The diction of a good composition is [Greek: lexis katestrammeon], the diction of a speech is [Greek: lexis eiromeon]. I cannot understand how the senators or the Roman plebs could follow or endure the elaborate periods of Cicero, if they were delivered as written. I am sure with the funeral oration of Pericles, a common audience would have sat with mouths open, incapable of following a single sentence. So also with the orations of Livy. In fact, if the speeches delivered in the Roman Senate or the Athenian Forum were anything like the speeches reported, to listen to them must have been a great strain upon the mind and attention of the hearer. I am writing to you whilst a learned counsel is arguing, but whose words and meaning are so obscure and involved that I am much in the condition of my supposed [Greek: aplous hakroataes] of the funeral oration. The Journal goes on to speak of a subject of peculiar literary and historical interest. _April 11th_.--Started with Christine and Circourt for Paris _via_ Havre, and at Rouen paid a visit to the Cardinal-Archbishop (Bonnechose). The publication in 1864 of three volumes of the letters of Marie Antoinette, under the title 'Louis XVI., Marie Antoinette et Madame Elisabeth. Lettres et Documents inedits;' publies par F. Feuillet de Conches, and of another volume--' Correspondance inedite de Marie Antoinette. Publiee sur les Documents originaux;' par le Comte Paul Vogt d'Hunolstein--had excited a keen controversy, in which one party, led by Professor von Sybel, the historian of the Revolution, maintained that the letters were forgeries. On the other hand, Reeve wrote an article for the 'Edinburgh Review' of April 1866, on the 'Correspondence of Marie Antoinette' in which he argued that the letters edited by M. d'Hunolstein were of very doubtful authenticity, but that those of the larger work of M. Feuillet de Conches were genuine. His visit to Paris gave him the opportunity to make a further examination, of which, and his interview with Sybel, he wrote a curious account.