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
a