So-called "watermarks" are sometimes produced by impressing a design on the paper _after_ manufacture; this has a somewhat similar effect, though the paper is only pressed, not thinned.
The earliest letter carriers--The Roman _posita_--Princely Postmasters of Thurn and Taxis--Sir Brian Tuke--Hobson of "Hobson's Choice"--The General Letter Office of England--Dockwra's Penny Post of 1680--Povey's "Halfpenny Carriage"--The Edinburgh and other Penny Posts--Postal Rates before 1840--Uniform Penny Postage--The Postage Stamp regarded as the royal _diplomata_--The growth of the postal business.
Postage is so cheap and so easy to-day that we are apt to forget how, not very many years ago, it was a privilege of the rich. To-day the Post Office is no respecter of persons, and the "all swallowing orifice of the pillar-box" receives without favour or distinction the correspondence of the humble with the messages of the mighty. The Post Office treats everything confided to its charge with the same organised routine. In the palatial new edifice, King Edward the Seventh Building, a few days before Christmas, a letter was handed to me for inspection in the "Blind Division," where they deal with insufficiently addressed letters. The missive bore in the handwriting of a little child, "To Santa Claus, No. 1, Aerial Building, London." That letter, I was informed, had to be passed through the Blind Division, thence to the Returned Letter Office, where it would be opened to discover if the enclosure contained any indication of the identity and whereabouts of the writer. If not returnable, the letter would be preserved for a period lest it should be claimed. The Department is as careful of the precocious petitions of a child as it is of the papers of State which it carries throughout the length and breadth of the land.
By all who would know the true love of stamps it must needs be understood how postal matters were before the birth of the Penny Black. Else we shall not fitly appreciate all the benefices that the "label with the glutinous wash" has brought to our present civilisation. Without this comparison of the old order with the new, we should be in peril of passing over the true significance of the postage-stamp in the surfeit of blessings it confers upon the world to-day. Postage to-day is as fecund of bounties as a fruitful garden, yet do we accept all as our rightful heritage, without giving much consideration to the little postage-stamp which was the seed which, planted in every civilised country of the earth, has yielded blessings in abundance.