The mythic importance attached to these hair-strings must, indeed, have been great, as history records that a certain prince, whose dominions were threatened by Mithridates, the great king of Pontus--like other great men, a troublesome neighbor in his day--sent the latter a submissive epistle, offering homage and tribute, and bound with the hair-strings of his nineteen wives, to signify that he and his were entirely at the monarch's service. The custom of securing letters by cords came through the Greek empire into Europe in the middle ages; but the use of the seal seems still earlier, as it is mentioned in Old Testament history. Ancient writers speak of it as an Egyptian Invention, together with the signet-ring, so indispensable throughout the classic world, and regarded as the special appendage of sovereignty in the feudal times. Of all the letters the Egyptians wrote on their papyrus, no specimens now remain, except perhaps those scrolls in the hands of mummies, referred to by early Christian authors as epistles sent to deceased friends by those unreturning messengers; and they, it may be presumed, were at the best but formal letters, since no reply was ever expected. The classic formula for correspondence, "Augustus to Julius, greeting," is now preserved only in letters-patent, or similar documents. That brief and unvarying style has long been superseded in every language of Europe by a graduated series of endearing terms, rising with the temperature of attachment, from "Dear Sir," or "Madam," to a limit scarcely assignable, but it lies somewhere near "Adored Thomas" or "Margery." Masters of the fine arts as they were, those ancient nations came far short of the moderns in that of letter-writing. The few specimens of their correspondence that have reached us are either on matters of public business, or dry and dignified epistles from one great man to another, with little life and less gossip in them. It is probable that their practice was somewhat limited, as the facilities of the post-office were unknown to Greece and Rome--the entire agency of modern communication being to the classic world represented only by the post or courier, who formed part of the retinue of every wealthy family. The method of writing in the third person, so suitable for heavy business or ceremony, is evidently a classical bequest. It does not appear to have been practiced in England till about the beginning of the eighteenth century, though it was early in use among the continental nations. Louis XIV. used to say, it was the only style in which a prince should permit himself to write; and in the far East, where it had been in still older repute, the Chinese informed his missionaries that ever since they had been taught manners by the Emperor Tae Sing, no inferior would presume to address a man of rank in any other form, especially as a law of the said emperor had appointed twenty blows of the bamboo for that infraction of plebeian duty.