Such a
costume, and the elaborate arrangement of the laurels in their hats,
dilate their hearts, by giving to them openly a personal connexion with
the great news in which already they have the general interest of
patriotism. That great national sentiment surmounts and quells all
sense of ordinary distinctions. Those passengers who happen to be
gentlemen are now hardly to be distinguished as such except by dress;
for the usual reserve of their manner in speaking to the attendants has
on this night melted away. One heart, one pride, one glory, connects
every man by the transcendent bond of his national blood. The
spectators, who are numerous beyond precedent, express their sympathy
with these fervent feelings by continual hurrahs. Every moment are
shouted aloud by the post-office servants, and summoned to draw up, the
great ancestral names of cities known to history through a thousand
years--Lincoln, Winchester, Portsmouth, Gloucester, Oxford, Bristol,
Manchester, York, Newcastle, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Perth, Stirling,
Aberdeen--expressing the grandeur of the empire by the antiquity of its
towns, and the grandeur of the mail establishment by the diffusive
radiation of its separate missions. Every moment you hear the thunder
of lids locked down upon the mail-bags. That sound to each individual
mail is the signal for drawing off; which process is the finest part of
the entire spectacle.
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