Truly is it gratifying, in our treatment of this topic, to be able to adduce such high, classical authority concerning the sacred and inviolable character of all private correspondence. In our humble view, not only is the seal of a letter a lock more impregnable to the hand of honor than the strongest bank safe which the expert Mr. Hobbs might vainly have tried to open; but even when that seal has already been rightfully broken and the contents of the letter exposed, those contents are to the eye of delicacy as unreadable as if written in that _Bass_ language which Adam and Eve are said to have spoken while in the garden of Eden, and which, since the fall, none but angels have ever been able to comprehend. Now, if Cicero thought it base for a third party to read a private letter, what eloquent thunder would he not have hurled at the head of that wretch who not only read, but printed and published it! There is an epithet, which, in certain parts of New England, the folks apply to the poorest of poor scamps--'mean.' Now who, in this round world, of all that dwell therein, can be found one half so 'mean' as the betrayer and revealer of another's secrets? A whip should be placed in every honest hand to lash the rascal naked through the world. He should be fastened in an air-tight mail bag, and sent jolting and bouncing, amid innumerable letters and packages and ponderous franked documents of members of Congress, over all the roughest roads of our Northwestern country! To return to what a letter should be. It seems, upon the whole, to have been Cicero's opinion--and in this we shall fain agree as well as in his view of the secrecy of letters--that, whether the subject be solemn or familiar, learned or colloquial, general or particular, political or domestic, an easy, vivacious, unaffected diction gives to epistolary writing its proper grace and perfection. In very truth, good letter writing is little else than conversation upon paper, carried on between parties personally separate, with this especial advantage, that it brings the minds of the interlocutors into reciprocal action, with more room for reflection, and with, fewer disturbances than can usually consist with personal conversation. We have thus made mention of Cicero as the greatest of authorities with regard to this subject, because he was himself the greatest of letter writers. The epistle was the shape in which his versatile and beautiful mind most gracefully ran and moulded itself. His fluctuating and unstable character no less than his vanity and love of distinction, seemed to minister occasion to those varied forms of diction and expression in which the genius of animated letter writing may be said to delight. Read his 'Familiar Letters,' if not in Latin, yet in translation, if you wish to study the most perfect specimens of this style--a style which has not been equalled or approached since his day.