to the Niagara of the French Revolution, and the rapids of the
quarter-century War. There were no great poets:[9] and even
verse-writers were rarely grand: but there was a greater diffusion of
competent writing faculty than had been seen before or perhaps--for all
the time, talk, trouble, and money spent on "education,"--has been
since. New divisions and departments of interest were accumulating--not
merely in Literature itself[10] (as to which, if people's ideas were
rather limited, they _had_ ideas), but in the arts which were in some
cases practised almost for the first time and in all taken more
seriously, in foreign and home politics, commerce, manufactures, all
manner of things. People were by no means so apt to stay in the same
place as they had been: and when friends were in different places they
had much easier means of communicating with each other. Nor should it be
forgotten that the more elaborate system of ceremonial manners which
then prevailed, but which has been at first gradually, and latterly with
a run, breaking down for the last hundred years, had an important
influence on letter-writing. One does not of course refer merely to
elaborate formulas of beginning and ending--such as make even the
greatest praisers of times past among us smile a little when they find
Dr. Johnson addressing his own step-daughter as "Dear Madam," and being
her "most humble servant" though in the course of the letter he may use
the most affectionate and intimate expressions. But the manners of
yester-year made it obligatory to make your letters--unless they were
merely what were called "cards" of invitation, message, etc.--to some
extent _substantive_. You gave the news of the day, if your
correspondent was not likely to know it; the news of the place,
especially if you were living in a University town or a Cathedral city.
If you had read a book you very often criticised it: if you had been to
any kind of entertainment you reported on it, etc. etc. Of course all
this is still done by people who really do write real letters: but it is
certainly done by a much smaller proportion of letter-writers than was
the case two hundred, one hundred, or even fifty years ago. The
newspaper has probably done more to kill letters than any penny post,
halfpenny postcard or even sixpenny telegram could do. Nor perhaps have
we yet mentioned the most powerful destructive agent of all, and that is
the ever increasing want of leisure. The dulness of