led to charming inventions of tint and texture, particularly in delicate
gray tints, and these papers are now often decorated with embossed
initials of heraldic devices on a large scale, but that is carrying
prettiness too far. The common American habit of writing letters on ruled
paper is not to be recommended, as the ruling reminds us of copy-books and
account-books, and has a mechanical appearance that greatly detracts from
what ought to be the purely personal air of an autograph.

Modern love of despatch has led to the invention of the post-card, which,
from our present point of view, that of courtesy, deserves unhesitating
condemnation. To use a post-card is as much as to say to your
correspondent, "In order to save for myself a very little money and a very
little time, I will expose the subject of our correspondence to the eyes
of any clerk, postman, or servant, who feels the slightest curiosity about
it; and I take this small piece of card, of which I am allowed to use one
side only, in order to relieve myself from the obligation, and spare
myself the trouble, of writing a letter." To make the convenience
absolutely perfect, it is customary in England to omit the opening and
concluding salutations on post-cards, so that they are the _ne plus
ultra_, I will not say of positive rudeness, but of that negative rudeness
which is not exactly the opposite of courtesy, but its absence. Here
again, however, comes the modern principle; and promptitude and frequency
of communication may be accepted as a compensation for the sacrifice of
formality. It may be argued, and with reason, that when a man of our own
day sends a post-card his ancestors would have been still more laconic,
for they would have sent nothing at all, and that there are a thousand
circumstances in which a post-card may be written when it is not possible
to write a letter. A husband on his travels has a supply of such cards in
a pocket-book. With these, and his pencil, he writes a line once or twice
a day in train or steamboat, or at table between two dishes, or on the
windy platform of a railway station, or in the street when he sees a
letter-box. He sends fifty such communications where his father would
have written three letters, and his grandfather one slowly composed and
slowly travelling epistle.

Many modern correspondents appreciate the convenience of the post-card,
but their conscience, as that of well-bred people, cannot get over the
fault of its publicity. For these the stationers have devised several
different substitutes. There is the French plan of what is called "Un Mot
à la Poste," a piece of paper with a single fold, gummed round the other
three edges, and perforated like postage-stamps for the facility of the
opener.[31] There is the miniature sheet of paper that you have not to
fold, and there is the card that you enclose in an envelope, and that
prepares the reader for a very brief communication. Here, again, is a very
curious illustration of the sacrificial nature of courtesy. A card is
sent; why a card? Why not a piece of paper of the same size which would
hold as many words? The answer is that a card is handsomer and more
costly, and from its stiffness a little easier to take out of the
envelope, and pleasanter to hold whilst reading, so that a small sacrifice
is made to the pleasure and convenience of the receiver, which is the
essence of courtesy in letter-writing. All this brief correspondence is
the offspring of the electric telegraph. Our forefathers were not used to
it, and would have regarded it as an offence. Even at the present date
(1884) it is not quite safe to write in our brief modern way to persons
who came to maturity before the electric telegraph was in use.

There is a wide distinction between brevity and hurry; in fact, brevity,
if of the intelligent kind, is the best preservative against hurry. Some
men write short letters, but are very careful to observe all the forms;
and they have the great advantage that the apparent importance of the
formal expressions is enhanced by the shortness of the letter itself. This
is the case in Robert Warcopp's letter to Sir Robert Plumpton.

When hurry really exists, and it is impossible to avoid the appearance of
it, as when a letter _cannot_ be brief, yet must be written at utmost
speed, the proper course is to apologize for hurry at the beginning and
not at the end of the letter. The reader is then propitiated at once, and
excuses the slovenly penmanship and style.

It is remarkable that legibility of handwriting should never have been
considered as among the essentials of courtesy in correspondence. It is
obviously for the convenience of the reader that a letter should be easily
read; but here another consideration intervenes. To write very legibly is
the accomplishment of clerks and writing-masters, who are usually poor
men, and, as such, do not hold a high social position. Aristocratic pride
has always had it for a principle to disdain, for itself, the
accomplishments of professional men; and therefore a careless scrawl is
more aristocratic than a clean handwriting, if the scrawl is of a
fashionable kind. Perhaps the historic origin of this feeling may be the
scorn of the ignorant mediæval baron for writing of all kinds as beneath
the attention of a warrior. In a cultured age there may be a reason of a
higher order. It may be supposed that attention to mechanical excellence
is incompatible with the action of the intellect; and people are curiously
ready to imagine incompatibilities where they do not really exist. As a
matter of fact, some men of eminent intellectual gifts write with as
exquisite a clearness in the formation of their letters as in the
elucidation of their ideas. It is easily forgotten, too, that the same
person may use different kinds of handwriting, according to circumstances,
like the gentleman whose best hand some people could read, whose middling
hand the writer himself could read, and whose worst neither he nor any
other human being could decipher. Legouvé, in his exquisite way, tells a
charming story of how he astonished a little girl by excelling her in
calligraphy. His scribble is all but illegible, and she was laughing at it
one day, when he boldly challenged her to a trial. Both sat down and
formed their letters with great patience, as in a writing class, and it
turned out, to the girl's amazement, that the scribbling Academician had
by far the more copperplate-like hand of the two. He then explained that
his bad writing was simply the result of speed. Frenchmen provokingly
reserve their very worst and most illegible writing for the signature. You
are able to read the letter but not the signature, and if there is not
some other means of ascertaining the writer's name you are utterly at
fault.

The old habit of crossing letters, now happily abandoned, was a direct
breach of real, though not of what in former days were conventional, good
manners. To cross a letter is as much as to say, "In order to spare myself
the cost of another sheet of paper or an extra stamp, I am quite willing
to inflict upon you, my reader, the trouble of disengaging one set of
lines from another." Very economical people in the past generation saved
an occasional penny in another way at the cost of the reader's eyes. They
diluted their ink with water, till the recipient of the letter cried,
"Prithee, why so pale?"

The modern type-writing machine has the advantage of making all words
equally legible; but the receiver of the printed letter is likely to feel
on opening it a slight yet perceptible shock of the kind always caused by
a want of consideration. The letter so printed is undoubtedly easier to
read than all but the very clearest manuscript, and so far it may be
considered a politeness to use the instrument; but unluckily it is
impersonal, so that the performer on the instrument seems far removed from
the receiver of the letter and not in that direct communication with him
which would be apparent in an autograph. The effect on the mind is almost
like that of a printed circular, or at least of a letter which has been
dictated to a short-hand writer.

The dictation of letters is allowable in business, because men of business
have to use the utmost attainable despatch, and (like the use of the lead
pencil) it is permitted to invalids, but with these exceptions it is sure
to produce a feeling of distance almost resembling discourtesy. In the
first place, a dictated letter is not strictly private, its contents
being already known to the amanuensis; and besides this it is felt that
the reason for dictating letters is the composer's convenience, which he
ought not to consult so obviously. If he dictates to a short-hand writer
he is evidently chary of his valuable time, whereas courtesy always at
least _seems_ willing to sacrifice time to others. These remarks, I
repeat, have no reference to business correspondence, which has its own
code of good manners.

The most irritating letters to receive are those which, under a great show
of courtesy, with many phrases and many kind inquiries about your health
and that of your household, and even with some news adapted to your taste,
contain some short sentence which betrays the fact that the whole letter
was written with a manifestly selfish purpose. The proper answer to such
letters is a brief business answer to the one essential sentence that
revealed the writer's object, not taking any notice whatever of the froth
of courteous verbiage.

Is it a part of necessary good breeding to answer letters at all? Are we
really, in the nature of things, under the obligation to take a piece of
paper and write phrases and sentences thereupon because it has pleased
somebody at a distance to spend his time in that manner?

This requires consideration; there can be no general rule. It seems to me
that people commit the error of transferring the subject from the region
of oral conversation to the region of written intercourse. If a man asked
me the way in the street it would be rudeness on my part not to answer
him, because the answer is easily given and costs no appreciable time,
but in written correspondence the case is essentially different. I am
burdened with work; every hour, every minute of my day is apportioned to
some definite duty or necessary rest, and three strangers make use of the
post to ask me questions. To answer them I must make references; however
brief the letters may be they will take time,--altogether the three will
consume an hour. Have these correspondents any right to expect me to work
an hour for them? Would a cabman drive them about the streets of London
during an hour for nothing? Would a waterman pull them an hour on the
Thames for nothing? Would a shoe-black brush their boots and trousers an
hour for nothing? And why am I to serve these men gratuitously and be
called an ill-bred, discourteous person if I tacitly decline to be their
servant? We owe sacrifices--occasional sacrifices--of this kind to friends
and relations, and we can afford them to a few, but we are under no
obligation to answer everybody. Those whom we do answer may be thankful
for a word on a post-card in Gladstone's brief but sufficient fashion. I
am very much of the opinion of Rudolphe in Ponsard's "L'Honneur et
l'Argent." A friend asks him what he does about letters:--

    _Rudolphe._          Je les mets
  Soigneusement en poche et ne réponds jamais.
    _Premier Ami._      Oh! vous raillez.
    _Rudolphe._ Non pas. Je ne puis pas admettre
  Qu'un importun m'oblige à répondre à sa lettre,
  Et, parcequ'il lui plaît de noircir du papier
  Me condamne moi-même à ce fâcheux métier.

ESSAY XXIII.

LETTERS OF FRIENDSHIP.

If the art of writing had been unknown till now, and if the invention of
it were suddenly to burst upon the world as did that of the telephone, one
of the things most generally said in praise of it would be this. It would
be said, "What a gain to friendship, now that friends can communicate in
spite of separation by the very widest distances!"

Yet we have possessed this means of communication, the fullest and best of
all, from remote antiquity, and we scarcely make any use of it--certainly
not any use at all responding to its capabilities, and as time goes on,
instead of developing those capabilities by practice in the art of
friendly correspondence, we allow them to diminish by disuse.

The lowering of cost for the transport of letters, instead of making
friendly correspondents numerous, has made them few. The cheap
postage-stamp has increased business correspondence prodigiously, but it
has had a very different effect on that of friendship. Great numbers of
men whose business correspondence is heavy scarcely write letters of
friendship at all. Their minds produce the business letter as by a second
nature, and are otherwise sterile.

As for the facilities afforded by steam communication with distant
countries, they seem to be of little use to friendship, since a moderate
distance soon puts a stop to friendly communication. Except in cases of
strong affection the Straits of Dover are an effectual though imaginary
bar to intercourse of this kind, not to speak of the great oceans.

The impediment created by a narrow sea is, as I have said, imaginary, but
we may speculate on the reasons for it; and my own reflections have ended
in the somewhat strange conclusion that it must have something to do with
sea-sickness. It must be that people dislike the idea of writing a letter
that will have to cross a narrow channel of salt-water, because they
vaguely and dimly dread the motion of the vessel. Nobody would consciously
avow to himself such a sympathy with a missive exempt from all human ills,
but the feeling may be unconsciously present. How else are we to account
for the remarkable fact that salt-water breaks friendly communication by
letter? If you go to live anywhere out of your native island your most
intimate friends cease to give any news of themselves. They do not even
send printed announcements of the marriages and deaths in their families.
This does not imply any cessation of friendly feeling on their part. If
you appeared in England again they would welcome you with the utmost
kindness and hospitality, but they do not like to post anything that will
have to cross the sea. The news-vendors have not the same delicate
imaginative sympathy with the possible sufferings of rag-pulp, so you get
your English journals and find therein, by pure accident, the marriage of
one intimate old friend and the death of another. You excuse the married
man, because he is too much intoxicated with happiness to be responsible
for any omission; and you excuse the dead man, because he cannot send
letters from another world. Still you think that somebody not preoccupied
by bridal joys or impeded by the last paralysis might have sent you a line
directly, were it only a printed card.

Not only do the writers of letters feel a difficulty in sending their
manuscript across the sea, but people appear to have a sense of difficulty
in correspondence proportionate to the distance the letter will have to
traverse. One would infer that they really experience, by the power of
imagination, a feeling of fatigue in sending a letter on a long journey.
If this is not so, how are we to account for the fact that the rarity of
letters from friends increases in exact proportion to our remoteness from
them? A simple person without correspondence would naturally imagine that
it would be resorted to as a solace for separation, and that the greater
the distance the more the separated friends would desire to be drawn
together occasionally by its means, but in practice this rarely happens.
People will communicate by letter across a space of a hundred miles when
they will not across a thousand.

The very smallest impediments are of importance when the desire for
intercourse is languid. The cost of postage to colonies and to countries
within the postal union is trifling, but still it is heavier than the cost
of internal postage, and it may be unconsciously felt as an impediment.
Another slight impediment is that the answer to a letter sent to a great
distance cannot arrive next day, so that he who writes in hope of an
answer is like a trader who cannot expect an immediate return for an
investment.

To prevent friendships from dying out entirely through distance, the
French have a custom which seems, but is not, an empty form. On or about
New Year's Day they send cards to _all_ friends and many acquaintances,
however far away. The useful effects of this custom are the following:--

1. It acquaints you with the fact that your friend is still
alive,--pleasing information if you care to see him again.

2. It shows you that he has not forgotten you.

3. It gives you his present address.

4. In case of marriage, you receive his wife's card along with his own;
and if he is dead you receive no card at all, which is at least a negative
intimation.[32]

This custom has also an effect upon written correspondence, as the printed
card affords the opportunity of writing a letter, when, without the
address, the letter might not be written. When the address is well known
the card often suggests the idea of writing.

When warm friends send visiting-cards they often add a few words of
manuscript on the card itself, expressing friendly sentiments and giving a
scrap of brief but welcome news.

Here is a suggestion to a generation that thinks friendly letter-writing
irksome. With a view to the sparing of time and trouble, which is the
great object of modern life (sparing, that is, in order to waste in other
ways), cards might be printed as forms of invitation are, leaving only a
few blanks to be filled up; or there might be a public signal-book in
which the phrases most likely to be useful might be represented by
numbers.

The abandonment of letter-writing between friends is the more to be
regretted that, unless our friends are public persons, we receive no news
of them indirectly; therefore, when we leave their neighborhood, the
separation is of that complete kind which resembles temporary death. "No
word comes from the dead," and no word comes from those silent friends. It
is a melancholy thought in leaving a friend of this kind, when you shake
hands at the station and still hear the sound of his voice, that in a few
minutes he will be dead to you for months or years. The separation from a
corresponding friend is shorn of half its sorrows. You know that he will
write, and when he writes it requires little imagination to hear his voice
again.

To write, however, is not all. For correspondence to reach its highest
value, both friends must have the natural gift of friendly letter-writing,
which may be defined as the power of talking on paper in such a manner as
to represent their own minds with perfect fidelity in their friendly
aspect.

This power is not common. A man may be a charming companion, full of humor
and gayety, a well of knowledge, an excellent talker, yet his
correspondence may not reveal the possession of these gifts. Some men are
so constituted that as soon as they take a pen their faculties freeze. I
remember a case of the same congelation in another art. A certain painter
had exuberant humor and mimicry, with a marked talent for strong effects
in talk; in short, he had the gifts of an actor, and, as Pius VII. called
Napoleon I., he was both _commediante_ and _tragediante_. Any one who knew
him, and did not know his paintings, would have supposed at once that a
man so gifted must have painted the most animated works; but it so
happened (from some cause in the deepest mysteries of his nature) that
whenever he took up a brush or a pencil his humor, his tragic power, and
his love of telling effects all suddenly left him, and he was as timid,
slow, sober, and generally ineffectual in his painting as he was full of
fire and energy in talk. So it is in writing. That which ought to be the
pouring forth of a man's nature often liberates only a part of his nature,
and perhaps that part which has least to do with friendship. Your friend
delights you by his ease and affectionate charm of manner, by the
happiness of his expressions, by his wit, by the extent of his
information, all these being qualities that social intercourse brings out
in him as colors are revealed by light. The same man, in dull solitude at
his desk, may write a letter from which every one of these qualities may
be totally absent, and instead of them he may offer you a piece of
perfunctory duty-writing which, as you see quite plainly, he only wanted
to get done with, and in which you do not find a trace of your friend's
real character. Such correspondence as that is worth having only so far
as it informs you of your friend's existence and of his health.

Another and a very different way in which a man may represent himself
unfairly in correspondence, so that his letters are not his real self, is
when he finds that he has some particular talent as a writer, and
unconsciously cultivates that talent when he holds a pen, whereas his real
self has many other qualities that remain unrepresented. In this way humor
may become the dominant quality in the letters of a correspondent whose
conversation is not dominantly humorous.

Habits of business sometimes produce the effect that the confirmed
business correspondent will write to his friend willingly and promptly on
any matter of business, and will give him excellent advice, and be glad of
the opportunity of rendering him a service, but he will shrink from the
unaccustomed effort of writing any other kind of letter.

There is a strong temptation to blame silent friends and praise good
correspondents; but we do not reflect that letter-writing is a task to
some and a pleasure to others, and that if people may sometimes be justly
blamed for shirking a _corvée_ they can never deserve praise for indulging
in an amusement. There is a particular reason why, when friendly
letter-writing is a task, it is more willingly put off than many other
tasks that appear far heavier and harder. It is either a real pleasure or
a feigned pleasure, and feigned pleasures are the most wearisome things in
life, far more wearisome than acknowledged work. For in work you have a
plain thing to do and you see the end of it, and there is no need for
ambages at the beginning or for a graceful retiring at the close; but a
feigned pleasure has its own observances that must be gone through whether
one has any heart for them or not. The groom who cleans a rich man's
stable, and whistles at his work, is happier than the guest at a state
dinner who is trying to look other than what he is,--a wearied victim of
feigned and formal pleasure with a set false smile upon his face. In
writing a business letter you have nothing to affect; but a letter of
friendship, unless you have the real inspiration for it, is a narrative of
things you have no true impulse to narrate, and the expression of feelings
which (even if they be in some degree existent) you do not earnestly
desire to utter.

The sentiment of friendship is in general rather a quiet feeling of regard
than any lively enthusiasm. It may be counted upon for what it is,--a
disposition to receive the friend with a welcome or to render him an
occasional service, but there is not, commonly, enough of it to be a
perennial warm fountain of literary inspiration. Therefore the worst
mistake in dealing with a friend is to reproach him for not having been
cordial and communicative enough. Sometimes this reproach is made,
especially by women, and the immediate effect of it is to close whatever
communicativeness there may be. If the friend wrote little before being
reproached he will write less after.

The true inspiration of the friendly letter is the perfect faith that all
the concerns of the writer will interest his friend. If James, who is
separated by distance from John, thinks that John will not care about what
James has been doing, hoping, suffering, the fount of friendly
correspondence is frozen at its source. James ought to believe that John
loves him enough to care about every little thing that can affect his
happiness, even to the sickness of his old horse or the accident that
happened to his dog when the scullery-maid threw scalding water out of the
kitchen window; then there will be no lack, and James will babble on
innocently through many a page, and never have to think.

The believer in friendship, he who has the true undoubting faith, writes
with perfect carelessness about great things and small, avoiding neither
serious interests, as a wary man would, nor trivial ones that might be
passed over by a writer avaricious of his time. William of Orange, in his
letters to Bentinck, appears to have been the model of friendly
correspondents; and he was so because his letters reflected not a part
only of his thinking and living, but the whole of it, as if nothing that
concerned him could possibly be without interest for the man he loved.
Familiar as it must be to many readers, I cannot but quote a passage from
Macaulay:

    "The descendants of Bentinck still preserve many letters written by
    William to their master, and it is not too much to say that no person
    who has not studied those letters can form a correct notion of the
    Prince's character. He whom even his admirers generally accounted the
    most frigid and distant of men here forgets all distinctions of rank,
    and pours out all his thoughts with the ingenuousness of a schoolboy.
    He imparts without reserve secrets of the highest moment. He explains
    with perfect simplicity vast designs affecting all the governments of
    Europe. Mingled with his communications on such subjects are other
    communications of a very different but perhaps not of a less
    interesting kind. All his adventures, all his personal feelings, his
    long runs after enormous stags, his carousals on St. Hubert's Day, the
    growth of his plantations, the failure of his melons, the state of his
    stud, his wish to procure an easy pad-nag for his wife, his vexation
    at learning that one of his household, after ruining a girl of good
    family, refused to marry her, his fits of sea-sickness, his coughs,
    his headaches, his devotional moods, his gratitude for the Divine
    protection after a great escape, his struggles to submit himself to
    the Divine will after a disaster, are described with an amiable
    garrulity hardly to have been expected from the most discreetly sedate
    statesman of his age. Still more remarkable is the careless effusion
    of his tenderness, and the brotherly interest which he takes in his
    friend's domestic felicity."

Friendly letters easily run over from sheet to sheet till they become
ample and voluminous. I received a welcome epistle of twenty pages
recently, and have seen another from a young man to his comrade which
exceeded fifty; but the grandest letter that I ever heard of was from
Gustave Doré to a very old lady whom he liked. He was travelling in
Switzerland, and sent her a letter eighty pages long, full of lively
pen-sketches for her entertainment. Artists often insert sketches in their
letters,--a graceful habit, as it adds to their interest and value.

The talent for scribbling friendly letters implies some rough literary
power, but may coexist with other literary powers of a totally different
kind, and, as it seems, in perfect independence of them. There is no
apparent connection between the genius in "Childe Harold," "Manfred,"
"Cain," and the talent of a lively letter-writer, yet Byron was the best
careless letter-writer in English whose correspondence has been published
and preserved. He said "dreadful is the exertion of letter-writing," but
by this he must have meant the first overcoming of indolence to begin the
letter, for when once in motion his pen travelled with consummate
naturalness and ease, and the exertion is not to be perceived. The length
and subject of his communications were indeterminate. He scribbled on and
on, every passing mood being reflected and fixed forever in his letters,
which complete our knowledge of him by showing us the action of his mind
in ordinal times as vividly as the poems display its power in moments of
highest exaltation. We follow his mental phases from minute to minute. He
is not really in one state and pretending to be in another for form's
sake, so you have all his moods, and the letters are alive. The
transitions are quick as thought. He darts from one topic to another with
the freedom and agility of a bird, dwelling on each just long enough to
satisfy his present need, but not an instant longer, and this without any
reference to the original subject or motive of the letter. He is one of
those perfect correspondents _qui causent avec la plume_. Men, women, and
things, comic and tragic adventures, magnificent scenery, historical
cities, all that his mind spontaneously notices in the world, are touched
upon briefly, yet with consummate power. Though the sentences were written
in the most careless haste and often in the strangest situations, many a
paragraph is so dense in its substance, so full of matter, that one could
not abridge it without loss. But the supreme merit of Byron's letters is
that they record his own sensations with such fidelity. What do I, the
receiver of a letter, care for second-hand opinions about anything? I can
hear the fashionable opinions from echoes innumerable. What I _do_ want is
a bit of my friend himself, of his own peculiar idiosyncrasy, and if I get
_that_ it matters nothing that his feelings and opinions should be
different from mine; nay, the more they differ from mine the more
freshness and amusement they bring me. All Byron's correspondents might be
sure of getting a bit of the real Byron. He never describes anything
without conveying the exact effect upon himself. Writing to his publisher
from Rome in 1817, he gives in a single paragraph a powerful description
of the execution of three robbers by the guillotine (rather too terrible
to quote), and at the end of it comes the personal effect:--

    "The pain seems little, and yet the effect to the spectator and the
    preparation to the criminal are very striking and chilling. The first
    turned me quite hot and thirsty, and made me shake so that I could
    hardly hold the opera-glass (I was close, but was determined to see as
    one should see everything once, with attention); the second and third
    (which shows how dreadfully soon things grow indifferent), I am
    ashamed to say, had no effect on me as a horror, though I would have
    saved them if I could."

How accurately this experience is described with no affectation of
impassible courage (he trembles at first like a woman) or of becoming
emotion afterwards, the instant that the real emotion ceased! Only some
pity remains,--"I would have saved them if I could."

The bits of frank criticism thrown into his letters, often quite by
chance, were not the least interesting elements in Byron's
correspondence. Here is an example, about a book that had been sent him:--

    "Modern Greece--good for nothing; written by some one who has never
    been there, and, not being able to manage the Spenser stanza, has
    invented a thing of his own, consisting of two elegiac stanzas, an
    heroic line and an Alexandrine, twisted on a string. Besides, why
    _modern_? You may say _modern Greeks_, but surely _Greece_ itself is
    rather more ancient than ever it was."

The carelessness of Byron in letter-writing, his total indifference to
proportion and form, his inattention to the beginning, middle, and end of
a letter, considered as a literary composition, are not to be counted for
faults, as they would be in writings of any pretension. A friendly letter
is, by its nature, a thing without pretension. The one merit of it which
compensates for every defect is to carry the living writer into the
reader's presence, such as he really is, not such as by study and art he
might make himself out to be. Byron was energetic, impetuous, impulsive,
quickly observant, disorderly, generous, open-hearted, vain. All these
qualities and defects are as conspicuous in his correspondence as they
were in his mode of life. There have been better letter-writers as to
literary art,--to which he gave no thought,--and the literary merits that
his letters possess (their clearness, their force of narrative and
description, their conciseness) are not the results of study, but the
characteristics of a vigorous mind.

The absolutely best friendly letter-writer known to me is Victor
Jacquemont. He, too, wrote according to the inspiration of the moment, but
it was so abundant that it carried him on like a steadily flowing tide.
His letters are wonderfully sustained, yet they are not _composed_; they
are as artless as Byron's, but much more full and regular. Many scribblers
have facility, a flux of words, but who has Jacquemont's weight of matter
along with it? The development of his extraordinary epistolary talent was
due to another talent deprived of adequate exercise by circumstances.
Jacquemont was by nature a brilliant, charming, amiable talker, and the
circumstances were various situations in which this talker was deprived of
an audience, being often, in long wanderings, surrounded by dull or
ignorant people. Ideas accumulated in his mind till the accumulation
became difficult to bear, and he relieved himself by talking on paper to
friends at a distance, but intentionally only to one friend at a time. He
tried to forget that his letters were passed round a circle of readers,
and the idea that they would be printed never once occurred to him:--

    "En écrivant aujourd'hui aux uns et aux autres, j'ai cherché à oublier
    ce que tu me dis de l'échange que chacun fait des lettres qu'il reçoit
    de moi. Cette pensée m'aurait retenu la plume, ou du moins, _ne
    l'aurait pas laissée couler assez nonchalamment sur le papier pour en
    noircir, en un jour, cinquante-huit feuilles_, comme je l'ai fait....
    _Je sais et j'aime beaucoup causer à deux; à trois, c'est autre chose;
    il en est de même pour écrire._ Pour parler comme je pense et sans
    blague, _il me faut la persuasion que je ne serai lu que de celui à
    qui j'écris_."

To read these letters, in the four volumes of them which have been happily
preserved, is to live with the courageous observer from day to day, to
share pleasures enjoyed with the freshness of sensation that belongs to
youth and strength, and privations borne with the cheerfulness of a truly
heroic spirit.

This Essay would run to an inordinate length if I even mentioned the best
of the many letter-writers who are known to us; and it is generally by
some adventitious circumstance that they have ever been known at all. A
man wins fame in something quite outside of letter-writing, and then his
letters are collected and given to the world, but perfectly obscure people
may have been equal or superior to him as correspondents. Occasionally the
letters of some obscure person are rescued from oblivion. Madame de
Rémusat passed quietly through life, and is now in a blaze of posthumous
fame. Her son decided upon the publication of her letters, and then it
became at once apparent that this lady had extraordinary gifts of the
observing and recording order, so that her testimony, as an eye-witness of
rare intelligence, must affect all future estimates of the conqueror of
Austerlitz. There may be at this moment, there probably are, persons to
whom the world attributes no literary talent, yet who are cleverly
preserving the very best materials of history in careless letters to their
friends.

It seems an indiscretion to read private letters, even when they are in
print, but it is an indiscretion we cannot help committing. What can be
more private than a letter from a man to his wife on purely family
matters? Surely it is wrong to read such letters; but who could repent
having read that exquisite one from Tasso's father, Bernardo Tasso,
written to his wife about the education of their children during an
involuntary separation? It shows to what a degree a sheet of paper may be
made the vehicle of a tender affection. In the first page he tries, and,
lover-like, tries again and again, to find words that will draw them
together in spite of distance. "Not merely often," he says, "but
continually our thoughts must meet upon the road." He expresses the
fullest confidence that her feelings for him are as strong and true as his
own for her, and that the weariness of separation is painful alike for
both, only he fears that she will be less able to bear the pain, not
because she is wanting in prudence but by reason of her abounding love. At
length the tender kindness of his expressions culminates in one passionate
outburst, "poi ch' io amo voi in quello estremo grado che si possa amar
cosa mortale."

It would be difficult to find a stronger contrast than that between
Bernardo Tasso's warmth and the tranquil coolness of Montaigne, who just
says enough to save appearances in that one conjugal epistle of his which
has come down to us. He begins by quoting a sceptical modern view of
marriage, and then briefly disclaims it for himself, but does not say
exactly what his own sentiments may be, not having much ardor of affection
to express, and honestly avoiding any feigned declarations:--

    "Ma Femme vous entendez bien que ce n'est pas le tour d'vn galand
    homme, aux reigles de ce temps icy, de vous courtiser & caresser
    encore. Car ils disent qu'vn habil homme peut bien prendre femme: mais
    que de l'espouser c'est à faire à vn sot. Laissons les dire: ie me
    tiens de ma part à la simple façon du vieil aage, aussi en porte-ie
    tantost le poil. Et de vray la nouuelleté couste si cher iusqu'à
    ceste heure à ce pauure estat (& si ie ne sçay si nous en sommes à la
    dernière enchere) qu'en tout & par tout i'en quitte le party. Viuons
    ma femme, vous & moy, à la vieille Françoise."

If friendship is maintained by correspondence, it is also liable to be
imperilled by it. Not unfrequently have men parted on the most amiable
terms, looking forward to a happy meeting, and not foreseeing the evil
effects of letters. Something will be written by one of them, not quite
acceptable to the other, who will either remonstrate and cause a rupture
in that way, or take his trouble silently and allow friendship to die
miserably of her wound. Much experience is needed before we entirely
realize the danger of friendly intercourse on paper. It is ten times more
difficult to maintain a friendship by letter than by personal intercourse,
not for the obvious reason that letter-writing requires an effort, but
because as soon as there is the slightest divergence of views or
difference in conduct, the expression of it or the account of it in
writing cannot be modified by kindness in the eye or gentleness in the
tone of voice. My friend may say almost anything to me in his private
room, because whatever passes his lips will come with tones that prove him
to be still my friend; but if he wrote down exactly the same words, and a
postman handed me the written paper, they might seem hard, unkind, and
even hostile. It is strange how slow we are to discover this in practice.
We are accustomed to speak with great freedom to intimate friends, and it
is only after painful mishaps that we completely realize the truth that it
is perilous to permit ourselves the same liberty with the pen. As soon as
we _do_ realize it we see the extreme folly of those who timidly avoid the
oral expression of friendly censure, and afterwards write it all out in
black ink and send it in a missive to the victim when he has gone away. He
receives the letter, feels it to be a cold cruelty, and takes refuge from
the vexations of friendship in the toils of business, thanking Heaven that
in the region of plain facts there is small place for sentiment.

ESSAY XXIV.

LETTERS OF BUSINESS.

The possibilities of intercourse by correspondence are usually
underestimated.

That there are great natural differences of talent for letter-writing is
certainly true; but it is equally true that there are great natural
differences of talent for oral explanation, yet, although we constantly
hear people say that this or that matter of business cannot be treated by
correspondence, we _never_ hear them say that it cannot be treated by
personal interviews. The value of the personal interview is often as much
over-estimated as that of letters is depreciated; for if some men do best
with the tongue, others are more effective with the pen.

It is presumed that there is nothing in correspondence to set against the
advantages of pouring forth many words without effort, and of carrying on
an argument rapidly; but the truth is, that correspondence has peculiar
advantages of its own. A hearer seldom grasps another person's argument
until it has been repeated several times, and if the argument is of a very
complex nature the chances are that he will not carry away all its points
even then. A letter is a document which a person of slow abilities can
study at his leisure, until he has mastered it; so that an elaborate
piece of reasoning may be set forth in a letter with a fair chance that
such a person will ultimately understand it. He will read the letter three
or four times on the day of its arrival, then he will still feel that
something may have escaped him, and he will read it again next day. He
will keep it and refer to it afterwards to refresh his memory. He can do
nothing of all this with what you say to him orally. His only resource in
that case is to write down a memorandum of the conversation on your
departure, in which he will probably make serious omissions or mistakes.
Your letter is a memorandum of a far more direct and authentic kind.

Appointments are sometimes made in order to settle a matter of business by
talking, and after the parties have met and talked for a long time one
says to the other, "I will write to you in a day or two;" and the other
instantly agrees with the proposal, from a feeling that the matter can be
settled more clearly by letter than by oral communication.

In these cases it may happen that the talking has cleared the way for the
letter,--that it has removed subjects of doubt, hesitation, or dispute,
and left only a few points on which the parties are very nearly agreed.

There are, however, other cases, which have sometimes come under my own
observation, in which men meet by appointment to settle a matter, and then
seem afraid to cope with it, and talk about indifferent subjects with a
half-conscious intention of postponing the difficult one till there is no
longer time to deal with it on that day. They then say, when they
separate, "We will settle that matter by correspondence," as if they could
not have done so just as easily without giving themselves the trouble of
meeting. In such cases as these the reason for avoiding the difficult
subject is either timidity or indolence. Either the parties do not like to
face each other in an opposition that may become a verbal combat, or else
they have not decision and industry enough to do a hard day's work
together; so they procrastinate, that they may spread the work over a
larger space of time.

The timidity that shrinks from a personal encounter is sometimes the cause
of hostile letter-writing about matters of business even when personal
interviews are most easy. There are instances of disputes by letter
between people who live in the same town, in the same street, and even in
the same house, and who might quarrel with their tongues if they were not
afraid, but fear drives them to fight from a certain distance, as it
requires less personal courage to fire a cannon at an enemy a league away
than to face his naked sword.

Timidity leads people to write letters and to avoid them. Some timorous
people feel bolder with a pen; others, on the contrary, are extremely
afraid of committing anything to paper, either because written words
remain and may be referred to afterwards, or because they may be read by
eyes they were never intended for, or else because the letter-writer feels
doubtful about his own powers in composition, grammar, or spelling.

Of these reasons against doing business by letter the second is really
serious. You write about your most strictly private affairs, and unless
the receiver of the letter is a rigidly careful and orderly person, it may
be read by his clerks or servants. You may afterwards visit the recipient
and find the letter lying about on a disorderly desk, or stuck on a hook
suspended from a wall, or thrust into a lockless drawer; and as the letter
is no longer your property, and you have not the resource of destroying
it, you will keenly appreciate the wisdom of those who avoid
letter-writing when they can.

The other cause of timidity, the apprehension that some fault may be
committed, some sin against literary taste or grammatical rule, has a
powerful effect as a deterrent from even necessary business
correspondence. The fear which a half-educated person feels that he will
commit faults causes a degree of hesitation which is enough of itself to
produce them; and besides this cause of error there is the want of
practice, also caused by timidity, for persons who dread letter-writing
practise it as little as possible.

The awkwardness of uneducated letter-writers is a most serious cause of
anxiety to people who are compelled to intrust the care of things to
uneducated dependants at a distance. Such care-takers, instead of keeping
you regularly informed of the state of affairs as an intelligent
correspondent would, write rarely, and they have such difficulty in
imagining the necessary ignorance of one who is not on the spot, that the
information they give you is provokingly incomplete on some most important
points.

An uneducated agent will write to you and tell you, for example, that
damage has occurred to something of yours, say a house, a carriage, or a
yacht, but he will not tell you its exact nature or extent, and he will
leave you in a state of anxious conjecture. If you question him by letter,
he will probably miss what is most essential in your questions, so that
you will have great difficulty in getting at the exact truth. After much
trouble you will perhaps have to take the train and go to see the extent
of damage for yourself, though it might have been described to you quite
accurately in a short letter by an intelligent man of business.

Nothing is more wonderful than the mistakes in following written
directions that can be committed by uneducated men. With clear directions
in the most legible characters before their eyes they will quietly go and
do something entirely different, and appear unfeignedly surprised when you
show them the written directions afterwards. In these cases it is probable
that they have unconsciously substituted a notion of their own for your
idea, which is the common process of what the uneducated consider to be
understanding things.

The extreme facility with which this is done may be illustrated by an
example. The well-known French _savant_ and inventor, Ruolz, whose name is
famous in connection with electro-plating, turned his attention to paper
for roofing and, as he perceived the defects of the common bituminous
papers, invented another in which no bitumen was employed. This he
advertised constantly and extensively as the "Carton _non_ bitumé Ruolz,"
consequently every one calls it the "Carton bitumé Ruolz." The reason here
is that the notion of papers for roofs was already so associated in the
French mind with bitumen, that it was absolutely impossible to effect the
disjunction of the two ideas.

Instances have occurred to everybody in which the consequence of warning a
workman that he is not to do some particular thing, is that he goes and
does it, when if nothing had been said on the subject he might, perchance,
have avoided it. Here are two good instances of this, but I have met with
many others. I remember ordering a binder to bind some volumes with red
edges, specially stipulating that he was not to use aniline red. He
therefore carefully stained the edges with aniline. I also remember
writing to a painter that he was to stain some new fittings of a boat with
a transparent glaze of raw sienna, and afterwards varnish them, and that
he was to be careful _not_ to use opaque paint anywhere. I was at a great
distance from the boat and could not superintend the work. In due time I
visited the boat and discovered that a foul tint of opaque paint had been
employed everywhere on the new fittings, without any glaze or varnish
whatever, in spite of the fact that old fittings, partially retained, were
still there, with mellow transparent stain and varnish, in the closest
juxtaposition with the hideous thick new daubing.

It is the evil of mediocrity in fortune to have frequently to trust to
uneducated agents. Rich men can employ able representatives, and in this
way they can inform themselves accurately of what occurs to their
belongings at a distance. Without riches, however, we may sometimes have a
friend on the spot who will see to things for us, which is one of the
kindest offices of friendship. The most efficient friend is one who will
not only look to matters of detail, but will take the trouble to inform
you accurately about them, and for this he must be a man of leisure. Such
a friend often spares one a railway journey by a few clear lines of report
or explanation. Judging from personal experience, I should say that
retired lawyers and retired military officers were admirably adapted to
render this great service efficiently, and I should suppose that a man who
had retired from busy commercial life would be scarcely less useful, but I
should not hope for precision in one who had always been unoccupied, nor
should I expect many details from one who was much occupied still. The
first would lack training and experience; the second would lack leisure.

The talent for accuracy in affairs may be distinct from literary talent
and education, and though we have been considering the difficulty of
corresponding on matters of business with the uneducated, we must not too
hastily infer that because a man is inaccurate in spelling, and inelegant
in phraseology, he may not be an agreeable and efficient business
correspondent. There was a time when all the greatest men of business in
England were uncertain spellers. Clear expression and completeness of
statement are more valuable than any other qualities in a business
correspondent. I sometimes have to correspond with a tradesman in Paris
who rose from an humble origin and scarcely produces what a schoolmaster
would consider a passable letter; yet his letters are models in essential
qualities, as he always removes by plain statements or questions every
possibility of a mistake, and if there is any want of absolute precision
in my orders he is sure to find out the deficiency, and to call my
attention to it sharply.

The habit of _not acknowledging orders_ is one of the worst negative vices
in business correspondence. It is most inconveniently common in France,
but happily much rarer in England. Where this vice prevails you cannot
tell whether the person you wish to employ has read your order or not; and
if you suppose him to have read it, you have no reason to feel sure that
he has understood it, or will execute it in time.

It is a great gain to the writer of letters to be able to make them brief
and clear at the same time, but as there is obscurity in a labyrinth of
many words so there may be another kind of obscurity from their
paucity,--that kind which Horace alluded to with reference to poetry,--

    "Brevis esse laboro
  Obscurus fio."

Sometimes one additional word would spare the reader a doubt or a
misunderstanding. This is likely to become more and more the dominant
fault of correspondence as it imitates the brevity of the telegram.

Observe the interesting use of the word _laboro_ by Horace. You may, in
fact, _labor_ to be brief, although the result is an appearance of less
labor than if you had written at ease. It may take more time to write a
very short letter than one of twice the length, the only gain in this
case being to the receiver.

Letters of business often appear to be written in the most rapid and
careless haste; the writing is almost illegible from its speed, the
composition slovenly, the letter brief. And yet such a letter may have
cost hours of deliberate reflection before one word of it was committed to
paper. It is the rapid registering of a slowly matured decision.

It is a well-known principle of modern business correspondence that if a
letter refers only to one subject it is more likely to receive attention
than if it deals with several; therefore if you have several different
orders or directions to give it is bad policy to write them all at once,
unless you are absolutely compelled to do so because they are all equally
pressing. Even if there is the same degree of urgency for all, yet a
practical impossibility that all should be executed at the same time, it
is still the best policy to give your orders successively and not more
quickly than they can be executed. The only danger of this is that the
receiver of the orders may think at first that they are small matters in
which postponement signifies little, as they can be executed at any time.
To prevent this he should be strongly warned at first that the order will
be rapidly followed by several others. If there is not the same degree of
urgency for all, the best way is to make a private register of the
different matters in the order of their urgency, and then to write several
short notes, at intervals, one about each thing.

People have such a marvellous power of misunderstanding even the very
plainest directions that a business letter never _can_ be made too clear.
It will, indeed, frequently happen that language itself is not clear
enough for the purposes of explanation without the help of drawing, and
drawing may not be clear to one who has not been educated to understand
it, which compels you to have recourse to modelling. In these cases the
task of the letter-writer is greatly simplified, as he has nothing to do
but foresee and prevent any misunderstanding of the drawing or model.

Every material thing constructed by mankind may be explained by the three
kinds of mechanical drawing,--plan, section, and elevation,--but the
difficulty, is that so many people are unable to understand plans and
sections; they only understand elevations, and not always even these. The
special incapacity to understand plans and sections is common in every
rank of society, and it is not uncommon even in the practical trades. All
letter-writing that refers to material construction would be immensely
simplified if, by a general rule in popular and other education, every
future man and woman in the country were taught enough about mechanical
drawing to be able at least to _read_ it.

It is delightful to correspond about construction with any trained
architect or engineer, because to such a correspondent you can explain
everything briefly, with the perfect certainty of being accurately
understood. It is terrible toil to have to explain construction by letter
to a man who does not understand mechanical drawing; and when you have
given great labor to your explanation, it is the merest chance whether he
will catch your meaning or not. The evil does not stop at mechanical
drawing. Not only do uneducated people misunderstand a mechanical plan or
section, but they are quite as liable to misunderstand a perspective
drawing, as the great architect and draughtsman Viollet-le-Duc charmingly
exemplified by the work of an intelligent child. A little boy had drawn a
cat as he had seen it in front with its tail standing up, and this front
view was stupidly misunderstood by a mature _bourgeois_, who thought the
animal was a biped (as the hind-legs were hidden), and believed the erect
tail to be some unknown object sticking out of the nondescript creature's
head. If you draw a board in perspective (other than isometrical) a
workman is quite likely to think that one end of it is to be narrower than
the other.

Business correspondence in foreign languages is a very simple matter when
it deals only with plain facts, and it does not require any very extensive
knowledge of the foreign tongue to write a common order; but if any
delicate or complicated matter has to be explained, or if touchy
sensitiveness in the foreigner has to be soothed by management and tact,
then a thorough knowledge of the shades of expression is required, and
this is extremely rare. The statement of bare facts, or the utterance of
simple wants, is indeed only a part of business correspondence, for men of
business, though they are not supposed to display sentiment in affairs,
are in reality just as much human beings as other men, and consequently
they have feelings which are to be considered. A correspondent who is able
to write a foreign language with delicacy and tact will often attain his
object when one with a ruder and more imperfect knowledge of the language
would meet with certain failure, though he asked for exactly the same
thing.

It is surety possible to be civil and even polite in business
correspondence without using the deplorable commercial slang which exists,
I believe, in every modern language. The proof that such abstinence is
possible is that some of the most efficient and most active men of
business never have recourse to it at all. This commercial slang consists
in the substitution of conventional terms originally intended to be more
courteous than plain English, French, etc., but which, in fact, from their
mechanical use, become wholly destitute of that best politeness which is
personal, and does not depend upon set phrases that can be copied out of a
tradesman's model letter-writer. Anybody but a tradesman calls your letter
a letter; why should an English tradesman call it "your favor," and a
French one "_votre honorée_"? A gentleman writing in the month of May
speaks of April, May, and June, when a tradesman carefully avoids the
names of the months, and calls them _ultimo_, _courant_, and _proximo_;
whilst instead of saying "by" or "according to," like other Englishmen, he
says _per_. This style was touched upon by Scott in Provost Crosbie's
letter to Alexander Fairford: "Dear Sir--Your _respected favor_ of 25th
_ultimo_, _per_ favor of Mr. Darsie Latimer, reached me in safety." This
is thought to be a finished commercial style. One sometimes meets with the
most astonishing and complicated specimens of it, which the authors are
evidently proud of as proofs of their high commercial training. I regret
not to have kept some fine examples of these, as their perfections are far
beyond all imitation. This is not surprising when we reflect that the very
worst commercial style is the result of a striving by many minds, during
several generations, after a preposterous ideal.

Tradesmen deserve credit for understanding the one element of courtesy in
letter-writing which has been neglected by gentlemen. They value legible
handwriting, and they print clear names and addresses on their
letter-paper, by which they spare much trouble.

Before closing this chapter let me say something about the reading of
business letters as well as the writing of them. It is, perhaps, a harder
duty to read such letters with the necessary degree of attention than to
compose them, for the author has his head charged with the subject, and
writing the letter is a relief to him; but to the receiver the matter is
new, and however lucid may be the exposition it always requires some
degree of real attention on his part. How are you, being at a distance, to
get an indolent man to bestow that necessary attention? He feels secure
from a personal visit, and indulges his indolence by neglecting your
concerns, even when they are also his own. Long ago I heard an English
Archdeacon tell the following story about his Bishop. The prelate was one
of that numerous class of men who loathe the sight of a business letter;
and he had indulged his indolence in that respect to such a degree that,
little by little, he had arrived at the fatal stage where one leaves
letters unopened for days or weeks. At one particular time the Archdeacon
was aware of a great arrear of unopened letters, and impressed his
lordship with the necessity for taking some note of their contents.
Yielding to a stronger will, the Bishop began to read; and one of the
first communications was from a wealthy man who offered a large sum for
church purposes (I think for building), but if the offer was not accepted
within a certain lapse of time he declared his intention of making it to
that which a Bishop loveth not--a dissenting community. The prelate had
opened the letter too late, and he lost the money. I believe that the
Archdeacon's vexation at the loss was more than counterbalanced by
gratification that his hierarchical superior had received such a lesson
for his neglect. Yet he did but imitate Napoleon, of whom Emerson says,
"He directed Bourrienne to leave all letters unopened for three weeks, and
then observed with satisfaction how large a part of the correspondence had
disposed of itself and no longer required an answer." This is a very
unsafe system to adopt, as the case of the Bishop proves. Things may
"dispose of themselves" in the wrong way, like wine in a leaky cask,
which, instead of putting itself carefully into a sound cask, goes
trickling into the earth.

The indolence of some men in reading and answering letters of business
would be incredible if they did not give clear evidence of it. The most
remarkable example that ever came under my notice is the following. A
French artist, not by any means in a condition of superfluous prosperity,
exhibited a picture at the _Salon_. He waited in Paris till after the
opening of the exhibition and then went down into the country. On the day
of his departure he received letters from two different collectors
expressing a desire to purchase his work, and asking its price. Any real
man of business would have seized upon such an opportunity at once. He
would have answered both letters, stayed in town, and contrived to set the
two amateurs bidding against each other. The artist in question was one of
those unaccountable mortals who would rather sacrifice all their chances
of life than indite a letter of business, so he left both inquiries
unanswered, saying that if the men had really wanted the picture they
would have called to see him. He never sold it, and some time afterwards
was obliged to give up his profession, quite as much from the lack of
promptitude in affairs as from any artistic deficiency.

Sometimes letters of business are _read_, but read so carelessly that it
would be better if they were thrown unopened into the fire. I have seen
some astounding instances of this, and, what is most remarkable, of
repeated and incorrigible carelessness in the same person or firm,
compelling one to the conclusion that in corresponding with that person or
that firm the clearest language, the plainest writing, and the most
legible numerals, are all equally without effect. I am thinking
particularly of one case, intimately known to me in all its details, in
which a business correspondence of some duration was finally abandoned,
after infinite annoyance, for the simple reason that it was impossible to
get the members of the firm, or their representatives, to attend to
written orders with any degree of accuracy. Even whilst writing this very
Essay I have given an order with regard to which I foresaw a probable
error. Knowing by experience that a probable error is almost certain if
steps are not taken energetically to prevent it, I requested that this
error might not be committed, and to attract more attention to my request
I wrote the paragraph containing it in red ink,--a very unusual
precaution. The foreseen error was accurately committed.

ESSAY XXV.

ANONYMOUS LETTERS.

Probably few of my mature readers have attained middle age without
receiving a number of anonymous letters. Such letters are not always
offensive, sometimes they are amusing, sometimes considerate and kind, yet
there is in all cases a feeling of annoyance on receiving them, because
the writer has made himself inaccessible to a reply. It is as if a man in
a mask whispered a word in your ear and then vanished suddenly in a crowd.
You wish to answer a calumny or acknowledge a kindness, and you may talk
to the winds and streams.

Anonymous letters of the worst kind have a certain value to the student of
human nature, because they afford him glimpses of the evil spirit that
disguises itself under the fair seemings of society. You believe with
childlike simplicity and innocence that, as you have never done any
intentional injury to a human being, you cannot have a human enemy, and
you make the startling discovery that somewhere in the world, perhaps even
amongst the smiling people you meet at dances and dinners, there are
creatures who will have recourse to the foulest slanders if thereby they
may hope to do you an injury. What _can_ you have done to excite such
bitter animosity? You may both have done much and neglected much. You may
have had some superiority of body, mind, or fortune; you may have
neglected to soothe some jealous vanity by the flattery it craved with a
tormenting hunger.

The simple fact that you seem happier than Envy thinks you ought to be is
of itself enough to excite a strong desire to diminish your offensive
happiness or put an end to it entirely. That is the reason why people who
are going to be married receive anonymous letters. If they are not really
happy they have every appearance of being happy, which is not less
intolerable. The anonymous letter-writer seeks to put a stop to such a
state of things. He might go to one of the parties and slander the other
openly, but it would require courage to do that directly to his face. A
letter might be written, but if name and address were given there would
come an inconvenient demand for proofs. One course remains, offering that
immunity from consequences which is soothing to the nerves of a coward.
The envious or jealous man can throw his vitriol in the dark and slip away
unperceived--_he can write an anonymous letter_.

Has the reader ever really tried to picture to himself the state of that
man's or woman's mind (for women write these things also) who can sit
down, take a sheet of paper, make a rough draft of an anonymous letter,
copy it out in a very legible yet carefully disguised hand, and make
arrangements for having it posted at a distance from the place where it
was written? Such things are constantly done. At this minute there are a
certain number of men and women in the world who are vile enough to do
all that simply in order to spoil the happiness of some person whom they
regard with "envy, hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness." I see in my
mind's eye the gentleman--the man having all the apparent delicacy and
refinement of a gentleman--who is writing a letter intended to blast the
character of an acquaintance. Perhaps he meets that acquaintance in
society, and shakes hands with him, and pretends to take an interest in
his health. Meanwhile he secretly reflects upon the particular sort of
calumny that will have the greatest degree of verisimilitude. Everything
depends upon his talent in devising the most _credible_ sort of
calumny,--not the calumny most likely to meet general credence, but that
which is most likely to be believed by the person to whom it is addressed,
and most likely to do injury when believed. The anonymous calumniator has
the immense advantage on his side that most people are prone to believe
evil, and that good people are unfortunately the most prone, as they hate
evil so intensely that even the very phantom of it arouses their anger,
and they too frequently do not stop to inquire whether it is a phantom or
a reality. The clever calumniator is careful not to go too far; he will
advance something that might be or that might have been; he does not love
_le vrai_, but he is a careful student of _le vraisemblable_. He will
assume an appearance of reluctance, he will drop hints more terrible than
assertions, because they are vague, mysterious, disquieting. When he
thinks he has done enough he stops in time; he has inoculated the drop of
poison, and can wait till it takes effect.

It must be rather an anxious time for the anonymous letter-writer when he
has sent off his missive. In the nature of things he cannot receive an
answer, and it is not easy for him to ascertain very soon what has been
the result of his enterprise. If he has been trying to prevent a marriage
he does not know immediately if the engagement is broken off, and if it is
not broken off he has to wait till the wedding-day before he is quite sure
of his own failure, and to suffer meanwhile from hope deferred and
constantly increasing apprehension. If the rupture occurs he has a moment
of Satanic joy, but it _may_ be due to some other cause than the success
of his own calumny, so that he is never quite sure of having himself
attained his object.

It is believed that most people who are engaged to be married receive
anonymous letters recommending them to break off the match. Not only are
such letters addressed to the betrothed couple themselves, but also to
their relations. If there is not a doubt that the statements in such
letters are purely calumnious, the right course is to destroy them
immediately and never allude to them afterwards; but if there is the
faintest shadow of a doubt--if there is the vaguest feeling that there may
be _some_ ground for the attack--then the only course is to send the
letter to the person accused, and to say that this is done in order to
afford him an opportunity for answering the anonymous assailant. I
remember a case in which this was done with the best results. A
professional man without fortune was going to marry a young heiress; I do
not mean a great heiress, but one whose fortune might be a temptation.
Her family received the usual anonymous letters, and in one of them it was
stated that the aspirant's father, who had been long dead, had dishonored
himself by base conduct with regard to a public trust in a certain town
where he occupied a post of great responsibility towards the municipal
authorities. The letter was shown to the son, and he was asked if he knew
anything of the matter, and if he could do anything to clear away the
imputation. Then came the difficulty that the alleged betrayal of trust
was stated to have occurred twenty years before, and that the Mayor was
dead, and probably most of the common councillors also. What was to be
done? It is not easy to disprove a calumny, and the _onus_ of proof ought
always to be thrown upon the calumniator, but this calumniator was
anonymous and intangible, so the son of the victim was requested to repel
the charge. By a very unusual and most fortunate accident, his father had
received on quitting the town in question a letter from the Mayor of a
most exceptional character, in which he spoke with warm and grateful
appreciation of services rendered and of the happy relations of trust and
confidence that had subsisted between himself and the slandered man down
to the very termination of their intercourse. This letter, again by a most
lucky accident, had been preserved by the widow, and by means of it one
dead man defended the memory of another. It removed the greatest obstacle
to the marriage; but another anonymous writer, or the same in another
handwriting, now alleged that the slandered man had died of a disease
likely to be inherited by his posterity. Here, again, luck was on the
side of the defence, as the physician who had attended him was still
alive, so that this second invention was as easily disposed of as the
first. The marriage took place; it has been more than usually happy, and
the children are pictures of health.

The trouble to which anonymous letter-writers put themselves to attain
their ends must sometimes be very great. I remember a case in which some
of these people must have contrived by means of spies or agents to procure
a private address in a foreign country, and must have been at great pains
also to ascertain certain facts in England which were carefully mingled
with the lies in the calumnious letter. The nameless writer was evidently
well informed, possibly he or she may have been a "friend" of the intended
victim. In this case no attention was paid to the attack, which did not
delay the marriage by a single hour. Long afterwards the married pair
happened to be talking about anonymous letters, and it then appeared that
each side had received several of these missives, coarsely or ingeniously
concocted, but had given them no more attention than they deserved.

An anonymous letter is sometimes written in collaboration by two persons
of different degrees of ability. When this is done one of the slanderers
generally supplies the basis of fact necessary to give an appearance of
knowledge, and the other supplies or improves the imaginative part of the
common performance and its literary style. Sometimes one of the two may be
detected by the nature of the references to fact, or by the supposed
writer's personal interest in bringing about a certain result.

It is very difficult at the first glance entirely to resist the effect of
a clever anonymous letter, and perhaps it is only men of clear strong
sense and long experience who at once overcome the first shock. In a very
short time, however, the phantom evil grows thin and disappears, and the
motive of the writer is guessed at or discerned.

The following brief anonymous letter or one closely resembling it (I quote
from memory) was once received by an English gentleman on his travels.

    "DEAR SIR,--I congratulate you on the fact that you will be a
    grandfather in about two months. I mention this as you may like to
    purchase baby-linen for your grandchild during your absence. I am,
    Sir, yours sincerely,

        "A WELL-WISHER."

The receiver had a family of grown-up children of whom not one was
married. The letter gave him a slight but perceptible degree of
disquietude which he put aside to the best of his ability. In a few days
came a signed letter from one of his female servants confessing that she
was about to become a mother, and claiming his protection as the
grandfather of the child. It then became evident that the anonymous letter
had been written by the girl's lover, who was a tolerably educated man
whilst she was uneducated, and that the pair had entered into this little
plot to obtain money. The matter ended by the dismissal of the girl, who
then made threats until she was placed in the hands of the police. Other
circumstances were recollected proving her to be a remarkably audacious
liar and of a slanderous disposition.

The torture that an anonymous letter may inflict depends far more on the
nature of the person who receives it than on the circumstances it relates.
A jealous and suspicious nature, not opened by much experience or
knowledge of the world, is the predestined victim of the anonymous
torturer. Such a nature jumps at evil report like a fish at an artificial
fly, and feels the anguish of it immediately. By a law that seems really
cruel such natures seize with most avidity on those very slanders that
cause them the most pain.

A kind of anonymous letter of which we have heard much in the present
disturbed state of European society is the letter containing threats of
physical injury. It informs you that you will be "done for" or "disabled"
in a short time, and exhorts you in the meanwhile to prepare for your
awful doom. The object of these letters is to deprive the receiver of all
feeling of security or comfort in existence. His consolation is that a
real intending murderer would probably be thinking too much of his own
perilous enterprise to indulge in correspondence about it, and we do not
perceive that the attacks on public men are at all proportionate in number
to the menaces addressed to them.

As there are malevolent anonymous letters intended to inflict the most
wearing anxiety, so there are benevolent ones written to save our souls.
Some theologically minded person, often of the female sex, is alarmed for
our spiritual state because she fears that we have doubts about the
supernatural, and so she sends us books that only make us wonder at the
mental condition for which such literature can be suitable. I remember one
of my female anonymous correspondents who took it for granted that I was
like a ship drifting about without compass or rudder (a great mistake on
her part), and so she offered me the safe and spacious haven of
Swedenborgianism! Others will tell you of the "great pain" with which they
have read this or that passage of your writings, to which an author may
always reply that as there is no Act of Parliament compelling British
subjects to read his books the sufferers have only to let them alone in
order to spare themselves the dolorous sensations they complain of.

Some kind anonymous correspondents write to console us for offensive
criticism by maintaining the truth of our assertions as supported by their
own experience. I remember that when the novel of "Wenderholme" was
published, and naturally attacked for its dreadful portraiture of the
drinking habits of a past generation, a lady wrote to me anonymously from
a locality of the kind described bearing mournful witness to the veracity
of the description.[33] In this case the employment of the anonymous form
was justified by two considerations. There was no offensive intention, and
the lady had to speak of her own relations whose names she desired to
conceal. Authors frequently receive letters of gently expressed criticism
or remonstrance from readers who do not give their names. The only
objection to these communications, which are often interesting, is that it
is rather teasing and vexatious to be deprived of the opportunity for
answering them. The reader may like to see one of these gentle anonymous
letters. An unmarried lady of mature age (for there appears to be no
reason to doubt the veracity with which she gives a slight account of
herself) has been reading one of my books and thinks me not quite just to
a most respectable and by no means insignificant class in English society.
She therefore takes me to task,--not at all unkindly.

    "DEAR SIR,--I have often wished to thank you for the intense pleasure
    your books have given me, especially the 'Painter's Camp in the
    Highlands,' the word-pictures of which reproduced the enjoyment,
    intense even to pain, of the Scottish scenery.

    "I have only now become acquainted with your 'Intellectual Life,'
    which has also given me great pleasure, though of another kind. Its
    general fairness and candor induce me to protest against your judgment
    of a class of women whom I am sure you underrate from not having a
    sufficient acquaintance with their capabilities.

    "'_Women who are not impelled by some masculine influence are not
    superior, either in knowledge or in discipline of the mind, at the age
    of fifty to what they were at twenty-five.... The best illustration of
    this is a sisterhood of three or four rich old maids.... You will
    observe that they invariably remain, as to their education, where they
    were left by their teachers many years before.... Even in what most
    interests them--theology, they repeat but do not extend their
    information._'

    "My circle of acquaintance is small, nevertheless I know many women
    between twenty-five and forty whose culture is always steadily
    progressing; who keep up an acquaintance with literature for its own
    sake, and not 'impelled' thereto 'by masculine influence;' who, though
    without creative power, yet have such capability of reception that
    they can appreciate the best authors of the day; whose theology is not
    quite the fossil you represent it, though I confess it is for but a
    small number of my acquaintance that I can claim the power of
    judicially estimating the various schools of theology.

    "Without being specialists, the more thoughtful of our class have such
    an acquaintance with current literature that they are able to enter
    into the progress of the great questions of the day, and may even
    estimate the more fairly a Gladstone or a Disraeli for being
    spectators instead of actors in politics.

    "I have spoken of my own acquaintances, but they are such as may be
    met within any middle-class society. For myself, I look back to the
    painful bewilderment of twenty-five and contrast it with satisfaction
    with the brighter perceptions of forty, finding out 'a little more,
    and yet a little more, of the eternal order of the universe.' One
    reason for your underrating us may be that our receptive powers only
    are in constant use, and we have little power of expression. I dislike
    anonymous letters as a rule, but as I write as the representative of a
    class, I beg to sign myself,

        "Yours gratefully,
            "ONE OF THREE OR FOUR RICH OLD MAIDS.

    "_November 13, 1883._"

Letters of this kind give no pain to the receiver, except when they compel
him to an unsatisfactory kind of self-examination. In the present case I
make the best amends by giving publicity and permanence to this clearly
expressed criticism. Something may be said, too, in defence of the
passages incriminated. Let me attempt it in the form of a letter which may
possibly fall under the eye of the Rich Old Maid.

    DEAR MADAM,--Your letter has duly reached me, and produced feelings of
    compunction. Have I indeed been guilty of injustice towards a class so
    deserving of respect and consideration as the Rich Old Maids of
    England? It has always seemed to me one of the privileges of my native
    country that such a class should flourish there so much more amply and
    luxuriantly than in other lands. Married women are absorbed in the
    cares and anxieties of their own households, but the sympathies of old
    maids spread themselves over a wider area. Balzac hated them, and
    described them as having souls overflowing with gall; but Balzac was a
    Frenchman, and if he was just to the rare old maids of his native
    country (which I cannot believe) he knew nothing of the more numerous
    old maids of Great Britain. I am not in Balzac's position. Dear
    friends of mine, and dearer relations, have belonged to that kindly
    sisterhood.

    The answer to your objection is simple. "The Intellectual Life" was
    not published in 1883 but in 1873. It was written some time before,
    and the materials had been gradually accumulating in the author's mind
    several years before it was written. Consequently your criticism is of
    a much later date than the work you criticise, and as you are forty in
    1883 you were a young maid in the times I was thinking of when
    writing. It is certainly true that many women of the now past
    generation, particularly those who lived in celibacy, had a remarkable
    power of remaining intellectually in the same place. This power is
    retained by some of the present generation, but it is becoming rarer
    every day because the intellectual movement is so strong that it is
    drawing a constantly increasing number of women along with it; indeed
    this movement is so accelerated as to give rise to a new anxiety, and
    make us look back with a wistful regret. We are now beginning to
    perceive that a certain excellent old type of Englishwomen whom we
    remember with the greatest affection and respect will soon belong as
    entirely to the past as if they had lived in the days of Queen
    Elizabeth. From the intellectual point of view their lives were hardly
    worth living, but we are beginning to ask ourselves whether their
    ignorance (I use the plain term) and their prejudices (the plain term
    again) were not essential parts of a whole that commanded our respect.
    Their simplicity of mind may have been a reason why they had so much
    simplicity of purpose in well-doing. Their strength of prejudice may
    have aided them to keep with perfect steadfastness on the side of
    moral and social order. Their intellectual restfulness in a few clear
    settled ideas left a degree of freedom to their energy in common
    duties that may not always be possible amidst the bewildering theories
    of an unsettled and speculative age.

        Faithfully yours,
            THE AUTHOR OF "THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE."

ESSAY XXVI.

AMUSEMENTS.

One of the most unexpected discoveries that we make on entering the
reflective stage of existence is that amusements are social obligations.

The next discovery of this kind is that the higher the rank of the person
the more obligatory and the more numerous do his so-called "amusements"
become, till finally we reach the princely life which seems to consist
almost exclusively of these observances.

Why should it ever be considered obligatory upon a man to amuse himself in
some way settled by others? There appear to be two principal reasons for
this. The first is, that when amusements are practised by many persons in
common it appears unsociable and ungracious to abstain. Even if the
amusement is not interesting in itself it is thought that the society it
leads us into ought to be a sufficient reason for following it.

The second reason is that, like all things which are repeated by many
people together, amusements soon become fixed customs, and have all the
weight and authority of customs, so that people dare not abstain from
observing them for fear of social penalties.

If the amusements are expensive they become not only a sign of wealth but
an actual demonstration and display of it, and as nothing in the world is
so much respected as wealth, or so efficient a help to social position,
and as the expenditure which is visible produces far more effect upon the
mind than that which is not seen, it follows that all costly amusements
are useful for self-assertion in the world, and become even a means of
maintaining the political importance of great families.

On the other hand, not to be accustomed to expensive amusements implies
that one has lived amongst people of narrow means, so that most of those
who have social ambition are eager to seize upon every opportunity for
enlarging their experience of expensive amusements in order that they may
talk about them afterwards, and so affirm their position as members of the
upper class.

The dread of appearing unsociable, of seeming rebellious against custom,
or inexperienced in the habits of the rich, are reasons quite strong
enough for the maintenance of customary amusements even when there is very
little real enjoyment of them for their own sake.

But, in fact, there are always _some_ people who practise these amusements
for the sake of the pleasure they give, and as these people are likely to
excel the others in vivacity, activity, and skill, as they have more
_entrain_ and gayety, and talk more willingly and heartily about the
sports they love, so they naturally come to lead opinion upon the subject
and to give it an appearance of earnestness and warmth that is beyond its
real condition. Hence the tone of conversation about amusements, though it
may accurately represent the sentiments of those who enjoy them, does not
represent all opinion fairly. The opposite side of the question found a
witty exponent in Sir George Cornewall Lewis, when he uttered that
immortal saying by which his name will endure when the recollection of his
political services has passed away,--"How tolerable life would be were it
not for its pleasures!" There you have the feeling of the thousands who
submit and conform, but who would have much to say if it were in good
taste to say anything against pleasures that are offered to us in
hospitality.

Amusements themselves become work when undertaken for an ulterior purpose
such as the maintenance of political influence. A great man goes through a
certain regular series of dinners, balls, games, shooting and hunting
parties, races, wedding-breakfasts, visits to great houses, excursions on
land and water, and all these things have the outward appearance of
amusement, but may, in reality, be labors that the great man undertakes
for some purpose entirely outside of the frivolous things themselves. A
Prime Minister scarcely goes beyond political dinners, but what an endless
series of engagements are undertaken by a Prince of Wales! Such things are
an obligation for him, and when the obligation is accepted with unfailing
patience and good temper, the Prince is not only working, but working with
a certain elegance and grace of art, often involving that prettiest kind
of self-sacrifice which hides itself under an appearance of enjoyment.
Nobody supposes that the social amusements so regularly gone through by
the eldest son of Queen Victoria can be, in all cases, very entertaining
to him; we suppose them to be accepted as forms of human intercourse that
bring him into personal relations with his future subjects. The difference
between this Prince and King Louis II. of Bavaria is perhaps the most
striking contrast in modern royal existences. Prince Albert Edward is
accessible to everybody, and shares the common pleasures of his
countrymen; the Bavarian sovereign is never so happy as when in one of his
romantic and magnificent residences, surrounded by the sublimity of nature
and the embellishments of art, he sits alone and dreams as he listens to
the strains of exquisite music. Has he not erected his splendid castle on
a rock, like the builder of "The Palace of Art"?

  "A huge crag-platform, smooth as burnish'd brass
       I chose. The ranged ramparts bright
   From level meadow-bases of deep grass
       Suddenly scaled the light.

  "Thereon I built it firm. Of ledge or shelf
       The rock rose clear, or winding stair.
   My soul would live alone unto herself
       In her high palace there."

The life of the King of Bavaria, sublimely serene in its independence, is
a long series of tranquil omissions. There may be a wedding-feast in one
of his palaces, but such an occurrence only seems to him the best of all
reasons why he should be in another. He escapes from the pleasures and
interests of daily life, making himself an earthly paradise of
architecture, music, and gardens, and lost in his long dream, assuredly
one of the most poetical figures in the biographies of kings, and one of
the most interesting, but how remote from men! This remoteness is due, in
great part, to a sincerity of disposition which declines amusements that
do not amuse, and desires only those real pleasures which are in perfect
harmony with one's own nature and constitution. We like the sociability,
the ready human sympathy, of the Prince of Wales; we think that in his
position it is well for him to be able to keep all that endless series of
engagements, but has not King Louis some claim upon our indulgence even in
his eccentricity? He has refused the weary round of false amusements and
made his choice of ideal pleasure. If he condescended to excuse himself,
his _Apologia pro vitâ sua_ might take a form somewhat resembling this. He
might say, "I was born to a great fortune and only ask leave to enjoy it
in my own way. The world's amusements are an infliction that I consider
myself at liberty to avoid. I love musical or silent solitude, and the
enchantments of a fair garden and a lofty dwelling amidst the glorious
Bavarian mountains. Let the noisy world go its way with its bitter
wranglings, its dishonest politics, its sanguinary wars! I set up no
tyranny. I leave my subjects to enjoy their brief human existence in their
own fashion, and they let me dream my dream."

These are not the world's ways nor the world's view. The world considers
it essential to the character of a prince that he should be at least
apparently happy in those pleasures which are enjoyed in society, that he
should seem to enjoy them along with others to show his fellow-feeling
with common men, and not sit by himself, like King Louis in his theatre,
when "Tannhauser" is performed for the royal ears alone.

Of the many precious immunities that belong to humble station there are
none more valuable than the freedom from false amusements. A poor man is
under one obligation, he must work, but his work itself is a blessed
deliverance from a thousand other obligations. He is not obliged to shoot,
and hunt, and dance against his will, he is not obliged to affect interest
and pleasure in games that only weary him, he has not to receive tiresome
strangers in long ceremonious repasts when he would rather have a simple
short dinner with his wife. Béranger sang the happiness of beggars with
his sympathetic humorous philosophy, but in all seriousness it might be
maintained that the poor are happier than they know. They get their easy
unrestrained human intercourse by chance meetings, and greetings, and
gossipings, and they are spared all the acting, all the feigning, that is
connected with the routine of imposed enjoyments.

Avowed work, even when uncongenial, is far less trying to patience than
feigned pleasure. You dislike accounts and you dislike balls, but though
your dislike may be nearly equal in both cases you will assuredly find
that the time hangs less heavily when you are resolutely grappling with
the details of your account-books than when you are only wishing that the
dancers would go to bed. The reason is that any hard work, whatever it is,
has the qualities of a mental tonic, whereas unenjoyed pleasures have an
opposite effect, and even though work may be uncongenial you see a sort
of result, whilst a false pleasure leaves no result but the extreme
fatigue that attends it,--a kind of fatigue quite exceptional in its
nature, and the most disagreeable that is known to man.

The dislike for false amusements is often misunderstood to be a
puritanical intolerance of all amusement. It is in this as in all things
that are passionately enjoyed,--the false thing is most disliked by those
who best appreciate the true.

What may be called the truth or falsehood of amusements is not in the
amusements themselves, but in the relation between one human idiosyncrasy
and them. Every idiosyncrasy has its own strong mysterious affinities,
generally distinguishable in childhood, always clearly distinguishable in
youth. We are like a lute or a violin, the tuned strings vibrate in answer
to certain notes but not in answer to others.

To convert amusements into social customs or obligations, to make it a
man's duty to shoot birds or ride after foxes because it is agreeable to
others to discharge guns and gallop across fields, is an infringement of
individual liberty which is less excusable in the case of amusements than
it is in more serious things. For in serious things, in politics and
religion, there is always the plausible argument that the repression of
the individual conscience is good for the unity of the State; whereas
amusements are supposed to exist for the recreation of those who practise
them, and when they are not enjoyed they are not amusements but something
else. There is no single English word that exactly expresses what they
are, but there is a French one, the word _corvée_, which means forced
labor, labor under dictation, all the more unpleasant in these cases that
it must assume the appearance of enjoyment.[34]

Surely there is nothing in which the independence of the individual ought
to be so absolute, so unquestioned, as in amusements. What right have I,
because a thing is a pleasant pastime to me, to compel my friend or my son
to do that thing when it is a _corvée_ to him? No man can possibly amuse
himself in obedience to a word of command, the most he can do is to
submit, to try to appear amused, wishing all the time that the weary task
was over.

To mark the contrast clearly I will describe some amusements from the
opposite points of view of those who enjoy them naturally, and those to
whom they would be indifferent if they were not imposed, and hateful if
they were.

Shooting is delightful to genuine sportsmen in many ways. It renews in
them the sensations of the vigorous youth of humanity, of the tribes that
lived by the chase. It brings them into contact with nature, gives a zest
and interest to hard pedestrian exercise, makes the sportsmen minutely
acquainted with the country, and leads to innumerable observations of the
habits of wild animals that have the interest without the formal
pretensions of a science. Shooting is a delightful exercise of skill,
requiring admirable promptitude and perfect nerve, so that any success in
it is gratifying to self-esteem. Sir Samuel Baker is always proud of
being such a good marksman, and frankly shows his satisfaction. "I had
fired three _beautifully correct_ shots with No. 10 bullets, and seven
drachms of powder in each charge; these were so nearly together that they
occupied a space in her forehead of about three inches." He does not aim
at an animal in a general way, but always at a particular and penetrable
spot, recording each hit, and the special bullet used. Of course he loves
his guns. These modern instruments are delightful toys on account of the
highly developed art employed in their construction, so that they would be
charming things to possess, and handle, and admire, even if they were
never used, whilst the use of them gives a terrible power to man. See a
good marksman when he takes a favorite weapon in his hand! More
redoubtable than Roland with the sword Durindal, he is comparable rather
to Apollo with the silver bow, or even to Olympian Zeus himself grasping
his thunders. Listen to him when he speaks of his weapon! If he thinks you
have the free-masonry of the chase, and can understand him, he talks like
a poet and lover. Baker never fails to tell us what weapon he used on each
occasion, and how beautifully it performed, and due honor and
advertisement are kindly given to the maker, out of gratitude.

    "I accordingly took my trusty little Fletcher double rifle No. 24, and
    running knee-deep into the water to obtain a close shot I fired
    exactly between the eyes near the crown of the head. At the reports of
    the little Fletcher the hippo disappeared."

Then he adds an affectionate foot-note about the gun, praising it for
going with him for five years, as if it had had a choice about the matter,
and could have offered its services to another master. He believes it to
be alive, like a dog.

    "This excellent and handy rifle was made by Thomas Fletcher, of
    Gloucester, and accompanied me like a faithful dog throughout my
    journey of nearly five years to the Albert Nyanza, and returned with
    me to England as good as new."

In the list of Baker's rifles appears his bow of Ulysses, his Child of a
Cannon, familiarly called the Baby, throwing a half-pound explosive shell,
a lovely little pet of a weapon with a recoil that broke an Arab's
collar-bone, and was not without some slight effect even upon that mighty
hunter, its master.

    "Bang went the Baby; round I spun like a weather-cock with the blood
    flowing from my nose, as the recoil had driven the top of the hammer
    deep into the bridge. My Baby not only screamed but kicked viciously.
    However I knew the elephant would be bagged, as the half-pound shell
    had been aimed directly behind the shoulder."

We have the most minute descriptions of the effects of these projectiles
in the head of a hippopotamus and the body of an elephant. "I was quite
satisfied with my explosive shells," says the enthusiastic sportsman, and
the great beasts appear to have been satisfied too.

Now let me attempt to describe the feelings of a man not born with the
natural instinct of a sportsman. We need not suppose him to be either a
weakling or a coward. There are strong and brave men who can exercise
their strength and prove their courage without willingly inflicting wounds
or death upon any creature. To some such men a gun is simply an
encumbrance, to wait for game is a wearisome trial of patience, to follow
it is aimless wandering, to slaughter it is to do the work of a butcher or
a poulterer, to wound it is to incur a degree of remorse that is entirely
destructive of enjoyment. The fact that somewhere on mountain or in forest
poor creatures are lying with festering flesh or shattered bones to die
slowly in pain and hunger, and the terrible thirst of the wounded, and all
for the pleasure of a gentleman,--such a fact as that, when clearly
realized, is not to be got over by anything less powerful than the genuine
instinct of the sportsman who is himself one of Nature's own born
destroyers, as panthers and falcons are. The feeling of one who has not
the sporting instinct has been well expressed as follows by Mr. Lewis
Morris, in "A Cynic's Day-dream:"--

  "Scant pleasure should I think to gain
   From endless scenes of death and pain;
   'Twould little profit me to slay
   A thousand innocents a day;
   I should not much delight to tear
   With wolfish dogs the shrieking hare;
   With horse and hound to track to death
   A helpless wretch that gasps for breath;
   To make the fair bird check its wing,
   And drop, a dying, shapeless thing;
   To leave the joy of all the wood
   A mangled heap of fur and blood,
   Or else escaping, but in vain,
   To pine, a shattered wretch, in pain;
   Teeming, perhaps, or doomed to see
   Its young brood starve in misery."

Hunting may be classed with shooting and passed over, as the instinct is
the same for both, with this difference only that the huntsman has a
natural passion for horsemanship that may be wanting to the pedestrian
marksman. An amusement entirely apart from every other, and requiring a
special instinct, is that of sailing.

If you have the nautical passion it was born with you, and no reasoning
can get it out of you. Every sheet of navigable water draws you with a
marvellous attraction, fills you with an indescribable longing. Miles away
from anything that can be sailed upon, you cannot feel a breeze upon your
cheek without wishing to be in a sailing-boat to catch it in a spread of
canvas. A ripple on a duck-pond torments you with a teazing reminder of
larger surfaces, and if you had no other field for navigation you would
want to be on that duck-pond in a tub. "I would rather have a plank and a
handkerchief for a sail," said Charles Lever, "than resign myself to give
up boating." You have pleasure merely in being afloat, even without
motion, and all the degrees of motion under sail have their own peculiar
charm for you, from an insensible gliding through glassy waters to a fight
against opposite winds and raging seas. You have a thorough, intimate, and
affectionate knowledge of all the details of your ship. The constant
succession of little tasks and duties is an unfailing interest, a
delightful occupation. You enjoy the manual labor, and acquire some skill
not only as a sailor but as ship's carpenter and painter. You take all
accidents and disappointments cheerfully, and bear even hardship with a
merry heart. Nautical exercise, though on the humble scale of the modest
amateur, has preserved or improved your health and activity, and brought
you nearer to Nature by teaching you the habits of the winds and waters
and by displaying to you an endless variety of scenes, always with some
fresh interest, and often of enchanting beauty.

Now let us suppose that you are simple enough to think that what pleases
you, who have the instinct, will gratify another who is destitute of it.
If you have power enough to make him accompany you, he will pass through
the following experiences.

Try to realize the fact that to him the sailing-boat is only a means of
locomotion, and that he will refer to his watch and compare it with other
means of locomotion already known to him, not having the slightest
affectionate prejudice in its favor or gentle tolerance of its defects. If
you could always have a steady fair wind he would enjoy the boat as much
as a coach or a very slow railway train, but he will chafe at every delay.
None of the details that delight you can have the slightest interest for
him. The sails, and particularly the cordage, seem to him an irritating
complication which, he thinks, might be simplified, and he will not give
any mental effort to master them. He cares nothing about those qualities
of sails and hull which have been the subject of such profound scientific
investigation, such long and passionate controversy. You cannot speak of
anything on board without employing technical terms which, however
necessary, however unavoidable, will seem to him a foolish and useless
affectation by which an amateur tries to give himself nautical airs. If
you say "the mainsheet" he thinks you might have said more rationally and
concisely "the cord by which you pull towards you that long pole which is
under the biggest of the sails," and if you say "the starboard quarter,"
he thinks you ought to have said, in simple English, "that part of the
vessel's side that is towards the back end of it and to your right hand
when you are standing with your face looking forwards." If you happen to
be becalmed he suffers from an infinite _ennui_. If you have to beat to
windward he is indifferent to the wonderful art and vexed with you
because, as his host, you have not had the politeness and the forethought
to provide a favorable breeze. If you are a yachtsman of limited means and
your guest has to take a small share in working the vessel, he will not
perform it with any cheerful alacrity, but consider it unfit for a
gentleman. If this goes on for long it is likely that there will be
irritation on both sides, snappish expressions, and a quarrel. Who is in
fault? Both are excusable in the false situation that has been created,
but it ought not to have been created at all. You ought not to have
invited a man without nautical instincts, or he ought not to have accepted
the invitation. He was a charming companion on land, and that misled you
both. Meet him on land again, receive him hospitably at your house. I
would say "forgive him!" if there were anything to forgive, but it is not
any fault of his or any merit of yours if, by the irrevocable fate of
congenital idiosyncrasy, the amusement that you were destined to seek and
enjoy is the _corvée_ that he was destined to avoid.

I find no language strong enough to condemn the selfishness of those who,
in order that they may enjoy what is a pleasure to themselves,
deliberately and knowingly inflict a _corvée_ upon others. This objection
does not apply to paid service, for that is the result of a contract.
Servants constantly endure the tedium of waiting and attendance, but it is
their form of work, and they have freely undertaken it. Work of that kind
is not a _corvée_, it is not forced labor. Real _corvées_ are inflicted by
heads of families on dependent relations, or by patrons on humble friends
who are under some obligation to them, and so bound to them as to be
defenceless. The father or patron wants, let us say, his nightly game at
whist; he must and will have it, if he cannot get it he feels that the
machine of the universe is out of gear. He singles out three people who do
not want to play, perhaps takes for his partner one who thoroughly
dislikes the game, but who has learned something of it in obedience to his
orders. They sit down to their board of green cloth. The time passes
wearily for the principal victim, who is thinking of something else and
makes mistakes. The patron loses his temper, speaks with increasing
acerbity, and finally either flies into a passion and storms (the
old-fashioned way), or else adopts, with grim self-control, a tone of
insulting contempt towards his victim that is even more difficult to
endure. And this is the reward for having been unselfish and obliging,
these are the thanks for having sacrificed a happy evening!

If this is often done by individuals armed with some kind of power and
authority, it is done still more frequently by majorities. The tyranny of
majorities begins in our school-days, and the principal happiness of
manhood is in some measure to escape from it. Many a man in after-life
remembers with bitterness the weary hours he had to spend for the
gratification of others in games that he disliked. The present writer has
a vivid recollection of what, to him, was the infinite dulness of cricket.
He was not by any means an inactive boy, but it so happened that cricket
never had the slightest interest for him, and to this day he cannot pass a
cricket-ground without a feeling of strong antipathy to its level surface
of green, and of thankfulness that he is no longer compelled to go through
the irksome old _corvée_ of his youth. One of the many charms, to his
taste, of a rocky mountain-side in the Highlands is that cricket is
impossible there. At the same time he quite believes and admits everything
that is so enthusiastically claimed for cricket by those who have a
natural affinity for the game.

There are not only sports and pastimes, but there is the long
reverberating echo of every sport in endless conversations. Here it may be
remarked that the lovers of a particular amusement, when they happen to be
a majority, possess a terrible power of inflicting _ennui_ upon others,
and they often exercise it without mercy. Five men are dining together,
and three are fox-hunters. Evidently they ought to keep fox-hunting to
themselves in consideration for the other two, but this requires an almost
superhuman self-discipline and politeness, so there is a risk that the
minority may have to submit in silence to an inexhaustible series of
details about horses and foxes and dogs. Indeed you are never safe from
this kind of conversation, even when you have numbers on your side.
Sporting talk may be inflicted by a minority when that minority is
incapable of any other conversation and strong in its own incapacity. Here
is a case in point that was narrated to me by one of the three _convives_.
The host was a country gentleman of great intellectual attainments, one
guest was a famous Londoner, and the other was a sporting squire who had
been invited as a neighbor. Fox-hunting was the only subject of talk,
because the squire was garrulous and unable to converse about any other
topic.

Ladies are often pitiable sufferers from this kind of conversation.
Sometimes they have the instinct of masculine sport themselves, and then
the subject has an interest for them; but an intelligent woman may find
herself in a wearisome position when she would rather avoid the subject of
slaughter, and all the men around her talk of nothing but killing and
wounding.

It is natural that men should talk much about their amusements, because
the mere recollection of a true amusement (that for which we have an
affinity) is in itself a renewal of it in imagination, and an immense
refreshment to the mind. In the midst of a gloomy English winter the
yachtsman talks of summer seas, and whilst he is talking he watches,
mentally, his well-set sails, and hears the wash of the Mediterranean
wave.

There are three pleasures in a true amusement, first anticipation, full of
hope, which is

  "A feast for promised triumph yet to come,"

often the best banquet of all. Then comes the actual fruition, usually
dashed with disappointments that a true lover of the sport accepts in the
most cheerful spirit. Lastly, we go through it all over again, either with
the friends who have shared our adventures or at least with those who
could have enjoyed them had they been there, and who (for vanity often
claims her own delights) know enough about the matter to appreciate our
own admirable skill and courage.

In concluding this Essay I desire to warn young readers against a very
common mistake. It is very generally believed that literature and the fine
arts can be happily practised as amusements. I believe this to be an error
due to the vulgar notion that artists and literal people do not work but
only display talent, as if anybody could display talent without toil.
Literary and artistic pursuits are in fact _studies_ and not amusements.
Too arduous to have the refreshing quality of recreation, they put too
severe a strain upon the faculties, they are too troublesome in their
processes, and too unsatisfactory in their results, unless a natural gift
has been developed by earnest and long-continued labor. It does indeed
occasionally happen that an artist who has acquired skill by persistent
study will amuse himself by exercising it in sport. A painter may make
idle sketches as Byron sometimes broke out into careless rhymes, or as a
scholar will playfully compose doggerel in Greek, but these gambols of
accomplished men are not to be confounded with the painful efforts of
amateurs who fancy that they are going to dance in the Palace of Art and
shortly discover that the muse who presides there is not a smiling
hostess but a severe and exigent schoolmistress. An able French painter,
Louis Leloir, wrote thus to a friend about another art that he felt
tempted to practise:--

    "Etching tempts me much. I am making experiments and hope to show you
    something soon. Unhappily life is too short; we do a little of
    everything and then perceive that each branch of art would of itself
    consume the life of a man, to practise it very imperfectly after
    all.... We get angry with ourselves and struggle, but too late. It was
    at the beginning that we ought to have put on blinkers to hide from
    ourselves everything that is not art."

If we mean to amuse ourselves let us avoid the painful wrestling against
insuperable difficulties, and the humiliation of imperfect results. Let us
shun all ostentation, either of wealth or talent, and take our pleasures
happily like poor children, or like the idle angler who stands in his old
clothes by the purling stream and watches the bobbing of his float, or the
glancing of the fly that his guileful industry has made.

INDEX.

  Absinthe, French use, 273.

  Absurdity, in languages, 157.

  Academies, in a university, 275.

  Accidents, Divine connection with (Essay XV.), 218-222.

  Acquaintances: new and humble, 21, 22;
    chance, 23-26;
    met in travelling (Essay XVII.), 239-252 _passim_.

  Adaptability: a mystery, 9;
    in life's journey, 44;
    to unrefined people, 72.

  Adultery, overlooked in princes, 168.

  Affection: not blinding to faults, 10;
    how to obtain filial, 98;
    in the beginning of letters, 316.

  Affinities, mysterious, 288.

  Age: affecting human intercourse, ix;
    outrun by youth, 86-93 _passim_;
    affecting friendship, 112;
    senility hard to convince, 293, 294;
    middle and old, 302;
    kind letter to an old lady, 345.

  Agnosticism, affecting filial relations, 93.

  Agriculture: under law, 228;
    and Radicals, 282.

  Albany, Duke of, his associations, 5.

  Albert Nyanza, Baker's exploits, 392.

  Alexis, Prince, sad relations to his father, 95, 96.

  Alps: first sight, 235;
    grandeur, 271.

  Americans: artistic attraction, 8;
    inequalities of wealth, 248;
    behaviour towards strangers, 249;
    treated as ignorant by the English, 277;
    under George III., 279;
    use of ruled paper, 328.

  Amusements: pursuit of, 27;
    sympathy with youthful, 88;
    out-door, 302, 303;
    praise for indulgence not deserved, 342;
    in general (Essay XXVI.), 383-401;
    obligatory, 383;
    expensive and pleasurable, 384;
    laborious, 385;
    princely enjoyments, 386, 387;
    poverty not compelled to practise, 388;
    feigned, 388, 389;
    converted into customs, 389;
    should be independent in, 390;
    shooting, 391-393;
    boating, 394-396;
    selfish compulsion, 397;
    tyranny of majorities, 398;
    conversational echoes, 398, 399;
    ladies not interested, 399;
    three stages of pleasure, 399, 400;
    artistic gambols, 400;
    to be taken naturally and happily, 401.

  Analysis: important to prevent confusion (Essay XX.), 280-294 _passim_;
    analytical faculty wanting, 280, 292-294.

  Ancestry: aristocratic, 123;
    boast, 130;
    home, 138;
    less religion, 214.

  Angels, and the arts, 191.

  Anglicanism, and Russian Church, 257, 258.

  Angling, pleasure of, 401.

  Animals, feminine care, 177.

  Annuities, affecting family ties, 68, 69.

  Answers to letters, 334, 335.

  Anticipation, pleasure of, 399, 400.

  Antiquarianism, author's, 323.

  Apollo, a sportsman compared to, 391.

  Arabs: use of telegraph, 323;
    collar-bone broken, 392.

  Archæology: a friend's interest, x;
    affected by railway travel, 14.

  Architecture: illustration, vii, xii;
    studies in France, 17, 23, 24;
    connection with religion, 189, 190, 192;
    ignorance about English, 265;
    common mistakes, 291;
    letters about, 365.

  Aristocracy: French rural, 18, 19;
    English laws of primogeniture, 66;
    English instance, 123, 124;
    discipline, 128;
    often poor, 135, 136;
    effect of deference, 146, 147;
    a mark of? 246, 247;
    Norman influence, 251, 252;
    antipathy, to Dissent, 256, 257;
    sent to Eton, 277;
    and Bohemianism, 309;
    dislike of scholarship, 331, 332.
    (See _Rank_.)

  Aristophilus, fictitious character, 146.

  Armies: national ignorance, 277-279;
    monopoly of places in French, 283.
    (See _War_.)

  Art: detached from religion, xii;
    affecting friendship, 6, 8;
    Claude and Turner, 13;
    chance acquaintances, 23, 24;
    purposes lowered, 28, 29;
    penetrated by love, 42, 43;
    affecting fraternity, 64;
    friendship, 113, 114;
    lifts above mercenary motives, 132;
    literary, 154;
    adaptability of Greek language, 158;
    preferences of artists rewarded, 165;
    affecting relations of Priests and Women (Essay XIII. part II.),
        187-195, _passim_;
    exaggeration and diminution, both admissible, 232, 233;
    result of selection, 253;
    French ignorance of English, 265, 266, 267;
    antagonized by Philistinism, 285, 286, 301;
    not mere amusement, 400.
    (See _Painting_, _Sculpture_, _Turner_, etc.)

  Asceticism, tinges both the Philistine and Bohemian, 299, 300.
    (See _Priesthood_, _Roman Catholicism_, etc.)

  Association: pleasurable or not, 3;
    affected by opinions, 5, 6;
    by tastes, 7, 8;
    London, 20;
    of a certain French painter, 28;
    between Priests and Women (Essay XIII. part III.), 195-204 _passim_;
    among travellers (Essay XVII.), 239-252;
    leads to misapprehension of opinions, 287, 288.
    (See _Companionship_, _Friendship_, _Society_, etc.)

  Atavism, puzzling to parents, 88.

  Atheism: reading prayers, 163;
    apparent, 173;
    confounded with Deism, 257.
    (See _God_, _Religion_, etc.)

  Attention: how directed in the study of language, 154;
    want of, 197.

  Austerlitz, battle, 350.
    (See _Napoleon I._)

  Austria, Empress, 180.

  Authority, of fathers (Essay VI.), 78-98 _passim_.
    (See _Priests_.)

  Authors: illustration, 9;
    indebtedness to humbler classes, 22, 23;
    relations of several to women, 46 _et seq._;
    sensitiveness to family indifference, 74;
    in society and with the pen, 237, 238;
    a procrastinating correspondent, 317;
    anonymous letters, 378.
    (See _Hamerton_, etc.)

  Authorship, illustrating interdependence, 12.
    (See _Literature_, etc.)

  Autobiographies, revelations of faithful family life, 65.

  Autumn tints, 233.

  Avignon, France, burial-place of Mill, 53.

  Bachelors: independence, 26;
    dread of a wife's relations, 73;
    lonely hearth, 76;
    friendship destroyed by marriage, 115, 116;
    reception into society, 120;
    eating-habits, 244.
    (See _Marriage_, _Wives_, etc.)

  Baker, Sir Samuel, shooting, 390-392.

  Balzac, his hatred of old maids, 381.

  Baptism, religious influence, 184, 185.
    (See _Priesthood_.)

  Baptists: in England, 170;
    ignorance about, 257.
    (See _Religion_.)

  Barbarism, emerging from, 161.
    (See _Civilization_.)

  Baronius, excerpts by Prince Alexis, 95.

  Barristers, mercenary motives, 132, 133.

  Bavaria, king of, 385-387.

  Bazaar, charity, 188.

  Beard, not worn by priests, 202.

  Beauty: womanly attraction, 38, 39;
    sought by wealth, 299.

  Bedford, Duke of, knowledge of French, 151.

  Belgium, letters written at the date of Waterloo, 153.

  Beljame, his knowledge of English, 152.

  Bell, Umfrey, in old letter, 323.

  Benevolence, priestly and feminine association therein, 195, 196.
    (See _Priests_, etc.)

  Ben Nevis, and other Scotch heights, 271.

  Bentinck, William, letters to, 344, 345.

  Betham-Edwards, Amelia, her description of English bad manners, 240, 245.

  Bible: faith in, 6;
    allusion to Proverbs and Canticles, 41;
    reading, 123;
    Babel, 159;
    commentaries studied, authority, 206;
    examples, 208;
    narrow limits, 211, 212;
    commentaries and sermons, 302.
    (See _Religion_, etc.)

  Bicycle, illustration, 15.

  Birds, in France, 272.

  Birth, priestly connection with, 184, 185.
    (See _Priests_, _Women_.)

  Black cap, illustration, 204.

  Blake, William, quotation about Folly and Wisdom, 31.

  Blasphemy, royal, 167.
    (See _Immorality_, etc.)

  Boating: affected by railways, 14;
    French river, 128;
    rich and poor, 138, 139;
    comparison, 154;
    Lever's experience, 260;
    mistaken judgments, 292, 293;
    not enjoyed, 302;
    sleeping, 307;
    on the Thames, 335;
    painting a boat, 359;
    amusement, 394-396.
    (See _Yachts_, etc.)

  Boccaccio, quotation about pestilence, 222.

  Bohemianism: Noble (Essay XXI.), 295-314;
    unjust opinions, 295;
    lower forms, 296;
    social vices, 297;
    sees the weakness of Philistinism, 298;
    how justifiable, 299;
    imagination and asceticism, 300;
    intimacy with nature, 302;
    estimate of the desirable, 303;
    living illustration, 304;
    furniture, mental and material, 305;
    an English Bohemian's enjoyment, 306;
    contempt for comfort, uselessness, 307;
    self-sacrifice, 308;
    higher sort, 309;
    of Goldsmith, 309, 310;
    Corot, Wordsworth, 311;
    Palmer, 312, 313;
    part of education, 313, 314;
    a painter's, 314.
    (See _Philistinism_.)

  Bonaparte Family, criminality of, 168.
    (See _Napoleon I._)

  Books: how far an author's own, 13;
    in hospitality, 142;
    refusal to read, 195;
    indifference to, 286, 287;
    cheap and dear, 304, 305;
    Wordsworth's carelessness, 311;
    binding, 359.
    (See _Literature_, etc.)

  Bores, English dread of, 245.
    (See _Intrusion_.)

  Borrow, George, on English houses, 145.

  Botany, allusion, 166.

  Bourbon Family, criminality of, 168.

  Bourrienne, Fauvelet de, Napoleon's secretary, 367.

  Boyton, Captain, swimming-apparatus, 290.

  Boys: French, 23, 24;
    English fraternal jealousies, 66;
    education, and differences with older people, 78-98 _passim_;
    roughened by play, 100;
    friendships, 111.
    (See _Brothers_, _Fathers_, _Sons_, etc.)

  Brassey, Sir Thomas, his yacht, 138, 139.

  Brevity, in correspondence, 324-331, 361.

  Bright, John, his fraternity, 68.

  British Museum: ignorance about, 266;
    library, 287;
    confused with other buildings, 291.
    (See _London_.)

  Brontë, Charlotte, her St. John, in Jane Eyre, 196.

  Brothers: divided by incompatibility, 10;
    English divisions, 63;
    idiosyncrasy, 64;
    petty jealousy, 65, 66;
    love and hatred illustrated, 67;
    the Brights, 68;
    money affairs, 69;
    generosity and meanness, 70;
    refinement an obstacle, 71;
    lack of fraternal interest, 74;
    riches and poverty, 77.
    (See _Boys_, _Friendship_, _Sons_, etc.)

  Buffon, Georges Louis Leclerc de, his noble life, 209, 210.

  Buildings, literary illustration, vii.

  Bulgaria, lost to Turkey, 278.

  Bull-fights, women's presence, 180.
    (See _Cruelty_.)

  Bunyan, John: choice in religion, 173;
    imprisoned, 181.

  Business: affecting family ties, 64, 67;
    affecting letter-writing, 342, 343;
    Letters of (Essay XXIV.), 354-369;
    orally conducted or written, 354-357;
    stupid agents, 358, 359;
    talent for accuracy, 360;
    acknowledging orders, 361;
    apparent carelessness, one subject best, 362;
    knowledge of drawing important to explanations on paper, 363, 364;
    acquaintance with languages a help, 364;
    commercial slang, 365;
    indolence in letter-reading has disastrous results, 366-369.
    (See _Correspondence_.)

  Byron, Lord: on Friendship, 30;
    Haidée, 39;
    marriage relations, 46, 48-50, 55-57;
    as a letter-writer, 345-349;
    careless rhymes, 400.

  Calumny: caused by indistinct ideas, 292;
    in letters, 370-377.

  Cambridge University, 275, 276.

  Camden Society, publication, 318.

  Cannes, anecdote, 235.

  Cannon-balls, national intercourse, 160.
    (See _Wars_.)

  Canoe, illustration, 15.

  Card-playing: incident, 128, 129;
    French habit, 273;
    kings, 289;
    laborious, 397.

  Carelessness, causing wrong judgments, 293.

  Caste: as affecting friendship, 4;
    not the uniting force, 9;
    French rites, 16;
    English prejudice, 19;
    sins against, 22;
    among authors, 46-56;
    kinship of ideas, 67;
    ease with lower classes, 64;
    really existent, 124, 125;
    loss through poverty, 136;
    among English travellers, 240-242, 245, 246.
    (See _Classes_, _Rank_, _Titles_, etc.)

  Cat, drawing by a child, 364.

  Cathedrals: drawing a French, 23, 24;
    imposing, 189, 190, 192.

  Celibacy: Shelley's experience, 34;
    in Catholic Church, 120;
    clerical, 198-201;
    of old maids, 379-382.
    (See _Clergy_, _Priests_, _Wives_, etc.)

  Censure, dangerous in letters, 352, 353.

  Ceremony: dependent on prosperity, 125, 126;
    fondness of women for, 197, 198;
    also 187-195 _passim_.
    (See _Manners_, _Rank_, etc.)

  Chamberlain, the title, 137.

  Chambord, Count de, restoration possible, 254, 255.

  Channel, British, illustration, 14.

  Charles II., women's influence during his reign, 181.

  Charles XII., his hardiness, 308.

  Chaucer, Geoffrey, on birds, 272.

  Cheltenham, Eng., treatment of Dissenters, 19.

  Chemistry, illustration, 3.

  Cheshire, Eng., a case of generosity, 68.

  Children: recrimination with parents, 75;
    as affecting parental wealth, 119;
    social reception, 120;
    keenly alive to social distinctions, 121;
    imprudent marriages, 123;
    a poor woman's, 139;
    interruptions, 140, 141;
    ignorance of foreign language makes us seem like, 151;
    feminine care, 177;
    of clergy, 200, 201;
    cat picture, 364;
    pleasures of poor, 401.
    (See _Boys_, _Brothers_, _Marriage_, _Sons_, etc.)

  Chinese mandarins, 130.

  Chirography, in letters, 331-333.

  Christ: his divinity a past issue, 6;
    Church instituted, 178, 179;
    Dr. Macleod on, 186;
    limits of knowledge in Jesus' day, 213.
    (See _Church_, _Religion_, etc.)

  Christianity: as affecting intercourse, 5, 6;
    its early disciples, 142;
    preferment for adherence, 162, 163;
    morality a part of, 168, 169;
    state churches, 170;
    in poetry, 198;
    early ideal, 206.
    (See _Roman Catholicism_, etc.)