Sir,—Seeing that the inquiry made by your Correspondent, I. E., and which appeared in your "Current Notes" for January last, p. 6, in a paragraph entitled, "Rowland Hill and the Penny Postage," has not been answered in the "Current Notes," for this month, I will inform you that the traveller mentioned in that paragraph was not Rowland Hill, but Coleridge. The fact was mentioned by Mr. Commissioner Hill (brother to Rowland Hill), in the last of two lectures, which he gave at the Bristol Philosophical Institution, on the evening of the 29th ultimo, "on Postal Arrangements," which I attended. An extract of the Lecture is to be found in the Bristol newspapers, and especially in the Times and Gazette, from which I copy the portion which has reference to the "Inquiry:"
"Many instances were related of the uselessness of the Post-office of those days to the poor; and the Lecturer took occasion to remark how often we were wrong and selfish in measuring any expense by our shillings and pence, forgetting that these nothings to us were pounds to the poor. Amongst other instances he referred to one mentioned in the Autobiography of Coleridge, who, whilst travelling, observed the postman offering a letter to a poor woman, urging upon her the necessity of taking it in, as it was evidently from her son. The poor woman refused; she could not afford it; but Coleridge charitably paid the shilling for her, and the postman left, when the woman expressed her grateful thanks, but was sorry he had wasted the shilling, for it was only a blank sheet addressed by her son, as a means of informing her he had reached his destination safely. Hundreds of such expedients were then employed, nor could it be wondered at."
If this communication can be of any use for your "Current Notes," it will give great pleasure, Sir, to
Your subscriber,
F. S. Donato.
Bishop Gibson.
London, Feb. 11, 1852.
Sir,—I will be much obliged to any of your correspondents who can inform me to whom Edmund Gibson, the Bishop of London, and a great authority on ecclesiastical laws, was married? and, if possible, the date of such marriage. The biographies of him which have fallen under my notice, have named no domestic circumstances but those of parentage and infancy. I think he died in 1745.
Your obedient servant,
Genealogist.