Some years ago I heard of a female Phoenix--wise and fair, too, beyond her fellows--who actually wrote to a very intimate friend ten consecutive letters, each containing, besides more confidential and interesting matter, all sorts of news and scandal, with the recording angel's comments annexed. They were model epistles, I believe--witty, but not _too_ wicked; frank, without being too demonstrative; and to not one of the brilliant decade did the writer _expect an answer_. That was understood from first to last, for circumstances made silence, on one side, imperative. I hope her correspondent appreciated that rare creature, then: I am very sure he did, the other day, when he sat down to his writing-table with a weary sigh and the remark--that "of all fond things vainly imagined, a second post was the most condemnable." If charity covers a multitude of sins, surely such repeated acts of unselfish benevolence ought to cloak most of that poor Rose's little faults and failings. Speaking quite disinterestedly (for I scarcely knew her by sight), I think she deserves a statue--as a marvel of the Post-office--better than Rowland Hill: if I were bound to take a pilgrimage, I would pass by the shrine of Saint Ursula, and go a thousand miles beyond it, to the green Styrian hills where She withered and died--the only woman on record who could persist, for three whole months, in amusing a silent correspondent without proximate hope of recompense. Wyverne's letters were not very numerous that morning, nor did they appear to interest him much; for he took up one after the other, at intervals, and after just glancing at the contents put them aside, without interrupting a pleasant desultory conversation with his companions. At last only two remained unread. The envelope of one was of thick blue-wove paper; the direction was in a large, strong, upright hand; the seal square, and solemnly accurate--such a seal as no man dare use unless he were in a position to set the world at defiance. If you or I, _amigo_, were to risk it, however numerous and unblemished our quarterings, we should lay ourselves open to all the penalties attendant on _lése-majesté_: the very crest was a menace--a mailed arm, with a mace in its gripe. If any possessor of that truculent coat-of-arms had put it on the outside of a love-letter, all passionate pleading must have been neutralized; the nymph to whom it was addressed would have fled away, swiftly as Arethusa of light-footed memory, or a "homeless hare."