Then there is the threatening letter of the king of Assyria to Hezekiah, set forth in the second book of Kings, and also the complimentary letter from Berodach-Baladan to the same king of Judah after his sickness; a king who subsequently appears himself to have written letters to the tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh, to summon them to Jerusalem. (2 Kings xix, 14; xx, 12; 2 Chron. xxx, 1-6.) Cyrus, after publishing his decree giving liberty to the Jews to return to their own country and rebuild the house of the Lord at Jerusalem, wrote letters recommendatory to the governors of several provinces to assist the Jews in their undertaking; one of which letters Josephus has recorded as being addressed to the governors of Syria, and commencing with the regular epistolary salutation, 'Cyrus, the king, to Sysina and Sarabasan sendeth a greeting.' And while the children of the captivity were rebuilding their temple (and this was five hundred and twenty-two years before Christ), there was a frequent correspondence by letters between, their adversaries and Artaxerxes, king of Persia. Now, supposing the invention, in any modified sense, of letter writing _on paper_, or what may answer to the idea conveyed by that term, is in any measure attributable to the daughter of Cyrus, this was quite a matter of course and in accordance with the general practice. Still, let us not be disposed to take away from the royal lady the honor of having invented an art which her sex have, in modern years, carried to a perfection scarcely attainable by the male sex; for it may be set down as an axiom that one woman's letter is worth a dozen letters by men.