o say; because they are letters rather in name than in
reality.

The fashion prevalent in modern days, to publish on the demise of an
author pretty much all his private correspondence, proves the general
interest which is felt in mere letters. Many of these are utterly
worthless, vastly inferior to those which constantly pass between
friends on the topics of the hour or their own affairs. It is charitable
to conjecture that their writers never imagined that they could be
exposed in print, or would not be burned as soon as read. And yet, with
what avidity are they conned and discussed! Look at the letters of Lord
Byron, Moore, and Campbell. How much brainless twattle do they contain,
amid a few grains of wit and humor. What mere commonplace! Editors may
as well publish every word a man says, as what he writes familiarly in
his dressing gown and slippers. We have not a doubt that by far the best
letters ever written still remain unpublished. There are many printed
volumes of travels very inferior to those which could be made up from
the letters of private persons abroad, composed purely for the
delectation of friends. There is hardly anything so difficult in writing
as to write with ease. They who write letters on purpose to be
published, feel and show a constraint which a mere private correspondent
never entertains nor exhibits.

The war in which we are engaged has brought forth whole hosts of
correspondents. They come not single spies, but in battalions. None of
these letters, so far as we have read, can boast of any striking or
peculiar excellence. Their great fault is their immense prolixity. Their
words far outnumber their facts. An editor having once complained to a
writer of the inordinate length of his composition, the writer replied
that he had not had time to make it _shorter_. This is doubtless the
trouble with our army letter writers. They are forced to write _currente
calamo_--sometimes on the heads of drums, and not unfrequently are such
epistles as full of sound and fury and as empty as the things on which
they are written. The best of these correspondents so far is the
somewhat ignominious Mr. Russell, of the London _Times_; the only one,
indeed, who has achieved a reputation. Mr. Charles Mackay, his successor
(_heu! quantum mutatus ab illo_), writes letters that are poorer, if
possible, than his poems; he has just sufficient imagination to be
indebted to it for his facts. As for his opinions, he seems to