who have beaten their wives to death, kicked and maltreated their little children, and who even there, in the expiation of their crimes, will not hesitate to take advantage of the smallest show of relaxation or kindness on the part of their warders, to try and cut them down with a spade or pickaxe; blackguards who will even maim themselves, make a pretence of committing suicide, sham madness, fits, paralysis, or any thing, to get off their work, to excite sympathy in the chaplain, or to procure an extra share of diet; who will lie, cringe, backbite, and "round," as they call it, upon their fellow-prisoners, in the meanest and most despicable manner. So that, by the time that my visit was ended, and I had leisure to contemplate the whole bearings of the case, I admit I felt a grim satisfaction, rather than any thing else, in having found out and justly appreciated convict life, - a grim satisfaction, which was enhanced the first time that I next read of some felonious and desperate outrage committed in our midst. I felt a grim satisfaction, I repeat, in knowing what punishment was in store for the ruffian culprit. It is not my purpose to recount all the details of this our state-prison system, which were laid before me; they have often been written about, and statistically stated. I have only wished to put on record, as familiarly as possible, the impression left on me by my superficial experience at Talkham. THE POSTMAN'S KNOCK. "A FOOT-POST doth come from Bury, in Suffolk, to the 'Green Dragon,' in Bishopsgate Street, every Wednesday, by whom letters may be conveyed to and fro." So writes the water poet, John Taylor, in his "Carrier's Cosmography," A.D. 1637. In like manner we learn that a footpost from Wasingham came every second Thursday to the "Cross Keys," Holborn; and one from York, to the "Rose and Crown," in St. John Street. Letters, however, could be sent every Monday to Scotland, "by the post that doth lodge at the King's Arms,' at the upper end of Cheapside." Letters did not travel then as fast as a certain general made one travel, by enclosing it in a cannon-ball, and firing it into a besieged town, for the purpose of conveying a message. Between the time when the first letter was written, and that signalled by the postman's knock this morning, there never was a more singular mode of despatch. The first letter ever written! Where is it? Let us be content to know, as beyond dispute, that the earliest sample we have of a letter is that of David to Joab. When we remember the contents and the purpose of that letter, we may be honestly ashamed of the writer. We could have wished this letter had not been preserved; and we turn from it readily to consider the letters of more recent and less sacred kings. The earliest royal sign-manual existing of our own kings is that of Richard II. The grandest and firmest is that of Richard III. There exists a document of this king's which was begun under dictation. Richard seems to have grown impatient with his secretary, snatched the pen from his hand, and finished the document with his own hand. His signature, “Ricardus Rex," is written with wonderful boldness. The cross line of the "x" looks like a pikestaff, and has a wickedly threatening air with it. There are letters of a far more interesting quality than the above, also written by Richard, in the collection of letters of the time of that king, with others of the later time of Henry VII. The work is one of the series published under the sanction of the Master of the Rolls, Richard's letters are those of a kind-hearted man, who considers no subject to be too trifling for consideration. Several letters "prove that he was an affectionate husband to Lady Anne. When she was Richard's queen, and had fallen sick, her husband wrote to Louis XI, civilly requesting him to send over some Burgundy and wines of Haute France, for the comforting and strengthening of that august lady's stomach, On another occasion, when the governess of his little son - Edward (that boy-prince of Wales, whose unexpected death at Middleham nearly drove his father mad) was likely to lose some property through the dishonesty of a kinsman, Richard looked into her affairs, and energetically set about seeing her righted. In details like these he comes before us, like a good-natured head of a family, sympathizing with all who live under his roof. It is quite curious, too, to see that matters of dress were not beneath his notice. One of his many Irish favorites — favorites because they had supported the cause of Richard's noble father, the Duke of York was the Earl of Desmond. Richard was not only generous to the earl, he was desirous of seeing him dressed in the fashion which prevailed in England, but which had not yet reached Ireland. Richard requests Desmond to "renounce the wearing and usage of the Irish array, and to use the manner of apparel for his person after the English guise." The king sent patterns of dress to Ireland by the hands of a bishop. The right reverend modiste carried with him samples of " gowns, doublets, hose, and bonnets," of the latest taste, with a facsimile of the king's livery, a collar of gold of Richard's device, and, finally, a neat assortment of "hats, kerchiefs, tippets, and shirts." In connection with such articles, and with the above household details, we hardly recognize the dark Richard of history and the drama. But light and shade prevail throughout. Richard could stoop to invent the fashion of a coat, and could climb through murder to a throne. Whatever may be his guilt with regard to the young princes in the tower, he showed his wisdom when he took for wife Lady Anne, the daughter of the fierce Countess of Warwick, by immediately locking up his uncomfortable mother-in-law ! Rich This series of letters is worthy of being studied. ard appears quite another manner of man than we have been accustomed to take him to be. Henry VII., on the other hand, remains unaltered, - mean, cruel, treacherous, and crafty. We will only allude to a letter of James IV. of Scotland to show his intelligence. In one of them, written to the King of Denmark, James announces that a band of gypsies, pretending to be Christian pilgrims, had been in Scotland, and that he had sent them to Denmark, the latter country being, as he believed, in the vicinity of Egypt, from whence the wanderers had started. In dealing with old letters, as much caution is necessary as in dealing with old pictures. All are not ancient masters that are called so. Some years ago there was an aged man in a German capital, who, throughout a long life, had made a decent income by painting pictures by any great artist of any time or place. If a rich amateur, travelling that way, wanted a work by some renowned painter of the early times, he went to a dealer, and the dealer, undertaking to find him one, went to the old painter of other men's pictures, who in a week produced a Da Vinci, a Raffaelle, or a Del Sarto, a Rubens, a Claude, or a Wouvermans -it mattered not what; and each party was satisfied. Once the old fellow tried to paint a picture of his own; but there was such a confusion of styles in it he could not offer it for sale, and in order to live respectably he was obliged once more to resort to forgery. - But the As for forged letters, they are as thick as leaves in Vallambrosa. A few years ago a writer in the Athenæum, referring to this fact, remarked, "In no age has literature been free from the intrusion of spurious records into the domain of truth. One man forges for the pure love of sport, throws his forged papers into a collection, to be found a hundred years later, merely to perplex the pundits. Another forges to sustain a crotchet or a principle. most industrious and the most facile are those who forge for profit. Every one familiar with old papers is aware that the publication of historical documents-letters, plays, poems, maps, charts, and cylinders has now ceased to be a learned profession, and has become a manufacture, the "Old Bailey" had its tribes of rascals ready to witness against anybody and any thing for money, so literature has its race of outcasts ready to furnish any document that may be wanted, from a Wardour-street pedigree, derived from scrolls in a Cheshire muniment room, up to a copy of Homer As from a monastery at the summit of Mt. Athos." Of the above there is no doubt. We may add that, in some cases, letters have been authentic and yet have been no more genuine than if they had been forged. That is to say, they misrepresented the feelings of the writers themselves. We have one sample of something intended in this way, though not carried out, by Crebillon and Sterne. Fun, profit, and mystification were at the bottom of it. Sterne, writing to Garrick in April, 1762, says: "Crebillon has made a convention with me, which, if he be not too lazy, will be no bad persiflage. As soon as I get to Toulouse he has agreed to write me an expostulatory letter upon the indecorums of 'Tristram Shandy,' which is to be answered by recriminations upon the coarseness of his own works. These are to be printed together, - Crebillon against Sterne: Sterne against Crebillon. The copy is to be sold, and the money to be equally divided. This is good Swiss policy!" Nothing came of this design, but it illustrates how a letter may be authentic and yet not be genuine. Widows' letters are rudely said to be sometimes of this quality. That is, no doubt, untrue. The idea, however, is as old as Massinger. That dramatic poet makes his Hilario, in "The Picture," remark, But Hilario, who says this, is the fool of the piece. When Ed The There are historical personages, whose letters and manuscripts generally we should expect would have disappeared altogether; voluntary destruction having been applied to them. On the other hand there are personages whose manuscripts and whose letters, we should suppose, would have been preserved with a reverential affection. In each case the expectation is contrary to fact. We will instance Margaret of Anjou and William Shakspeare. ward IV. was on the throne, he was so desirous to secure every letter or despatch written by that heroic wife of an unheroic king, that the penalty of death was awarded against any person who, receiving a letter, or being in possession of a letter from Queen Margaret, delayed in surrendering the same to the government. One would suppose that such a penalty would lead every individual holding such documents, if not to surrender, at least to destroy them. But human nature is perverse; also bold, courageous, defiant. Many of Margaret's correspondents hid away the letters she had written to them: some of these have lately been published by the Camden Society. volume is one of the most interesting of the series published by that society, and the letters themselves are creditable to the writer. They show her less as a fiercely-struggling, deeply sorrowing, terribly-avenging queen, than as a sympathizing woman, not so busy in her own affairs as to lack time for being interested in the affairs of others. She is ever ready to say a good word for a worthy man seeking advancement; and her heart responds to appeals from young maidens with whom the course of true love does not run smooth. For them, Queen Margaret writes with affectionate urgency to that sort of sire who is apt to say of a suitor to his daughter, who is unwelcome to himself, "I can't imagine what the girl can see in such a fellow, to like him!" To such stern fathers Margaret of Anjou writes like a wise and affectionate woman. She may be called a "matchmaker," for she seems to have gone to the work of coupling with great alacrity; but we are sure that many a young couple, in those turbulent times, owed to her a happiness and a harmony in their married life which poor Margaret never enjoyed in her own. But Shakspeare! It is nothing less than marvellous that a man who wrote as he wrote, and, altogether, no other man ever wrote like him, — that a poet, the author of such plays and such poems; that a man possessing so many friends and admirers, with whom his correspondence must have been extensive, should not have left a single line behind him traced by his own hand. Of all his poems and plays there does not exist a page, a line, a single word in manuscript. All Shakspeare's manuscript plays could not have perished in the fire which destroyed the Globe Theatre. The author must have made little account of them himself; but how great would our estimation be of a single act of any one of Shakspeare's plays, in his own handwriting! We have just now got among us a parallel to the tulip mania. Thousands of pounds are willingly paid for a picture which the same number of shillings would once have purchased. Rather, let us say that the shillings were given for the picture, and that the pounds by thousands are given for the painter's name. Well, what would not be willingly paid (for the sake of Shakspeare's name) for the original manuscript, say of Hamlet? There would be a fierce fight among competitors for even a single passage. We fancy that the lines beginning with "The quality of mercy is not strained," or those that open with "Can'st thou not minister to a mind diseased?" or with "She never told her love," and hundreds of others, would not be had for guineas covering each letter. What a contention there would be for the first love-letter, or for any love-letter, which the poet wrote to Anne Hathaway; or, indeed, for any letter, addressed to any one. A costly holograph! Alas! there are neither lines nor letters. All that has been saved of Shakspeare's handwriting is confined to a couple of signatures of his name to certain deeds, and in those subscriptions the name is spelled differently. Even the forgers have not dared to produce a letter by Shakspeare. There seems to have been, at one time, a regular manufactory for the production of letters by Shelley, Keats, and Byron. The market was swamped by these cleverlyforged documents. Ten years ago, Robert Browning, the poet, edited a volume of letters by Shelley, and critics said that they would prove useful to all future biographers of that wayward genius. These letters turned out to be forgeries. One epistle was found to be a "crib" from an article by Sir Francis Palgrave, in the Quarterly Review. Another was slightly altered from a paper in a literary annual. When research was made, the discovery ensued that the supposed original had been purchased by Mr. Moxon, the publisher, at an auction. The auctioneer had had them consigned to him by a bookseller in Pall Mall, and the bookseller had bought them from two unknown women, who looked as much like ladies as the letters looked like genuine productions. If Mr. Moxon had not sent a copy of the volume to Mr. Tennyson, a long time might have elapsed before the fraud could have been discovered. But Mr. Palgrave, on a visit to the Laureate, happened to open the book, and his eye fell on a letter from Shelley to Godwin, written from Florence. Mr. Palgrave recognized in it a portion of an article on Florence, in the Quarterly, written by his father, Sir Francis. Mr. Moxon called in all the copies of this volume of pseudoepistles, and suppressed the publication altogether. A curious result has followed. The volume is worthless, but it is rare; and simply on account of its rarity, it is set down in a London bookseller's catalogue, now before us, at the price of one pound ten shillings. Stray letters of Shelley continued to turn up in the market. Letters to his wife, of the most confidential nature, containing aspersions on his father, were bought by Sir Percy Shelley, the poet's son. These, too, proved to be forgeries, and were destroyed. Another letter, addressed to Byron, and bearing Shelley's signature, contained an assertion against the fidelity of " Harriet." Whoever bought it paid six guineas for a calumny against a dead and defenceless woman, to which was appended the forged signature of her dead and defenceless husband. Forged letters purporting to be from Byron, are, as it were, to be had at every turn. Also books with his alleged manuscript notes in the margin. Good judges assert that these notes and letters are written with a thorough knowledge of Byron's life and feelings, and that the books are chosen with the most perfect knowledge of his tastes and peculiarities. 66 There was once a dre dful fashion of writing romances and novels in letters. Nothing seems more wearisome now, but they delighted the age in which they were written, and that says much for the patient endurance of the readers of the period. There is, however, one story told in letters, the humor of which will never grow old, namely, “ Humphrey Clinker." Smollett never showed more ability, or humor, or power in delineating and discriminating character, than in that admirable work. For humor, commend us to the letters of Mrs. Tabitha Bramble. The preciseness of that lady, who is satisfied if a suitable reason be given for things she complains of, and who is drolly serious in her logic, is charmingly illustrated in the following passage in one of her various letters, addressed from London to the housekeeper, Mrs. Gwyllym, in the country, at Brambleton Hall: "You tell me the thunder has soured two barrels of beer in the seller; but how the thunder should get there, when the seller was double-locked, I can't comprehend. Howsomever, I won't have the beer thrown out till I have seen it with my own eyes. Perhaps it will recover. At least, it will serve for vinegar for the servants." This pretended letter is not beyond the reality of much letter-writing of the last century. Southey, when collecting materials for "Espriella," came into possession of a letter from a farmer's daughter. It was written towards the close of the century, and it runs thus: way. -- 66 Unalterably yours." In the days of heavy postage no one had the slightest scruple in cheating the revenue. Persons leaving home, whether for inland or foreign travel, were importuned by friends to carry letters for them to other friends. An idea prevailed that, if the letters were carried "open," that is, unsealed, there was no infraction of the law, and that, consequently, no penalty could be exacted. This was a popular error. The law, moreover, was evaded in another A newspaper was sent by post in an envelope: inside the latter a long epistle was often written in invisible ink, generally milk. When this was dry the writing could not be seen. By holding the paper to the fire the writing came out in a sepia color, and the law was broken. The post-office authorities discovered this pretty trick, and parties were threatened with prosecution; but as the receivers invariably protested that they did not know who the senders were, it was almost impossible to obtain a conviction. Senders, indeed, grew a little nervous, and many changed their method of conveying information in spite of the law. In place of writing in milk on the covers of the newspapers, they made slight dots in ordinary ink under such printed letters as suited their purpose for conveying intelligence. This was troublesome for both sender and receiver, and it was therefore used only for brief messages. The postal tax pressed most heavily on the poor, but the ingenious poor discovered means to evade it. For instance, a son or daughter in town despatched a letter to parents in the country, who were too poor to pay the postage. The parents declined to take such letter in, which they had legal right to do. Returned to the General Post-office, the letter, on being opened, was found to be a blank sheet of paper. The fact is, that parents and children had agreed to send these blank sheets as indications that all was well with the sender; the receiver got that much of news and had nothing to pay for it. The letter was never taken in unless a particular mark was on the cover, which intimated that something of importance was to be read within. Although a high rate of postage fell most heavily upon the poor, there was scarcely any one who did not feel it. Every one wished to be relieved from it. We can hardly realize how peers, who could frank a large number of letters daily, and how members of Parliament, who could frank, every day except Sunday, a few, were beset by friends for franks for themselves, or for their friends, or for their friends' friends. We have an illustration of this fact in the "Diary, Letters, and Journals of Sir George Jackson," an exceedingly amusing and instructive book, recently published by Sir George's widow. Writing to his mother at Ba h, in 1802, the then apprentice diplomatist says: "My sister tells me Bath was never so thin. I sympathize with her, knowing how voluminous her correspondence is, and that the thinness of Bath means a dearth of frank men,' there being, she says, only Lords Rosslyn and Harcourt to fly to." In those old days, heavy postage made long letters. As the receivers paid the postage, they naturally expected their money's worth. Often a sheet of Bath post, or even of foolscap, was crossed and recrossed, and not a hair's breadth of the paper was left without its line. A letter then was written bit by bit, day after day, till the whole was completed. It was, in its way, a newspaper or a book; it was sent all through the branches of a family; it was lent to friends; it even went to mere acquaintances, and strangers made extracts from the choicest parts of it. In the second series of Miss Mitford's "Letters and Correspondence" she refers to one of these epistles. It was written by a lord who had been travelling on the Continent, and it was a clever, sensible, and instructive document. Miss Mitford borrowed it for the purpose of copying the contents, to accomplish which cost her six mortal hours, which the lady did not think were ill-spent. When postage was high, letters were luxuries in which persons far above the condition of those who are called poor, could not often indulge. We cannot give a better illustration of this than one we find in a letter addressed by Mr. Collins, the artist, to his brother, in 1816, when the landscape painter was twenty-eight years of age. Collins was then at Hastings sketching, and had invited his brother to come down from Saturday to Monday. "The whole amount of the expense would be the coach, provided you put two biscuits in your pocket, which would answer as a lunch; and I would have dinner for you, which would not increase my expenditure above tenpence. I shall be at the place where the coach stops for you, should you be able to come. Write me nothing about it unless you have other business, for a letter costs a dinner." This was the artist who was overjoyed to receive fifty pounds for his "Cromer Sands," the picture for which, at the sale of the Gillott collection, a purchaser was found to give, quite as joyously, three thousand seven hundred and eighty guineas. It has been said that, if heavy postage produced essays, cheap postage makes epigrams. But the latter were not wanting in the very earliest days. Nothing could be more epigrammatic than the note sent by one Irish chief to another: "Pay me tribute, or else". To which the equally epigrammatic answer was: "I owe you none, and if" Of this sort were the notes between Foote's mother and Foote. "Dear Sam, I'm in prison. Yours, E. FOOTE." The old lady was under arrest for debt. The son's answer was: "Dear mother, - so am I. Yours, S. FOOTE." And again, the letters between old Mrs. Garrick and young Edmund Kean: "Dear Mr. Kean, - You can't play Abel Drugger. Yours, &c." To which intimation Edmund wrote back: "Dear Madam, - I know it. Yours, E. K." Instances occur now and then where a joke has been played, the fun of which was to make a man pay heavy postage for very unnecessary information. When Collins, the artist, was once with some friends around him, one of them resisted every attempt to induce him to stay to supper. He withdrew, and the friends in council over their banquet, resolved that the sulky guest should be punished. Accordingly, on the following day, Collins sent him a folded sheet of foolscap, in which was written: "After you left we had stout and oysters." The receiver understood what was meant, but he was equally resolved to have his revenge. Accordingly, biding his time, he transmitted, in a feigned hand, to Collins, a letter in which the painter read only, "Had you?" Therewith the joke secmed at an end; but Collins would have the last word. He waited and waited, till the thing was almost forgotten, and then the writer of the last query opened a letter one morning in which he had the satisfaction of finding an answer to it in the words, "Yes, we had." We cannot dismiss this part of the subject without expressing our regret that we are unable to remember the name of that British admiral who, after achieving a glorious victory at sea, despatched a letter to the Admiralty, in which there were only these or similar words: ". . Beat the enemy; took, sunk, burned, and destroyed ships named in the margin." Tersest of admirals! The publication of the letters of deceased persons first arose, or began to be so common, about the middle of the last century, that Dr. Arbuthnot declared the knowledge of such a fact added a new terror to death. In 1781, the custom had not improved. "It has become so much the fashion to publish letters," said Dr. Johnson, "that I put as little into mine as I can." Nevertheless, when Boswell subsequently asked him if it would be proper to publish any of his letters after death, Johnson contented himself by remarking: "Nay, sir, when I am dead you may do as you will with mine." There has been no little affectation in some notable persons, and a remarkable candor in others, with respect to the publication of these documents. Pope addressed his letters to his friends, but he carefully and elaborately wrote and re-wrote them for posterity, and he was not sorry to see some of them get into print (he rather helping them to that end than obstructing them), that he might have a foretaste of the enjoyment which was more especially intended for after ages. Every line in Walpole's letters reads as if it were as much intended for us of any year to come, as for the happy friend to whom the letter was directed; but this diminishes neither Walpole's credit nor our appreciation. Pepys never intended his " Diary" to be perused by any mortal eye but his own. The Rev. Mr. Smith, however, deciphered the shorthand, and the best social history of Pepys' time fell into the hands of a delighted and grateful public. Evelyn wrote his "Diary" for his own satisfaction, indifferent as Dr. Johnson about his letters, whether it were published or not after his death. Evelyn's descendants were ignorant of its value, and it is to a stranger we owe those sketches of contemporary men and things which now enrich our literature. Pepys, Evelyn, Walpole, diaries and letters; of how many exquisite stories we should have known nothing but for those three indivi luals! It matters little whether they intended we should enjoy that knowledge or not; sufficient for us that we do. And let us note, in passing, another letter-writer, — Lady Mary Wortley Montague. Her letters are not quite so popular, so much read, or so well known, perhaps, as they used to be; they may have had their day, but the writer was well assured they would at least have that. "Keep my letters," she once wrote to a friend; "they will be as good as Madame de Sévigné's forty years bence." They certainly contain many things worth the knowing. The writer's descriptions of foreign scenes and incidents are full of life and spirit, generally truthful, and always effective without marring the truth. There is one passage in one of her ladyship's letters which illustrates the writer's power in a particularly delicate matter, which is well deserving notice. Mr. Montague's sister died. She had been Lady Mary Pierrepont's dearest friend. Young Montague had to communicate the news of his sister's death to the young Lady Mary. In her reply the latter said: "I know it is not acting in form, but I do not look upon you as I do upon the rest of the world. You are brother to a woman whom I tenderly loved." The young fellow excused the informality; he was proud of bing looked upon by the young beauty in a different way from the rest of the world. As that young beauty reminded him that he was brother to the woman she so tenderly loved, he was not dull, and had no difficulty in persuading her to love the brother even better than she had done the sister. The marriage, however, was not made in heaven. The lady herself had some sus "I tremble," she wrote to picion about the consequences. her intended husband, "for what we are doing. Shall we never repent? . . . I shall come to you only with a nightgown and petticoat, and that is all you will get by me." She adds significantly: "I had rather die than return to a dependency upon relations I have disobliged." In her first letter to her (absent) husband af er marriage she alludes to the children of the family in which she was residing, and says: "It furnishes my imagination with agreeable pictures of our future life, and I flatter myself with the hopes of one day enjoying with you the same satisfaction. when the noise of a nursery may have more charms for us than the music of the opera." While on the subject of the publication of posthumous letters, we may add that other men besides Johnson have written their own so as to gratify posterity as little as possible. Some are as cautious with respect to contemporaries. One of the most venerable cf our peers was once told that several of his letters were catalogued for sale in a London auction rocm. "It is a matter of indifference to me," said the noble lord; "from the day I became a public man I never wrote a line worth the reading by any one except the person to whom my letter was addressed." The assertion that a lady puts the essence, nay, the very purpose and import of her letter, in the postscript, has had many an ingenious but invented illustration. One of the best is that of a young lady in India to her friends at home, viz.: ". P.S. You will see by my signature that I am married." Cobbett hated writing across already written lines, and declared that it was of French origin. The earliest letter by a lady, in this country, of which a copy exists, is one from Matilda, Queen of Henry I. to Archbishop Anselm. In this she styles him her "worthily reverenced lord," and herself "the lowest of the handmaidens of his Holiness;" phrases which show the mind and hand of some reverend secretary. Anne Boleyn's last cry of love and anguish to her lord, is worth a ream of the letters of earlier date written at second-hand. It is genuineness that gives all the interest to the Paston letters (once so disputed); Agnes Paston's to her son may be said to be admirable for detail and simplicity. "God's blessing and mine," is a fitting double benediction from a mother to her son. How picturesquely descriptive is the passage, "On Tuesday last Sir John Heveni gham went to his church and heard three masses, and came home again, never merrier, and said to his wife that he would go say a little devotion in his garden and then he would dine; and forthwith he felt a fainting in his legs and slid down. This was at nine of the clock, and he was dead ere ncon." Such were life and death in the middle of the fifteenth century in the county of Norfolk. We may notice, after the above illustration of a letter from a mother to her son, one from a wife to her husband, but of the seventeenth century. In a letter from Susan Montague to her husband Edward, who has announced his being about to leave Madrid for England, the sprightly Susan replied to her "sweetheart" that she fears she may weary his eyes with her "tedious scribblement," and after many allusions to herself and two ladies, with matters of confidence, Susan Montague concludes by saying: "So being very late, as a matter of ten o'clock, I bid you good-night, going into the little bed, which I find less than ever it was, and never have no mind to go into it because I cannot find my sweeting there. But when I am there I sleep as little as may be, for I am still riding post to Madrid, which I hope doth presage that you will shortly post from there and come to the little chamber again, which I heartily pray for. So, dear heart, farewell. Your truly loving wife, Su. MONTAGUE." The orthography of ladies became rather worse than better in the times after Susan Montague wrote. In the last century, ladies spelled "physician" with a capital F, and in the old game of "loving " would not be conscious of wrong in saying, “I love my love with a G, because he's a Gustus! There are some curious samples of ill spelling in the Delany correspondence. Caccgraphy seemed to be intermittent, like the ague. The wrong thing came with the east wind or epidemics. Sometimes an odd word or two would baffle a The letters of fine gentlemen are written in a fine gentlemanly way. If the fine gentleman be a wit and a poet, it does not always improve the style of the letter. Much nonsense has been written upon Waller and his Sacharissa (Lady Dorothy Sidney). The facts of their supposed love passages have grown up out of the imaginations of sentimental writers. When Lady Dorothy married Lord Spencer, Waller wrote to her sister, Lady Lucy, a letter which would now be considered much more impudent than witty. But the poet's hand is in it as well as the impudent wit's. After sympathizing with Lady Lucy on the loss of her sister "bedfellow," and expressing a hope that the latter would soon "taste of the first curse imposed on woman," and often; in due course of time, the poet wishes, "May she then arrive at that great curse so much declined by fair ladies, old age. May she live to be very old and yet seem young, be told so by her glass, and have no aches to inform her of the truth. And when she shall appear to be mortal, may her lord not mourn for her, but go hand in hand with her to that place where we are told there is neither marrying nor giving in marriage, that being there divorced we may all have an equal interest in her again." Letters to children are as difficult to write as books for children. Crabb Robinson stands at the head of all inditers of little epistles to little folk. He is not in the vein of Jeffrey to his granddaughter, as in "I send you my blessing, and wish I was kissing your sweet rosy lips or your fat finger-tips." Robinson comes nearer to Hood, only that he could not stoop to use old jokes as well as make new. The two are together in the following paragraph in Hood's letter to May, one of Dr. Elliot's daughters: "Tell Dunnie that Tom has set his trap in the balcony, and has caught a cold; and tell Jeanie that Fanny has set her foot in the garden, but it has not come up yet. The other night, when I came from Stratford, the cold shrivelled me up so that when I got home I thought I was my own child." The best thing Crabb Robinson did in this way was by surprising a little girl, who said she did not know how to write a letter to her little brother, by proving to her that she was a perfect letter-writer. She had asked Robinson to suggest all the subjects. He proposed purposely something untrue, then something silly, but both were rejected by the child on the ground of their untruthfulness and silliness. This process went on till the child adopted such subjects as were adapted to her purpose; and she found she was a good letterwriter without knowing it. We conclude with an unpublished letter, from an American lady we believe, who, some quarter of a century ago, aspired to be the instructor of children. The quaintness and simplicity, for it is all sober earnestness, are worthy of being preserved: "DEAR SIR, Having heard that you are in want of a governess for your children, I write to offer myself as a candidate for that post. My acquirements are English in all its branches, French, German, music, which I play well, singing, painting, drawing, and dancing. My age is just twenty-eight. I am a lady by birth, high spirited, and, I am sorry to say, slightly quick-tempered, but still very fond of children, likewise of gentlemen's society; I am rather delicate, and when not as well as usual require a few tempting viands. I hope, if you decide in having me for your children as their governess, that you will allow me the entré of your drawing-room at all times, and that you will also allow me to join in all your domestic amusements. I wish to inform you that I have been in the habit of receiving sixty pounds per annum, or fifty pounds with laundress, and all travelling expenses paid. You may be glad to hear that I have an elegant figure, small hands and feet, and am, if my friends and admirers are to be believed, engaging." With this sample we may leave our readers to pass on to fresh woods and pastures new. STAGE WIGS. WIGS have claims to be considered amongst the most essential appliances of the actors: means at once of their disguise and their decoration. Without false hair the fictions of the stage could scarcely be set forth. How could the old look young, or the young look old? how could scanty locks be augmented, or baldness concealed, if the coiffeur did not lend his aid to the costumier? Nay, oftentimes calvity has to be simulated, and fictitious foreheads of canvas assumed. Hence the quaint advertisements of the theatrical hairdresser in professional organs, that he is prepared to vend "old men's bald pates" at a remarkably cheap rate. King Lear has been known to appear without his beard; indeed, Mr. Garrick, as his portraits reveal, played the part with a clean-shaven face, wearing ruffles, knee-breeches, silk stockings, and diamond buckles, in strange contrast with his flowing robe of ermine-trimmed velvet; but could the ghost of Hamlet's father ever have defied the poet's portraiture of him, and walked the platform of Elsinore Castle without a "sable-silvered" chin? Has an audience ever viewed tolerantly a bald Romeo, or a Juliet grown gray in learning how to impersonate that heroine to perfection? It is clear that at a very early date the players must have acquired the simple arts of altering and amending their personal appearance in these respects. The accounts still extant of the revels at court during the reigns of Elizabeth and James contain many charges for wigs and beards. Thus a certain John Ogle is paid "for four yeallowe heares for head attires for women, twenty-six shillings and eight-pence;" and "for a pound of heare twelve-pence." Probably the auburn tresses of Elizabeth had made blond wigs fashionable. John Owgle, who is no doubt the same trader, receives thirteen shillings and fourpence for "eight long white berds at twenty pence the peece." He has charges also on account of "a black fyzician's berde," "berds white and black," "heares for palmers," "berds for fyshers," &c. It would seem, however, that these adornments were really made of silk, There is an entry: "John Ogle for curling of heare made of black silk for Discord's heade (being sixty ounces), price of his woorkmanshipp thereon only is seven shillings and eightpence." And mention is made of a delivery to Mrs. Swegoo the silk-woman, of " Spanish silke of sundry cullers weighing four ounces and three quarters, at two shillings and sixpence the ounce, to garnishe nine heads and nine skarfes for the nine muzes; beads of heare drest and trimmed at twenty-three shillings and fourpence the peece, in all nine, ten pounds ten shillings." The diary or account-book of Philip Henslowe, the manager, supplies much information concerning the usual appointments of a theatre prior to the year 1600. In his inventory of dresses and properties, bearing date 1598, is included a record of "six head tiers," or attires. An early and entertaining account of the contents of a theatrical "tiring-room" is to be found in Richard Brome's comedy, "The Antipodes," first published in 1640, Bye-play says of Peregrine, the leading comic character, "He has got into our tiring house amongst us, Our planets and our constellations, Our giants, monsters, furies, beasts and bugbears, With the Restoration, wigs came into general wear; and gradually the beards and mustaches which had literally flourished so remarkably from the time of Elizabeth, were yielded to the razor. At this period, theatrical costume was simply regulated by the prevailing fashions, and made no pretensions to historical truth or antiquarian correctThe actors appeared upon all occasions in the enormous perukes that were introduced in the reign of Charles II., and continued in vogue until 1720. The flowing flaxen wigs assumed by Booth, Wilks, Cibber, and others, were said to cost some forty guineas each. ness. "Till |