Mr. Anthony Trollope has retired from the Post Office, and
his friends and colleagues have commemorated that event by a dinner given to hint last Thursday at the Albion, at which nearly a hundred persons were present. Mr. Scudamore, the author, or at least the principal executive mind of the new Post-Office Savings' Banks, was in the chair. He made an amusing and entertaining speech on the difficulties with which Mr. Trollope had had to -contend in gaining such a place in literature, without ever neg- lecting his duties in a very hardworked service. A raw Scotch -official in the Post Office had recently asked him if a man could work his way up to be Lord Mayor through the Post Office, a melancholy fate from which Mr. Scudamore assured the anxious inquirer that civil servants were "specially exempt." But he thought even the Lord Mayoralty would have been more clearly within the range of possibilities for a Post-Office clerk, than so great a literary success as Mr. Trollope's. Mr. Trollope in returning thanks for the toast of his health professed melancholy at bidding adieu to the Post Office, and doubted whether inspecting post offices were not better work than delineating ;character. But this must have had in it a shade of rhetorical affect. Lily Dale appears to have been the " favourite " amongst N Mr. TrolloPe's old colleagues, and was heartily cheered. Were there no groans for Sir Raffle Buffie and Mr. Kissing?
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