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ON THE POST-OFFICE

establishment a more regular form, extending it throughout the empire, at first by the agency of couriers on foot, and afterwards by horse and chariot conveyance.

The lex de cursu publico in the Theodosian Code regulates and fixes the respective stages, the rate of post-horses, &c.; but this regulation appears to have had reference chiefly to the travelling of the government couriers, who, until that period, were accustomed to seize the horses of any individuals they met with, on the plea of the public service.

After all, from the state of society in general, the deficiency of materials, and the partial extent of the essential qualification of writing, not then quite so universal as in modern times, we may safely conclude that the epistolary correspondence of antiquity was at no period very considerable, but confined to the higher and learned classes.

The sagacity of Charlemagne quickly suggested to him the advantages arising from a regular and prompt communication throughout his extensive empire; and scarcely had he completed the subjugation of Italy, Germany, and part of Spain, when he established public posts to each of those countries, which largely contributed to secure the conquests his valour had achieved. After his death, amidst the convulsions that soon ensued and desolated the whole of Europe,

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