.
39. Jane Welsh on her Travels.
40. Jane Welsh on the blessings of Photography.

THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY 253

41. Outfits, and Election Dinners. Miss Berry and
Lady Holland.

THOMAS LOVELL BEDDOES 258

42. Stage-coach tricks, and stage-play ghosts.

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING 263

43. An extended Honey-moon.

EDWARD FITZGERALD 270

44. Of Bath, and Oxford, and some Immortals.

FRANCIS ANNE KEMBLE 275

45. A Ghost in Flannel.
46. Bakespearism.

WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY 279

47. As himself.
48. In character.

CHARLES DICKENS 286

49. Straight dealing with the personages of _Nicholas
Nickleby_.
50. Advice to an Innocent in London.
51. Mr. and Mrs. Harris.

CHARLES KINGSLEY 292

52. _Tom Brown's Schooldays_; Pike fishing; and a
pretty thing with Garth's.

JOHN RUSKIN 296

53. The Servant question.

ROBERT LOUIS BALFOUR STEVENSON 303

54. John Gibson Lockhart, and an Umbrella.

INTRODUCTION

THE HISTORY AND ART OF LETTER
WRITING

I

ANCIENT HISTORY

On letter-writing, as on most things that can themselves be written and
talked about, there are current many _cliches_--stock and banal sayings
that express, or have at some time expressed, a certain amount of truth.
The most familiar of these for a good many years past has been that the
penny post has killed it. Whether revival of the twopenny has caused it
to exhibit any kind of corresponding resurrectionary symptoms is a
matter which cannot yet be pronounced upon. But it may be possible to
avoid these _cliches_, or at any rate to make no more than necessary
glances at them, in composing this little paper, which aims at being a
discussion of the Letter as a branch of Literature, no less than an
introduction to the specimens of the kind which follow.

If, according to a famous dictum, "Everything has been said," it follows
that every definition must have been already made. Therefore, no doubt,
somebody has, or many bodies have, before now defined or at least
descr