GRACEFUL HANDWRITING.

145

they treat letters in Turkey, cut through and through with a knife, lest they should be full of the plague. You should remember that, though your letter is addressed to the eye of a particular friend, yet it is to live long; for that friend will preserve it, and whose shall fall upon

eye

after he and you are among the dead?

"Dead letters, thus with living notions fraught,
Prove to the soul the telescope of thought;

To mortal life a deathless witness give,
And bid all deeds and titles last and live.

In scanty life eternity we taste,

View the first ages, and inform the last.

Arts, history, laws, we purchase with a look,
And keep, like fate, all nature in a book.

it

I hope the impression will not be left upon your mind that I deem a fair hand of no consequence. It is to the composition of a lady what dress is to her person,-what a fair body is to the soul,-what the chasing is to the jewel. A lady is more known and better judged of by her handwriting than a man is: we are allowed to wear our hair as we please, on the head or on the face, but a lady may not do so; and we may write an abominable hand, and yet

K

146

FIRST SPECIMEN.

pass among respectable people. With some, it is even a mark of genius; but who ever thought a lady a genius because she wrote in hieroglyphics, or in English in a way that nobody could read ?

"Ye sprightly fair, whose gentle minds incline
To mend our manners and our hearts refine,
With admiration in your works are read
The various textures of the twining thread.
Then let the fingers, whose unrivalled skill
Exalts the needle, grace the noble quill.
An artless scrawl the blushing scribbler shames;
All should be fair that beauteous woman frames;
True ease in writing comes from art, not chance,
As those move easiest who have learned to dance."

I have desired to give you a specimen or two of beautiful letter-writing. They must be short. The first is from a bishop to a young clergyman:

“I am much pleased to hear you have been for some time stationary at Oxford; a place where a man may prepare himself to go forth as a burning and shining light into a world where charity is waxed cold, and where truth is wellnigh obscured. Whenever it pleases God to appoint you to the government of a

THE YOKE OF DISCIPLINE.

147

parish, you will find work enough to employ you; and therefore before that time comes you should be careful to provide yourself with all necessary knowledge, lest by and by, when you should be building, you should have your materials to look for and bring together; besides, the habit of studying and thinking, if not got in the first part of life, rarely comes afterwards. A man is miserably drawn into the eddy of worldly dissipation, and knows not how to get out of it again till, in the end, for want of spiritual exercises, the faculties of the soul are benumbed, and he sinks into indolence, till the night cometh when no man can work. Happy, therefore, is the man, who betimes acquires a relish for holy solitude, and accustoms himself to bear the yoke of Christ's discipline in his youth; who can sit alone and keep silence, and seek wisdom diligently where she may be found, in the Scriptures of faith and in the writings of the saints. From these flowers of Paradise he extracts the honey of knowledge and divine love, and therewith fills every cell of his understanding

148

COWPER TO JOHN NEWTON.

and affections. The winter of affliction, disease, and old age will not surprise such a one in an unprepared state. He will not be confounded in the perilous time, and in the days of dearth he will have enough to strengthen, comfort, and support him and his brethren. Precious beyond rubies are the hours of youth and health! Let none of them pass unprofitably away, for surely they make to themselves wings, and are as a bird cutting swiftly the air, and the trace of her can no more be found. If well spent, they fly to heaven with news that rejoices angels, and meet us again as witnesses for us at the tribunal of our Lord. When the graces of time run into the glories of eternity, how trifling will the labour then seem that has procured us, through grace, the everlasting rest, for which the Apostles toiled night and day, and the martyrs loved not their lives unto death."

COWPER TO JOHN NEWTON.

"MY DEAR FRIEND, I have neither long visits to pay nor to receive, nor ladies to spend hours in telling me that which might be

ECONOMIST OF TIME.

149

told in five minutes, yet often find myself obliged to be an economist of time, and to make the most of a short opportunity. Let our station be retired as it may, there is no want of playthings and avocations, nor much need to seek them in this world of ours. Business, or what presents itself to us under that imposing character, will find us out even in the stillest retreat, and plead its importance, however trivial in reality, as a just demand upon our attention. It is wonderful how, by means of such real or seeming necessities, my time is stolen away. I have just time to observe that time is short, and by the time I have made the observation, time is gone. I have wondered in former days at the patience of the antediluvian world; that they could endure a life almost millenary, with so little variety as seems to have fallen to their share. It is probable that they had much fewer employments than we. Their affairs lay in a narrower compass; their libraries were indifferently furnished, philosophical researches were carried on with much less industry and acuteness of penetration, and fiddles, perhaps, were not even in