The Postmaster-General, Mr. Raikes, laid the foundation- stone on Monday
of a new Post-Office in Birmingham, stating that within the last twenty years,—since 1870,—the number of letters delivered in Birmingham had more than trebled, while the telegrams had increased more than sixfold. All this is remarkable evidence of the rapidly increasing life and energy in Birmingham ; but if there were only any conceivable test of the proportion, at the two different periods, between the letters worth writing and the letters actually written, we should learn more of the growth of true life at Birmingham than we do. But it is the worst of statistics that they so seldom touch anything but the most superficial part of life. It would be very satisfactory to know whether the trivial aspects of life encroach on the serious, or the serious on the trivial ; whether, as business increases, it is mere inertness that vanishes away, or whether a certain old-fashioned type of slow, painstaking energy dies away with it, as well as mere inertness.
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