in persons who continually
peep and pry at the key-hole of that mysterious door through which,
sooner or later, we all make our exits, so there are doubtless ghosts
fidgeting and fretting on the other side of it, because they have no
means of conveying back to the world the scraps of news they have picked
up. For there is an answer ready somewhere to every question, the great
law of _give and take_ runs through all nature, and if we see a hook, we
may be sure that an eye is waiting for it. I read in every face I meet a
standing advertisement of information wanted in regard to A. B., or that
the friends of C. D. can hear of him by application to such a one.

It was to gratify the two great passions of asking and answering, that
epistolary correspondence was first invented. Letters (for by this
usurped title epistles are now commonly known) are of several kinds.
First, there are those which are not letters at all,--as letters patent,
letters dimissory, letters inclosing bills, letters of administration,
Pliny's letters, letters of diplomacy, of Cato, of Mentor, of Lords
Lyttelton, Chesterfield, and Orrery, of Jacob Behmen, Seneca (whom St.
Jerome includes in his list of sacred writers), letters from abroad,
from sons in college to their fathers, letters of marque, and letters
generally, which are in no wise letters of mark. Second, are real
letters, such as those of Gray, Cowper, Walpole, Howel, Lamb, the first
letters from children (printed in staggering capitals), Letters from New
York, letters of credit, and others, interesting for the sake of the
writer or the thing written. I have read also letters from Europe by a
gentleman named Pinto, containing some curious gossip, and which I hope
to see collected for the benefit of the curious. There are, besides,
letters addressed to posterity,--as epitaphs, for example, written for
their own monuments by monarchs, whereby we have lately become possessed
of the names of several great conquerors and kings of kings, hitherto
unheard of and still unpronounceable, but valuable to the student of the
entirely dark ages. The letter which St. Peter sent to King Pepin in the
year of grace 755 I would place in a class by itself, as also the
letters of candidates, concerning which I shall dilate more fully in a
note at the end of the following poem. At present, _sat prata
biberunt_. Only, concerning the shape of letters, they are all either
square or oblong, to which general figures circu