be famous without any regard to the conditions of obtaining fame; but when years have brought a certain equable gravity of temper, and calmness of judgment, we begin to see things in their true colors, and to value a life of virtue above a life of honors. We at last discover the pitiful shifts of those who would obtain notoriety, and the incredible meannesses to which they subject themselves, by their ignorant zeal in the pursuit of worldly glory. Titles, wealth, applause, what chimeras ye are! what bubbles ye make of us your greedy followers! The highest powers of intellect, the most brilliant gems of poesy, are incomparably inferior to the possession of a peaceful conscience, and a heart filled with none but good intentions.

The fame of the popular poet, or the great general, has an almost overpowering charm for the young man; but a later age, which cools his blood, clears his mind also, and he only wonders how he ever happened to entertain such images of greatness, as the gods of his idolatry. The flashes of the skilful rhetorician captivate the youthful student; but the powers of the philosophic reasoner attract his maturer judgment. Light, airy poetry, is fit food for the raw critic; but experience and reflection give the palm to a deeper and more majestic vein. Amusement gains us then, but instruction holds us now. Then, we imagine we have learnt all that is to be known; now, we feel our real ignorance of the highest mysteries, and would die learning. Thus we see the love of applause (in its place, and in its integrity, a noble incentive to generous action) is still an insufficient motive. Milton, in that well known passage, which summons all the powers of the soul as with the sound of a trumpet, has written nobly of fame—as

The spur which the clear spirit doth raise.

Though he feels obliged to add

(That last infirmity of noble minds),

To scorn delights and live laborious days.

Yet as fame is not altogether of a disinterested nature (though the interestedness is of the highest character), it cannot furnish the only sure foundation for a life of virtue. The sense of duty is our only resource; and on that, as on an eternal and immutable foundation, we may erect a superstructure as high as our genius may serve to raise it, sacred to both genius and virtue.

VI.

LETTERS.

NEXT to the essay, the letter is the most agreeable form of the minor literature. It is the most familiar species of writing, and approaches the nearest to ordinary conversation. Letters are the opuscula of great authors, but they form the opera of lesser writers. We weekly critics and magaziners may be proud of a volume of clever epistles, fearful of essaying a higher flight. Authors of the first class, and with the highest pretensions, affect to look down upon letters as the mere entertainment of a scholar; and hence, from want of sympathy, no less than from want of nicety of apprehension and subtle delicacy of taste, have almost uniformly failed in this department of composition. A professed orator, a great divine, poet or philosopher, cannot easily descend from the heights of speculation and eloquence and imagination, to the plain ground of commonplace reality. Raillery is the most delightful talent in epistolary composition (a delicate talent); and next to that, refined sentiment. These are minute excellences, however, agreeable in the great character, and the incidental ornaments of a strong intellect. Women uniformly write the best letters, both of the narrative kind and lively description. Lady Montague and Madame D'Arblay are yet

unsurpassed. The female intellect is allowed to possess a finer tact and a minuter (instinctive) observation of things and characters, than the manly understanding. It is better pleased with the details of a subject, and paints the manners with a lighter hand. Boarding-school girls, and young ladies, who have just "come out," are readier with their pens in recounting family history, and current fashionable news; in giving a relation of the incidents at a ball or dinner-party, at sketching portraits of the beaux and their admirers; and, in a word, at all the arts of gossiping and scandal, than boys or young men, much older. Richardson has shown this very conclusively in his novels. His letters are the very counterparts of those of young ladies in the same situation, and such as they would naturally write.

Letters are valuable for many reasons. As a test of character, and affording an unconscious autobiographyas materials for literary and political history-as pictures of the times-as the repositories of individual opinions and peculiar sentiments. As a test of character, letters are worth much more than the more ordinary (supposed) keys to that sort of knowledge. A man's autograph may be very far from characteristic. I know a generous man, who writes a mean, cramped scrawl, and an undecided one, whose chirography is firm and regular. Physiognomy may belie the brightness of the head and the goodness of the heart. Phrenology may regard as an indifferent specimen the casket that contains a golden brain. But a number of confidential letters addressed to familiar friends, and written in all the warmth of confidence, afford the fairest means of getting at the real character of the writer. insincerity may occur here. Letters are often written for

Yet

the public eye, though on the most confidential subjects. Pope and Walpole wrote for posterity. They wrote at, rather than to, their correspondents. So, also, of the French wits. We confine ourselves entirely to English authors, however, in the present paper. Some authors have told their history in letters, as Howell, Gray, Cowper, Burns, and Lamb,-dwelling on petty occurrences and comparatively slight traits, with an unction and gusto that would not be allowed in a formal biography. Of the historical value of letters, no complete student can doubt, and none but he can appreciate it adequately.

English literature is rich in letters from Howell to Lamb. Intermediately, we have Pope and his friends, Cowper, Burns, Gray, Walpole, Lady Montague; a sufficient variety, surely, both of talent and character. We had meant to draw up a classification of, and criticism upon, the different sorts of letters, but find the whole matter so handsomely handled in the very first letter of Howell, that we insert it instead: "It was a quaint difference the ancients did put betwixt a letter and an oration; that the one should be attired like a woman, the other like a man. The latter of the two is allowed large siderobes, as long periods, parentheses, similes, examples, and other parts of rhetorical flourishes: but a letter or epistle should be short-coated and closely couched; a hungerskin becomes a letter more handsomely than a gown. Indeed we should write as we speak, and that is a true and familiar letter which expresseth one's mind, as if he were discoursing with the party to whom he writes in succinct and short terms. The tongue and the pen are both of them interpreters of the mind; but I hold the pen to be the more faithful of the two. The tongue in udo posita, being seated