There exists a perfect mania for letters throughout Europe, in this "piping time of peace." Statesmen, soldiers, peers, princes, and kings, hardly think themselves _illustrated_, until each has produced his book. The world never before saw a tithe of the names of people of condition, figuring in the catalogues of its writers. "Some thinks he writes Cinna--he owns to Panurge," applies to half the people one meets in society. I was at a dinner lately, given by the Marquis de ----, when the table was filled with peers, generals, ex-ministers, ex-ambassadors, naturalists, philosophers, and statesmen of all degrees. Casting my eyes round the circle, I was struck with the singular prevalence of the _cacoethes scribendi_, among so many men of different educations, antecedents, and pursuits. There was a soldier present who had written on taste, a politician on the art of war, a _diplomate_ who had dabbled in poetry, and a jurist who pretended to enlighten the world in ethics, it was the drollest assemblage in the world, and suggested many queer associations, for, I believe, the only man at table, who had not dealt in ink, was an old Lieutenant-General, who sat by me, and who, when I alluded to the circumstance, strongly felicitated himself that he had escaped the mania of the age, as it was an _illustration_ of itself. Among the _convives_ were Cuvier, Villemain, Daru, and several others who are almost as well known to science and letters. Half the voluntary visits I receive are preceded by a volume of some sort or other, as a token of my new acquaintance being a regularly initiated member of the fraternity of the quill. In two or three instances, I have been surprised at subsequently discovering that the regular profession of the writer is arms, or some other pursuit, in which one would scarcely anticipate so strong a devotion to letters. In short, such is the actual state of opinion in Europe, that one is hardly satisfied with any amount, or any quality of glory, until it is consummated by that of having written a book. Napoleon closed his career with the quill, and his successor was hardly on his throne, before he began to publish. The principal officers of the Empire, and _emigres_ without number, have fairly set to work as so many disinterested historians, and even a lady, who, by way of abbreviation, is called "The Widow of the Grand Army," is giving us regularly volumes, whose eccentricities and periodicity, as the astronomers say, can be reduced to known laws, by the use of figures.