Nothing can be more false than the phraseology of most letters. Many a letter is commenced with 'dear,' when the writer, if he dared express his real sentiment, would use a very opposite word. But, be the sentiments of a letter what they may, true or false, real or affected, it is the desire of the present writer to insist upon the indispensable neatness of letters--that they should be externally faultless, however defective inside. We regret to record the unpleasant fact that our American ladies seldom write good hands, whereas a fair chirography is properly considered as among the very first accomplishments for a well-educated girl in England. Who ever saw a letter from a true English lady that was not faultless in its details? What nice, legible penmanship! How happily expressed! How trim and pretty a cover! How beautiful and classic a seal! Very different these from the concomitants of half a sheet of ruled paper, scrawled over as if chickens had been walking upon it, and folded slopingly, and held loosely together by a wafer! It is an affectation of many lawyers and most literary people to write ill, probably to create an impression that such is the vast importance of their occupations and lucubrations that they have not time to attend to so minor a matter as penmanship. A certain highly distinguished counsellor of Massachusetts was said to have written so badly that he could not comprehend his own legal opinions after he had put them on paper. Now such affectation is in very poor taste. Those who cannot write fairly and legibly had better go to school and practise until they can. Incomprehensible writing is as bad as incomprehensible speaking. A clear enunciation is scarcely more important than a plain hand. A lawyer, in speaking, may as well jumble his words so together that not one in fifty can be understood, as in writing to scrawl and run them about so that not one in fifty can be read.