walks of literature, famed for a beautiful style of composition, who do not write a tolerable letter nor answer a note of invitation with propriety. Their sentences are slipshod, their punctuation and spelling beyond criticism, and their manuscript repulsive. A lady, to whose politeness such an answer is given, has a right to feel offended, and may very properly ask whether she be not entitled to as choice language as the promiscuous crowd which the "distinguished gentleman" addresses from pulpit or desk.
How the distinguished gentleman would open his eyes at the question! He is sure that what he sent her was well enough for a letter. As though a letter, especially a letter to a lady, should not be as perfect in its kind as a lecture or sermon in its kind! as though one's duties toward an individual were less stringent than one's duties toward an audience! Would the distinguished gentleman be willing to probe his soul in search of the true reason for the difference in his treatment of the two? Is he sure that it is not an outgrowth from a certain "mountainous me," which seeks approbation more ardently from the one source than from the other?
There are those who indite elegant notes to comparative strangers, but, probably upon the principle that familiarity breeds or should breed contempt, send the most villanous scrawls to their intimate friends and those of their own household. They are akin to the numerous wives, who, reserving not only silks and satins, but neatness and courtesy, for company, are always in dishabille in their husbands' houses.
Pericles, according to Walter Savage Landor, once wrote to Aspasia as follows:—
"We should accustom ourselves to think always with propriety in little things as well as in great, and neither be too solicitous of our dress in the parlor nor negligent because we are at home. I think it as improper and indecorous to write a stupid or silly letter to you, as one in a bad hand or upon coarse paper. Familiarity ought to have another and a worse name, when it relaxes in its efforts to please."
The London Pericles, the Athenian gentleman,—and there are a few such as he still extant,—writes to his nearest and dearest friend none but the best letters. It appears to him as ill-bred to say stupid or silly things to her, as to say what he does say clownishly. He cannot conceive of doing what is so frequently done now-a-days. He brings as much of Pericles to the composition of a letter as to the preparation of a speech. We may feel sure, that, unless he acted counter to his own maxims, he never wrote a line more or a line less than he felt an impulse to write, and that he had no "regular correspondents."
It is not every one that can write such letters as are in that delightful book of Walter Savage Landor, or as charmed the friends of Charles Lamb, the poet Gray, and a few famous women, first, and the world afterwards. It is not every one who can, with the utmost and wisest painstaking, produce a thoroughly excellent letter. The power to do that is original and not to be acquired. The charm of it will not, cannot, disclose its secret. Like the charm of the finest manners, of the best conversation, of an exquisite style, of an admirable character, it is felt rather than perceived. But every person, who will be simply true to his or her nature, can write a letter that will be very welcome to a friend, because it will be expressive of the character which that friend esteems and loves. The bunch of flowers, hastily put together by her who gathered them, speaks as plainly of affection, although not in so delicate tones, as the most tastefully-arranged bouquet. But who desires to be presented with a nosegay of artificial flowers? Who can abide dead blossoms or violent discords of color? Freshness, sweetness, and an approach to harmony, that shall bring to mind the living, growing plants, and the bountiful Nature from whose embrace flowers are born, the acceptable gift must have.
