At last, after an interval of twenty-four years, which succeeded a tolerably intimate acquaintance of seven weeks, I saw Count Münster of Hanover again. We met like two ghosts that ought to have been laid long since. I witnessed the whole process of the difficulty of persuading him that I was I; and I thought him as much changed in his degree as he could have found me. When we conversed, all the persons we referred to were dead and gone; and our interview added another link in my mind to the chain of proofs that, after a very, very long interval, neither friends nor acquaintance ought to meet in this world. He was kindly anxious to renew our acquaintance, and visited me next day; but still it seemed as if seeing me had renewed some painful associations. --------------------- Footnote 119: _The Doctor._ ---------------------------- TRUE TONE OF POLITE WRITING. Sir James Mackintosh, who has sometimes been unfairly characterised as a writer of drawing-room essays, has left the following able view of what may be termed “the True Tone of Polite Writing,”—a rare accomplishment even in these days of assumed facility and literary pretension: When a woman of feeling, fancy, and accomplishment has learned to converse with ease and grace, from long intercourse with the most polished society, and when she writes as she speaks, she must write letters as they ought to be written, if she has acquired just as much habitual correctness as is reconcilable with the air of negligence. A moment of enthusiasm, a burst of feeling, a flash of eloquence, may be allowed; but the intercourse of society, either in conversation or in letters, allows no more. Though interdicted from the long-continued use of elevated language, they are not without a resource. There is a part of language which is disdained by the pedant or the declaimer, and which both, if they knew its difficulty, would approach with dread; it is formed of the most familiar phrases and turns in daily use by the generality of men, and is full of energy and vivacity, bearing upon it the marks of those keen feelings and strong passions from which it springs. It is the employment of such phrases which produces what may be called colloquial eloquence. Conversation and letters may be thus raised to any degree of animation, without departing from their character. Any thing may be said, if it be spoken in the tone of society. The highest guests are welcome if they come in the easy undress of the club: the strongest metaphor appears without violence, if it is _familiarly_ expressed; and we the more easily catch the warmest feeling, if we perceive that it is intentionally lowered in expression, out of condescension to our calmer temper. It is thus that harangues and declamations, the last proof of bad taste and bad