re is a close kinship; and very similar
reasons have been alleged for the common belief that both are on the
decline. Whether such a belief has any solid foundation in the case of
letter-writing, we may be warranted in doubting. Observations of this
sort, which have a false air of acuteness and profundity, are repeated
periodically. The remark so constantly made at this moment, that
nowadays people read nothing but magazines, was made by Coleridge
early in this century; and Southey prophesied the ruin of good letters
from the penny post. It is true that the number of letters written
must have increased enormously; it is also true that many more are
published than heretofore, and that as a great many of these are not
above mediocrity, are valueless as literature, and of little worth
biographically, they produce on the disappointed reader the effect of
a general depreciation of the standard. Nevertheless, this article
will have been written to little purpose, unless it has shown fair
cause for rejecting such a conclusion, and for maintaining that,
although fine letter-writers, like poets, are few and far between, yet
they have not been wanting in our own time, and are not likely to
disappear. There will always be men, like Coleridge or Carlyle, whose
impetuous thoughts and humoristic conceptions cannot perpetually
submit to the forms and limitations and delays of printing and
publishing, but must occasionally demand instant liberation and
prompt delivery by the natural process of private letters. And
although the stir and bustle of the world is increasing, so that quiet
corners in it are not easily kept, yet it is probable that the race of
literary recluses--of those who pass their days in reading books, in
watching the course of affairs, and in corresponding with a select
circle of friends--will also continue. Whether Englishwomen, who write
letters up to a certain point better than Englishmen, will now rise,
as Frenchwomen have done, to the highest line, and why they have not
done so heretofore, are points that we have no space here for taking
up.

But it is the exceptional peculiarity of letters, as a form of
literature, that the writer can never superintend their publication.
During his lifetime he has no control over them, they are not in his
hands; and they do not appear until after his death. He must rely
entirely, therefore, upon the discretion of his editor, who has to
balance the wishes of a family, or the susc