LINGUISTS AT THE POST OFFICE.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE SPECTATOR."] SIR,—"Lindum " deserves all credit for his loyal defence of the officials of the Lincoln post-office and their educational antecedents. But he must accept my assurance that the letter in question is no creation of a crapulous dream, as he, not quite courteously, suggests, but a substantial fact. I saw the letter with my waking eyes; I held it in my waking hands ; I copied the. address and the endorsements with my waking fingers; and, like "the bricks" in Jack Cade's aiinney, the letter "is alive at this day to testify" to its -existence.
Among the thousands of letters they have to distribute, it is hardly surprising that this one, addressed presumably to a .certain " Mrs. Leveque," " not known in Lincoln," should have passed from the memory of the sorters ; and as the Bishop's private correspondence does not come into the hands of his secretary, that gentleman's ignorance of its reception is easily accounted for. The fact, however, is as I have stated it.
I need hardly say that, in making my connnunication to you, I had no desire to "run down" or " badger " the staff of the Lincoln or of any other post-office. Considering the vast amount of work they have to do, and the limited time in which it has to be done, the wonder is, not that mistakes do sometimes occur, but that they occur so seldom. But at the same time, I must repeat that such a practical knowledge of French (and, may I add, German) as would prevent the occurrence of so ludicrous a mistake should be a sine qud non in some at least of the staff of every post-office in the King-
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