To schoolboys in general be ascribed the honour of introducing the elegant and instructive fancy forming the subject of our dissertation. The young students of the college of Louvain in particular claim to have been the earliest collectors: thence the fancy spread over France and Germany, inoculating many an English pupil in continental seminaries, by whom it was transmitted home. Some Louvain scholars informed us last year that it had been long prohibited by the professors, as tending to induce inattention to their regular tasks! We think this a mistaken notion; convinced that a knowledge of geography, history, and the values of foreign coins is materially facilitated by the study of postage stamps; which, moreover, induces neatness, regularity, and a sure refuge from ennui on a rainy day. Before the reign of postage stamps, who ever heard of the obscure city whence emanates that unit of a strange set of five, engraved at [page 759], or the equally mysterious Thurn and Taxis?
What can give a better idea of the chances and changes fewer than ten years have produced in the vast tract of land known as the Danubian Principalities, whose stamps are representatives of Moldavia alone, of Moldo-Wallachia united, and of the same countries resuming their ancient denomination of Roumania, first under Prince Couza, now under Prince Charles of Hohenzollern?
At the head of this paper is a reprint of an [engraving] taken from an old work on ancient and modern posts, printed at Paris in 1708. It portrays the various methods of transmitting news in use before the present almost universal system. The left-hand tower bears a lighted beacon; on the top of the right and central towers are men supposed to be shouting messages to be passed onwards from place to place, in the way some of our young classical scholars will remember is mentioned by Cæsar, book vii. chapter 3. The carrier pigeon above, and the dog in the foreground, represent other well-known modes. The former was, and still is, common in the East, and by no means disused here in the case of races, prize-fights, &c.; the latter was employed by the Portuguese during their East Indian conquests, and has been used until a late period by the Peruvians and other Americans.
An early anticipation of the modern post-paid envelope is still in existence, appropriately addressed to the celebrated authoress of “Cyrus the Great,” the originator of ἄγγαρα (angara), or posting-stations; but, strange to say, Persia, the earliest postal pioneer, has not yet adopted the stamp system, though essays have been submitted to the State.
The Californian Pony Expresses, and the earliest emission of Buenos Aires, are exemplars of this primitive way of communication. The last-named stamp has been supposed merely an essay; but we have seen it post-marked. A modification of the same is the Humboldt Express of Langton and Co. and a sort of travestie, the United States local of D. O. Blood.
Other methods of transmitting correspondence, &c. are typified by the sailing vessels of British Guiana, the steamers on the extinct stamps of Buenos Aires, and the Pacific Steam Navigation Company; those of La Guaira and the Russian for the Levant sea-ports. An American idea, even too go-ahead for the reckless Yankees, for we cannot hear that it was ever put in practice, is also here embodied.