LETTER WRITING.

To Atossa, a Persian queen, the daughter of Cyrus and the mother of

Xerxes, has been ascribed the invention of letter writing. She, although

a royal barbarian, was, like her prototype of Sheba, not only an admirer

of wisdom in others, but wise herself. She first composed epistles. So

testifies Hellanicus, a general historian of the ancient states, and so

insists Tatian in his celebrated oration against the Greeks. In that

oration he contends that none of the institutions of which the Greeks

were so boastful had their origin with them, but were all invented by

the barbarians.

It may be doubted, however, whether to any known person in the domains

of olden time can be truly attributed the high honor of such an

invention. Indeed, the views that may justly be entertained as to what

constitutes an invention may be various and diverse. Perhaps, in a

qualified sense, any signal addition or improvement deserves to be so

distinguished. What was precisely the subject matter of Atossa's

invention is not told, nor is anything recorded to lead to the

conclusion that she invented any new material; but, if she discovered

any way of committing the communications between persons, separated or

at a distance from each other, to paper--whether composed of the

interior bark of trees, or of the Egyptian papyrus, or other flexible

substance--and making it into a roll or volume, to be sent by some

carrier, that Persian queen may be accredited as the inventress of

epistolary composition.

It has been conjectured that letter writing was an art existing in the

days of Homer; because one of that great poet's characters, named

Pretus, gives a folded tablet to another personage, Bellerophontes, to

deliver to a third individual, Jobates. But the learned commentators,

both German and English, agree in the fact that the Iliad and the

Odyssey were never written, but recited to various audiences by

'The grand old bard of Scio's rocky isle.'

Writing, however, was in use throughout Greece before the time of Homer,

if not in ordinary intercourse, certainly for memorials and

inscriptions. The age of Homer may be regarded as preceding the

Christian era by about one thousand years. It synchronizes with the time

of Solomon. Thus the greatest of poets and the wisest of kings

coexisted--truly a noticeable fact, a theme for the imagination.

But the Holy Scriptures afford instances of letter writing, in some form

or other, at a period considerably anterior to the age of Solomon. David

wrote a letter to Joab, and sent it by the hand of Uriah: 'And he wrote

in the letter, saying.' (2 Samuel xi, 14, 15.) And, about one hundred

and forty years afterward, Jezebel wrote letters in Ahab's name (1 Kings

xxi, 8, 9), and 'sealed them with his seal, and sent the letters unto

the elders and to the nobles that were in the city, dwelling with

Naboth, and she wrote in the letters, saying, (2 Kings v, 5, 6, 7; 2

Kings x, 1, 2, 6, 7.) The king of Syria wrote a letter to the king of

Israel, and therewith sent Naaman, his servant, to be cured of his

leprosy: 'And it came to pass when the king of Israel read the letter,

that he rent his clothes.'

Now this occurred about nine hundred years before the Christian era;

and, about twenty years later, we are told that Jehu wrote letters and

sent them to Samaria. A second time he transmitted other letters of a

similar import, which were cruelly obeyed.

Then there is the threatening letter of the king of Assyria to Hezekiah,

set forth in the second book of Kings, and also the complimentary

letter from Berodach-Baladan to the same king of Judah after his

sickness; a king who subsequently appears himself to have written

letters to the tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh, to summon them to

Jerusalem. (2 Kings xix, 14; xx, 12; 2 Chron. xxx, 1-6.)

Cyrus, after publishing his decree giving liberty to the Jews to return

to their own country and rebuild the house of the Lord at Jerusalem,

wrote letters recommendatory to the governors of several provinces to

assist the Jews in their undertaking; one of which letters Josephus has

recorded as being addressed to the governors of Syria, and commencing

with the regular epistolary salutation, 'Cyrus, the king, to Sysina and

Sarabasan sendeth a greeting.' And while the children of the captivity

were rebuilding their temple (and this was five hundred and twenty-two

years before Christ), there was a frequent correspondence by letters

between, their adversaries and Artaxerxes, king of Persia. Now,

supposing the invention, in any modified sense, of letter writing _on

paper_, or what may answer to the idea conveyed by that term, is in any

measure attributable to the daughter of Cyrus, this was quite a matter

of course and in accordance with the general practice.

Still, let us not be disposed to take away from the royal lady the honor

of having invented an art which her sex have, in modern years, carried

to a perfection scarcely attainable by the male sex; for it may be set

down as an axiom that one woman's letter is worth a dozen letters by

men.

After all, the instances of communication by means of letter writing to

which allusions have thus been made are plainly no specimens of that use

of the invention which constitutes it the medium of free thought and

intelligence, or even the simple vehicle of domestic intercourse. Those

letters or missives were either formal announcements of authoritative

mandates and despatches, or, at best, only the conveyancers of certain

information, to be the motive to some act or understanding, or to

determine or direct some course of proceeding. There are no examples of

what can properly be called _familiar letters_ before the time of

Cicero, whose correspondence may justly be regarded as among the most

precious remains of ancient literature which have survived to our own

day. In connection with this remark, we may be permitted to observe

that, as with the greatest of ancient, so with the greatest of modern

orators, he was distinguished for the beauty, power, and brilliancy of

his letters. There are few instances of English style more charming in

themselves than the epistles, whether published or still in manuscript,

written by that versatile and wonderful person, Daniel Webster.

(_Nunquam tetigit quod non ornavit._) How copious is their expression!

How facile and felicitous their illustrations! What grace! What beauty

of diction! What simplicity, elevated by a matchless elegance! Nothing

more clearly proves the various talents of both the Roman and the

American statesman than that they should no more have excelled in their

forensic achievements on grand occasions than in those common and

trivial affairs of every-day life, so unaffected and so effortless as

the writing of letters to their friends.

All the letters of Greek and Roman origin which have come down to us

seem to be doubtful, except those of Plato and Isocrates, until the days

of Cicero. Under his genius the mind of the Roman nation took a sudden

spring, and the polite literature of the world was embellished by

epistolary composition. As the rules and illustrations of poetic writing

were borrowed by Aristotle from the example of Homer, so the practice

and authority of Cicero appear to have furnished precepts best entitled

to determine the character and merits of the epistolary style. He

esteemed it as a species of composition enjoying the privilege of great

ease and familiarity, as well in its diction as in its treatment of its

subject, and also in its employment of the weapons of wit and humor. The

general style most suitable to its spirit and character he considered to

be that most in use in the ordinary and daily intercourse of society. He

admired a simple and playful use of language, and he affected, as he

asserts, a common and almost plebeian manner of writing, using words of

every-day stamp in his correspondence. In his view of letter writing,

its style and manner ought to vary with the complexion of its subject

matter, and be subjected to no abstract system of rules. Ho propounds

three principal kinds of epistles: first, that which merely conveys

interesting intelligence, being, as he says, the very object for which

the thing itself came into existence; second, the jocose letter; third,

the serious and solemn letter. And it was besides the opinion of the

great orator--an opinion sanctioned and ratified by all honorable

persons then and in our own day--that there is something sacred in the

contents of a letter which gives it the strongest claims to be withheld

from third persons. 'For who,' he exclaims, in his second Philippic,

'who that is at all influenced by good habits and feelings, has ever

allowed himself to resent an affront or injury by exposing to others any

letters received from the offending persons during their intercourse of

friendship?' 'What else,' he eloquently exclaims, 'would be the tendency

of such conduct but to rob the very life of life of its social charms!

How many pleasantries find their way into letters, as amusing to the

correspondents as they are insipid to others; and how many subjects of

serious interest, which are entirely unfit to be brought before the

public!'

Truly is it gratifying, in our treatment of this topic, to be able to

adduce such high, classical authority concerning the sacred and

inviolable character of all private correspondence. In our humble view,

not only is the seal of a letter a lock more impregnable to the hand of

honor than the strongest bank safe which the expert Mr. Hobbs might

vainly have tried to open; but even when that seal has already been

rightfully broken and the contents of the letter exposed, those contents

are to the eye of delicacy as unreadable as if written in that _Bass_

language which Adam and Eve are said to have spoken while in the garden

of Eden, and which, since the fall, none but angels have ever been able

to comprehend. Now, if Cicero thought it base for a third party to read

a private letter, what eloquent thunder would he not have hurled at the

head of that wretch who not only read, but printed and published it!

There is an epithet, which, in certain parts of New England, the folks

apply to the poorest of poor scamps--'mean.' Now who, in this round

world, of all that dwell therein, can be found one half so 'mean' as the

betrayer and revealer of another's secrets? A whip should be placed in

every honest hand to lash the rascal naked through the world. He should

be fastened in an air-tight mail bag, and sent jolting and bouncing,

amid innumerable letters and packages and ponderous franked documents of

members of Congress, over all the roughest roads of our Northwestern

country!

To return to what a letter should be. It seems, upon the whole, to have

been Cicero's opinion--and in this we shall fain agree as well as in his

view of the secrecy of letters--that, whether the subject be solemn or

familiar, learned or colloquial, general or particular, political or

domestic, an easy, vivacious, unaffected diction gives to epistolary

writing its proper grace and perfection.

In very truth, good letter writing is little else than conversation upon

paper, carried on between parties personally separate, with this

especial advantage, that it brings the minds of the interlocutors into

reciprocal action, with more room for reflection, and with, fewer

disturbances than can usually consist with personal conversation.

We have thus made mention of Cicero as the greatest of authorities with

regard to this subject, because he was himself the greatest of letter

writers. The epistle was the shape in which his versatile and beautiful

mind most gracefully ran and moulded itself. His fluctuating and

unstable character no less than his vanity and love of distinction,

seemed to minister occasion to those varied forms of diction and

expression in which the genius of animated letter writing may be said to

delight. Read his 'Familiar Letters,' if not in Latin, yet in

translation, if you wish to study the most perfect specimens of this

style--a style which has not been equalled or approached since his day.

Next to the letters of the great Roman orator, merit points to those of

the philosopher Seneca. He, too, cultivates and enjoins an easy and

unstudied diction. So great is the excellence of his letters; so nearly

is their beauty allied to the beauty of our Holy Scriptures; so does he

seem to anticipate the morals and teachings of our Christian

dispensation, that it is almost reprehensible to speak of them at all,

without setting forth their extraordinary charms of style and thought,

even in a larger space than the present article can be allowed to

occupy.

After Seneca, the next most noted of the ancient letter writers was

Pliny the younger. And now we are brought down to the days of the

Apostles and their Epistles. With a simple reverential allusion to the

letters of St. Paul and the other immediate followers of our Lord,

letters that teach men the way of salvation--we pass to a more modern

consideration of our topic.

Letters can hardly be classified. They are of various sorts. Most of

them, as schoolboys say, end in t-i-o-n, _tion_. There are Letters of

Introduction; Letters of Congratulation; Letters of Consolation; Letters

of Invitation; Letters of Recommendation; Letters of Administration.

There are, moreover, letters of friendship, business letters, letters of

diplomacy, letters of credit, letters patent, letters of marque (apt

also to be letters of mark), and love letters--the last being by no

means least.

Let not the gentle reader imagine from this enumeration than we are

going to be so tedious as to divide the remainder of this article into

heads, and to treat of each one of these kinds of letters in its turn.

No; our object is, by indicating thus the number of sorts, to elucidate

the importance of letters, and to prove that, if their writing be not,

like that of poetry, ranked among the fine arts, it well deserves to be.

For what more admirable accomplishment can there be--what is of more

importance often than the proper composing of letters? Many a reputation

is made or marred by a single epistle. Great consequences follow in the

train of a single epistle. The pen is mightier than the sword. How well

may our readers remember one brief letter of Henry Clay (_clarum et

venerabile nomen!_), who, when a candidate for the Presidency, wrote

many excellent letters, and too many--so many, indeed, that his

adversaries indulged in pointless ridicule, and called him 'The Complete

Letter Writer.' We allude, of course, to that brief letter to certain

importunate individuals in Alabama, which lost for him the decisive and

final vote of New York, and made Mr. Polk President--its consequences

being the war with Mexico, the acquisition and annexation of California,

the discovery of the gold mines--working an utter change in the

political and commercial fortunes of the world, which would probably

never have taken place, or, at least, not in our century, but for that

one brief Alabama letter! It is, we believe, fully conceded that the

safest rule for becoming Chief Magistrate of our country is never to

write a letter.

Many a man and woman, who has written a letter and posted it, wishes

ardently that it could be recalled; and many a one who has something

disagreeable to say, and is obliged to say it in a letter because he has

promised to write, wishes that he could send the letter in blank--like

Larry O'Branigan to his wife Judy, when he was constrained to inform her

that he had been dismissed from his place, thus done into verse by the

bard of Erin:

'As it was but last week that I sent you a letter,

You'll wonder, dear Judy, what this is about,

And, troth, it's a letter myself would like better,

Could I manage to leave the contents of it out.'

Excellent, by the way, as this Hibernicism is, it is not so perfect as

the following, which it would be difficult for the most accomplished of

Paddies to surpass. A man, dying, wrote an epistle, in which, stating

that he was near death, he took an affectionate farewell of his friends.

He left the letter open on a table near him, and expired before he had

time to complete it. His attendant, just after his demise, taking up the

defunct's pen, in which the ink was scarcely yet dry, added, by way of

postcript, or rather _post-mortem-script_: 'Since writing the foregoing,

I have died.'

There is more philosophy than one would at first imagine in the apology

of him who said that his pen was so bad it could not spell correctly. To

write a letter as it should be in all respects, to be what it ought to

be, orthographically, grammatically, rhetorically right, there should be

a good pen, good paper, good ink. Many a pleasant correspondence has

been marred by want of these adjuncts; many an agreeable thought

arrested; many a composition, happily begun, hurried to an abrupt

conclusion. And how many delightful letters have been omitted or

neglected to be written by their want! We are not jesting. These

concomitants, together with nice envelopes, are as requisite to a

respectable epistle as becoming costume is to a lady. When we see a

scrawling hand on coarse paper, ill folded, worse directed, and ending,

'Yours in haste,' we think but little of the writer. Such a one may

complain of being in a hurry, but ladies and gentlemen should always

take time to do well whatsoever they do at all. No letters should be

written 'in haste' except angry ones, and the faster they are 'committed

to paper' the better. We have found it a capital plan, when in hot

wrath, to sit directly down and scratch off a furious letter, and then,

having thus committed our ire to the paper, to commit that to the

flames. The process is highly refrigerant, in any state of the weather.

Nothing can be more false than the phraseology of most letters. Many a

letter is commenced with 'dear,' when the writer, if he dared express

his real sentiment, would use a very opposite word. But, be the

sentiments of a letter what they may, true or false, real or affected,

it is the desire of the present writer to insist upon the indispensable

neatness of letters--that they should be externally faultless, however

defective inside. We regret to record the unpleasant fact that our

American ladies seldom write good hands, whereas a fair chirography is

properly considered as among the very first accomplishments for a

well-educated girl in England. Who ever saw a letter from a true English

lady that was not faultless in its details? What nice, legible

penmanship! How happily expressed! How trim and pretty a cover! How

beautiful and classic a seal! Very different these from the concomitants

of half a sheet of ruled paper, scrawled over as if chickens had been

walking upon it, and folded slopingly, and held loosely together by a

wafer!

It is an affectation of many lawyers and most literary people to write

ill, probably to create an impression that such is the vast importance

of their occupations and lucubrations that they have not time to attend

to so minor a matter as penmanship. A certain highly distinguished

counsellor of Massachusetts was said to have written so badly that he

could not comprehend his own legal opinions after he had put them on

paper. Now such affectation is in very poor taste. Those who cannot

write fairly and legibly had better go to school and practise until they

can. Incomprehensible writing is as bad as incomprehensible speaking. A

clear enunciation is scarcely more important than a plain hand. A

lawyer, in speaking, may as well jumble his words so together that not

one in fifty can be understood, as in writing to scrawl and run them

about so that not one in fifty can be read.

What a world of content or of unhappiness lies within the little fold of

a letter! Hark! There is the postman's ring at the door, sharp, quick,

imperative; as much as to say, 'Don't, keep me standing here; I'm in a

hurry.' How your heart beats! It has come at length--the long-expected

letter; an answer to a proposal of marriage, perhaps; a reply to an

urgent inquiry concerning a matter of business; information with regard

to some near and dear relative; a bulletin from the field of battle;

what the heart sighs for, hopes for--fears, yet welcomes--desires, yet

dreads. You seize the letter. Has it a black seal? Yes? The blood leaves

your cheeks and rushes to its citadel, frozen with fear, and in your ear

sounds the knell of a departed joy. No? Then you heave a long sigh of

relief, and gaze for a moment at the missive, wondering from whom it can

be. Your doubts are soon resolved, and you rest satisfied or you are

disappointed. Recall the emotions which you have experienced in opening

and reading many a letter, and you will acknowledge that fate and

fortune often announce their happiest or sternest decrees through a

little sheet of folded paper. Have you not thought so, wife, when came

the long looked-for, long hoped-for, long prayed-for--with so many sighs

and tears, such throbbing, and such sinking of the heart--letter from

your husband, telling the fruition of his schemes, and the prospect of

his speedy return? Have you not thought so, mother, when your son's

letter came, assuring you that your early teachings had been blessed to

him; and, though perchance surrounded by the temptations of a great city

or a great camp, he had found that 'peace which passeth understanding?'

Have you not thought so, O happy damsel--yes! that blush tells how

deeply--when _his_ letter came at last, that letter which told you you

were beloved, and that all his future felicity depended upon your reply?

And that soft reply--how covered with kisses, how worn in that pocket of

the coat in which it can feel the beatings of the precordial region! And

not of you alone, ye refined and accomplished lovers--but of swains and

sweethearts are the letters dear. Nothing more prized than such

epistles, commencing with: 'This comes to inform you that I am well,

saving a bad cold, and hope you enjoy the same blessing,' and ending:

'My pen is poor, my ink is pale,

My love for you shall never fail.'

Assuredly, if there can be unalloyed happiness in this world, it

appertains to those dear and distant friends, parted from one another by

intervening ocean or continent, at those moments of mental communion

which are vouchsafed by long and loving letters. Ah, how would the bands

of friendship weaken and drop apart if it were not for them! They

brighten the links of our social affections; they freshen the verdure of

kind thoughts; they are like the morning dew and the evening rain to

filial, conjugal, fraternal, paternal and parental love!

Let us now pass on to say something concerning those different kinds of

letters that we named. Letters of diplomacy are affairs in which words

are used for the purpose of concealing or obscuring the author's

meaning, and which always conclude: 'Yours, with distinguished

consideration.' To this species of epistle, the 'non-committal style,'

of which the late Martin Van Buren was reputed to be a perfect master,

is best adapted. Diplomatists seldom desire to be comprehended; but

occasionally, when they do, how luminously plain they can be! Witness

that celebrated letter which Mr. Webster dictated to Edward Everett, and

the latter put on paper to be sent to Austria's minister, the Chevalier

Hulsemann. The 'distinguished consideration' of that discomfited

official was exercised to an unpleasant extent; and the result is that

Austria has ceased to instruct this republic.

Nothing is more difficult to compose than a letter of consolation or

condolence. The more earnestly you desire to express sympathy and impart

solace, the more impossible it seems to find gentle and appropriate

terms. You would shun commonplaces and avoid sermonizing. You wish to

say something simple, kind, soothing. And yet the reflection of how far

short of the exigencies of the grief you would mitigate, fails your best

and most effectual efforts, oppresses and restrains your pen.

Of letters of business, it is quite well to say as little as they say

themselves: 'Yours received; contents noted. Yours, &c.' As brevity is

the soul of wit, so is it the soul of a business letter--the argument of

which should be _ad rem_, to the matter; _cum punctu_, with point.

Letters of invitation and congratulation are often mere formalities,

although there is a way of infusing kindness, courtesy, and sincerity

into them, especially into the latter, which ought at least to seem to

be in cordial earnest.

Letters of introduction and recommendation are very difficult to write,

because most people endeavor to give an original turn to their

expressions. After all, it is judicious, in the composition of such

affairs, to follow the briefest and most usual formulas, unless, indeed,

you desire to introduce and recommend some particular person in

downright reality, and then the farther you deviate from mere customary

expressions the better. And if you are truly in earnest, you need be at

no loss what to say: the words will suggest themselves.

Letters of friendship may be divided into two sorts--real and pretended.

A real letter of friendship commends itself directly to the heart. There

is a warm, genial glow about it, as welcome as the blaze of a hickory or

sea-coal fire to one coming in from the cold, bitter breeze of a

December night. It makes one philanthropic and a believer in human

goodness. What cheer--what ardent cheer is there in a letter

unexpectedly received from an old friend between whom and one's self

roll years of absence, or stretch lands and seas of distance! It is like

a boon from the very heaven of memory. But a pretended letter of

friendship--how easily detected! how transparent its falsity! The

loadstone of love touches it, and finds it mere brass. Its influence is

icy and bleak, like the rays of the moon, from which all the lenses on

earth cannot extract one particle of heat.

And what can be said of love letters--those flowers of feeling, those

redundant roses of recapitulation? There is one strain running through

their first parts, and then--_da capo_. They are the same thing, over

and over and over again, and then--repeat. Yet are they never wearisome

to those who write or to those who acceptably receive. They are like the

interviews of their writers, excessively stupid to everybody else, but

exquisitely charming to themselves; that is, _real_ love letters; not

those absurd things--amusing from their very absurdity--which novelists

palm off upon innocent readers as the correspondence of heroes and

heroines. Verily is there a distinction between letters written by

lovers and love letters. The former may be deeply interesting to

uninterested readers, while the latter are the very quintessence of

egotistical selfishness; for, indeed, lovers may sometimes write about

other matters besides love, as, for example, in the famous epistles of

Abelard and Héloïse.

'Heaven first taught letters for some wretch's aid,

Some banish'd lover or some captive maid;

They live, they breathe, they speak what love inspires,

Warm from the soul, and faithful to its fires;

The virgin's wish without her fears impart,

Excuse the blush, and pour out all the heart;

Speed the soft intercourse from soul to soul,

And waft a sigh from Indus to the pole.'

About the other kinds of letters which have been enumerated, we shall

have nothing to say; because they are letters rather in name than in

reality.

The fashion prevalent in modern days, to publish on the demise of an

author pretty much all his private correspondence, proves the general

interest which is felt in mere letters. Many of these are utterly

worthless, vastly inferior to those which constantly pass between

friends on the topics of the hour or their own affairs. It is charitable

to conjecture that their writers never imagined that they could be

exposed in print, or would not be burned as soon as read. And yet, with

what avidity are they conned and discussed! Look at the letters of Lord

Byron, Moore, and Campbell. How much brainless twattle do they contain,

amid a few grains of wit and humor. What mere commonplace! Editors may

as well publish every word a man says, as what he writes familiarly in

his dressing gown and slippers. We have not a doubt that by far the best

letters ever written still remain unpublished. There are many printed

volumes of travels very inferior to those which could be made up from

the letters of private persons abroad, composed purely for the

delectation of friends. There is hardly anything so difficult in writing

as to write with ease. They who write letters on purpose to be

published, feel and show a constraint which a mere private correspondent

never entertains nor exhibits.

The war in which we are engaged has brought forth whole hosts of

correspondents. They come not single spies, but in battalions. None of

these letters, so far as we have read, can boast of any striking or

peculiar excellence. Their great fault is their immense prolixity. Their

words far outnumber their facts. An editor having once complained to a

writer of the inordinate length of his composition, the writer replied

that he had not had time to make it _shorter_. This is doubtless the

trouble with our army letter writers. They are forced to write _currente

calamo_--sometimes on the heads of drums, and not unfrequently are such

epistles as full of sound and fury and as empty as the things on which

they are written. The best of these correspondents so far is the

somewhat ignominious Mr. Russell, of the London _Times_; the only one,

indeed, who has achieved a reputation. Mr. Charles Mackay, his successor

(_heu! quantum mutatus ab illo_), writes letters that are poorer, if

possible, than his poems; he has just sufficient imagination to be

indebted to it for his facts. As for his opinions, he seems to gather

them, like a ragpicker, from political stews, reeking with the filth of

treason and foul with the garbage of secession.

So far as _literary_ merit goes, we regret to give our verdict in favor

of correspondents for the Southern journals. They write with greater

facility, greater elegance, and greater force than our own too

voluminous reporters. But, as much as they have figured, it is not

probable that they will live in print. They are like exhalations over a

battle field--touched briefly by the hues of sunlight, then fading,

rolling off, and vanishing in the distance.

Of all the methods of acquiring a good English style, there is no

practice so beneficial as that of frequent and familiar letter writing.

Because your object in writing to a friend is to make yourself perfectly

clear to him, therefore you make use of the simplest, plainest, readiest

words--and such are ever the best for an essay, sermon, lecture, or even

oration. This practice imparts ease and perspicuity, and it teaches that

writing ought to be and may be as little difficult as conversation. It

teaches every one not to say anything till he shall have something to

say. A want of something to say is generally not felt in writing

letters, especially by ladies; but it would seem to be a great pity that

there are so many words in our language; for, whenever one desires to

say anything, three or four ways of saying it run in one's head

together, and it is hard to choose the best! It is quite as puzzling to

a lady as the choice of a ribbon or a--husband. But let us earnestly

advise all fair letter writers to lessen their perplexity by restricting

themselves to words of home manufacture. They may perhaps think it looks

prettily to garnish their correspondence with such phrases as _de tout

mon coeur_. Now, _with all my heart_ is really better English; the

only advantage on the side of the former expression is that it is far

less sincere. French silks and French laces may be superior, but it is

much better to make use of the English language. Whenever there is any

doubt between two words or expressions, choose the plainest, the

commonest, the most idiomatic. Let ladies eschew fine phrases as they

would _rouge_; let them love simple words as they do native roses on

their cheeks. A true lady should be emulous to deserve that praise which

the old poet Chaucer bestows on his Virginia:

'Though she were wise as Pallas, dare I sain

Her faconde eke full womanly and plain,

No contrefeted terms hadde she

To semen wise; but after her degree

She spake; and all her wordes more or less

Sounding in virtue and in gentilesse.'

Exquisite examples of this pure, mother English are to be found in the

speeches put by Shakspeare into the mouths of his female characters.

'No fountain from its rocky cave

E'er tripped with foot more free;'

never were its waters clearer, more translucent, or more musical. This

is indeed the peculiar beauty of a feminine style--choice and elegant

words, but such as are familiar in well-bred conversation; words, not

used scientifically, but according to their customary signification. It

is from being guided wholly by usage, undisturbed by extraneous

considerations, and from their characteristic fineness of discernment

with regard to what is fit and appropriate, as well as from their being

much less influenced by the vanity of fine writing, that sensible,

educated women have a grace of style so rarely attainable by men. What

are called the graces of composition are often its blemishes. There is

no better test of beauties or defects of style than to judge them by the

standard of letter writing. An expression, a phrase, a figure of speech,

thought to be very splendid in itself, would often appear perfectly

ridiculous if introduced in a letter. The rule of the cynic is a pretty

good one, after all: _In writing, when you think you have done something

particularly brilliant, strike it out._

We are pretty well persuaded that authors are but poor judges of their

own productions. They pride themselves on what they did with most labor.

It is not good praise of any work to say that it is 'elaborate.' An

author's letters are not apt to be labored, 'to smell of the lamp;' and

they are, therefore, in general, his best specimens. In letter writing

there will be found a facility, a freedom from constraint, a

simplicity, and a directness, which are the capital traits of a good

style. Of Shakspeare it is said, in the preface to the first edition of

his works: 'His mind and hand went together, and what he thought he

uttered with that easiness, that we have scarce received from him a blot

in his papers.' Shakspeare did not, therefore,

'Write with fury, and correct with phlegm;'

but he wrote straightforwardly and naturally, as they do who assiduously

practise letter writing.