes should have taken place here is not so strange, when we take into consideration the fact that all England was witch-mad, and the epidemic raged there subsequent to those atrocities which disgraced our colonial history. Even now the blush of shame reflects its hue on those pages devoted to witchcraft in New England, from the cheeks of those who cannot read our country’s history without referring to them. During the seventeenth century 40,000 persons are said to have been put to death for witchcraft in England alone. In Scotland the number was probably, in proportion to the population, much greater; for it is certain that even in the last forty years of the sixteenth century the executions were not fewer than 17,000. In 1643 the madness may be said to have reached its highest pitch; for in that year occurred the celebrated case of the Lancashire witches, in which eight innocent persons were deprived of their lives by the inherent falsehoods of a mischievous urchin. The civil war, far from suspending the prosecution, seemed to have redoubled it. In 1644-45 the infamous Matthew Hopkins was able to earn a livelihood by the profession of witch-finder, which he exercised, not indeed without occasional suspicion, but still with general success. And even twenty years later the delusion was still sanctioned by the most venerable name of the English law!