_My Dear Boy_:--When Erasmus visited Sir Thomas More, that obstinate sophist, and that martyr to a scolding wife, (how nobly he bore her!) he said that he could always write a pleasing letter when his hand was the secretary of his heart. _En passant_, Erasmus made a gallant speech on this memorable visit. In admiring the kind fashion of saluting females with a kiss, on your arrival or departure from an entertainment, he said, and that philosophically, that this habit preserved health, in calling a constant and blushing glow to the cheek, and that in his moments of sickness he could wish no happier situation than to be placed near an English nunnery, where if he could not be kissed for charity he might yet live in hopes of it. Now my hand is the obedient secretary, and my heart is anxious to dictate its duties. How true, yet how simple is this conceit! and how far superior to the monkish verbosity, and strangled sentiment of those bad novels which you read merely because they are new. The heart is the _écritoire_ of the letter writer, and have you never paused with feelings of admiration and delight over the affectionate and eloquent letters of a woman? She writes from the heart, and pours out the swelling torrent of all her thoughts and feelings. Man thinks _what_ to write, and will fritter away feeling and sacrifice nature in the struggle for easy periods and mellifluous cadences. It is not learning that shadows with tints of tenderness the beautiful letters of Tully--nor is it philosophy which lends that nameless grace, and elastic interest, to the epistles of Pliny. 'Tis nature whose affections, like the rainbow, beautify and hallow the roughness of every spot over which it spans its creative arch. A letter, says Tully, cannot blush, "_epistola enim non erubescit_," if it could, it would never have this characteristic when I addressed it to you. I cannot write aught that will suffuse either your cheek or mine, though I might whisper something about your fair cousin, Isa Gordon. You love her, Lionel? and she may return your affection, but you must owe it to your distinction. Isa is no sickly and prurient-hearted girl who can solely love the person, for she demands the intellectual man, and in the hymeneal chaplet which is to adorn her brow, the laurel must twine its emblematic vanities. Let this hope excite you to study--let this holy object imp your eagle wing, for on every page of your books you must see her name urging and stimulating the slumbering energies of your ambition. I would not have you free from love, nor untouched, as Spenser calls it, by its pensive discontent, for no young man can prosper without its stirring and startling excitements. I myself, "_vixi puellis idoneus_," and I know that it softens the asperities of temper--gentles the turbulence of youth--breaks down the outworks of vice, and detracts no more from the firmness of mind than the polish