The pen is too truly said to be a fruitful source of regrets to some of us, in regard of the outbreaks of temper we allow it to put on paper; and never is the sting sharper, says one essayist, than when we realize that our imprudence is in black and white, beyond our reach, irrevocable. “We send off our letter, to repent sometimes how bitterly!” _Litera scripta manet._ Hence the advice of another, never to write in anger, or, at any rate, to keep your letter till you are cool. We are recommended, when indignant at any one’s conduct, to write a letter couched in the strongest terms possible, as satirical and cutting as we can make it, and having done this, to direct, seal, and put it in our desk for a few hours, then read it for our own satisfaction, and tear it up. Another popular authority, earnestly deprecating angry letters, lays down as a rule to be observed throughout the letter-writing world, that no angry letter be posted till four and twenty hours shall have elapsed since it was written. “We all know how absurd is that other rule, of saying the alphabet when you are angry. Trash! Sit down and write your letter; write it with all the venom in your power; spit out your spleen at the fullest; it will do you good: you think you have been injured; say all that you can say with all your poisoned eloquence, and gratify yourself by reading it while your temper is still hot. Then put it in your desk, and, as a matter of course, burn it before breakfast the following morning. Believe me that you will then have a double gratification.” _Loquitur_ the perhaps most widely read, and without a perhaps the most prolific, writer of the day. When Cœur-de-Lion, in Scott’s “Talisman,” incensed and mortified at the Templar’s tactics, yet foresaw the penalty of giving way to his headlong resentment, with a strong effort he remained silent till he had repeated a pater noster, that being the course which “his confessor had enjoined him to pursue when anger was likely to obtain dominion over him.” The familiar “count five-and-twenty, Tattycoram,” in one of Mr. Dickens’ later stories is but another practical application of the selfsame text. Gibbon adds to his account of the public penance inflicted by Ambrose on Theodosius, for the massacre of Thessalonica, this remark: “and the edict which interposes a salutary interval of thirty days between the sentence and the execution, may be accepted as the worthy fruits of his [the emperor’s] repentance.” For it was by a hasty resolve that Theodosius swore in his wrath to expiate the blood of his lieutenant, Botheric, by the blood of a guilty people; his fiery and choleric temper being impatient of the dilatory forms of a judicial inquiry. In hot haste he despatched the messengers of death; but attempted, when it was too late, to prevent the execution of his own orders. Avenging furiously in haste, he had to repent at leisure; and he did repent.