ful sense
of the faithful services and attachment
of an amiable young woman to
his beloved Daughter.

This deep emotion for the tender offices of servitude is not peculiar to
the refinement of our manners, or to modern Europe; it is not the charity
of Christianity alone which has hallowed this sensibility, and confessed
this equality of affection, which the domestic may participate: monumental
inscriptions, raised by grateful masters to the merits of their slaves,
have been preserved in the great collections of Graevius and Gruter.[A]

[Footnote A: There are several instances of Roman heads of houses who
consecrate "to themselves and their servants" the sepulchres they erect in
their own lifetime, as if in death they had no desire to be divided from
those who had served them faithfully. An instance of affectionate regard
to the memory of a deceased servant occurs in the collection at Nismes; it
is an inscription by one Sextus Arius Varcis, to Hermes, "his best
servant" (servo optimo). Fabretti has preserved an inscription which
records the death of a child, T. Alfacius Scantianius, by one Alfacius
Severus, his master, by which it appears he was the child of an old
servant, who was honoured by bearing the prenomen of the master, and
who is also styled in the epitaph "his sweetest freedman" (liberto
dulcissimo).--ED.]

* * * * *

PRINTED LETTERS IN THE VERNACULAR IDIOM.

Printed Letters, without any attention to the selection, is so great a
literary evil, that it has excited my curiosity to detect the first modern
who obtruded such formless things on public attention. I conjectured that,
whoever he might be, he would be distinguished for his egotism and his
knavery. My hypothetical criticism turned out to be correct. Nothing less
than the audacity of the unblushing Pietro Aretino could have adventured
on this project; he claims the honour, and the critics do not deny it, of
being the first who published Italian letters. Aretino had the hardihood
to dedicate one volume of his letters to the King of England, another to
the Duke of Florence; a third to Hercules of Este, a relative of Pope
Julius Third--evidently insinuating that his letters were worthy to be
read by the royal and the noble.

Among these letters there is one addressed to Mary, Queen of England, on
her resuscitation of the ancient faith, which offers a very extraordinary
catalogue of