of the earlier part of life, the more important, constructive part, are apt to be distorted and confused, to be altered and twisted out of normal proportions and relations in a way that would astonish even the writers, if they could test their recollection by the actual record of facts. Autobiography is a fascinating form of literature, but it is a terribly deceptive one, unless it can be checked by other testimony of a very different character.

The daily diary is better, and our richest clues to the great field of souls are probably arrived at in this way. There are the directly personal diaries, in which skilled and scientific analysts have endeavored to set down the daily process of their lives with the most minute and anxious care. Yet, with all their care and all their anxiety, it is astonishing how often the diligent and impartial observer from the outside feels that they have been mistaken. Long ago an old Greek poet said, “many things are obscure to man, but nothing is more obscure to him than his own soul." One feels this in reading the Journal of Amiel, or that of Maine de Biran. Subtle and penetrating as the writers are, they seem to be struggling with a problem beyond their reach or that of any one. The very fact of so constantly observing one's own life tends to make the

living of it artificial and distorted and it sometimes appears that the more objective diarists, such as Greville or Moore or Pepys, give a truer rendering, even of their inner lives, than the deliberate analyst. But, after all, only a portion of mankind keeps diaries, and the process is in itself rather artificial. Practically all men and women who can write at all write letters, and letters afford, on the whole, the most general and the most satisfactory clues for the naturalist of souls. Letter writing in some form goes back to the earliest written records that we have, though its spiritually interpretative value can hardly be said to begin before the ages of more highly developed civilization. It is sometimes urged that in the present day the art of letter writing is dying out. Certainly the hurry of modern life does not favor long letters. Also, who would write when he can use the telephone? And the growing habit of dictation and stenography is maddeningly destructive to the old personality and significance of the exquisite epistolary art. Yet, so long as men burn to pour out their souls to each other, and so long as there are people—and there are millions of them-who can say with the pen what they cannot say with the tongue, so long will letters be written: significant letters, human letters,

letters whose stinging, darting, quivering phrases afford an intentional or unintentional clue to the writers' souls. An age which has seen within one year the publication of the letters of Walter Page, James Huneker, and H. H. Furness need not feel that the art of letter writing is dying out.

It would be a pity if it did; for, quite independent of their psychographical value, letters have a singular charm for those who have learned to savor them. And this is not a matter of general literary genius. To be sure some great authors, like Cicero and Voltaire, have been great letter writers also. But the most delightful of letter writers have often not been authors in other lines at all. Madame de Sévigné, for instance, is universally recognized as a mistress of the epistolary art. She wrote nothing else whatever. So with Madame du Deffand. So with men. There is the French letter writer, Doudan, one of the most varied and brilliant, who has no reputation as a general author. There is our own Francis J. Child, whose letters were published a few years ago, a great scholar, who might perhaps have written more generally, if he had wished, but at any rate an exquisite letter writer, and one who should be more widely known. On the other hand, Sainte-Beuve and Matthew Arnold.

both poets and critics of the greatest distinction and both masters in the use and interpretation of the letters of others, themselves wrote letters that were dull, tame, and insignificant.

As to the substance of letters, there is the external and the internal, what affects others, and what affects the writer himself. Externally, there is the larger treatment of life, the picture of historical periods and characters. From this point of view letters are often historical documents of the highest consequence and value. There are such accumulations as the Paston Letters which, in giving the minute portrayal of the daily life of an average family, afford at the same time a priceless record of the manners of a whole period. There are the letters of distinguished historical personages, shedding floods of light on the great events and actions of their time; for example, the vast correspondence of Thomas Jefferson, said to be the most extensive known and to run to twenty thousand letters, of which eight or ten thousand are actually in print. Also, private individuals who note and study what is going on about them may render the life of their age with a color and a human suggestiveness that can be conveyed by no formal history. The large collection of Horace

Walpole's letters is one of the monuments of both English history and literature. And the even larger collection of Voltaire's is more significant still. In fact, when you take Voltaire's own letters in connection with what are addressed to himletters from Frederick the Great, from Catherine Second, from D'Alembert, from Rousseau, from Diderot, from Madame du Deffand, from Madame d'Epinay-you have probably the greatest epistolary treasure the world has ever seen or will see. It is the epitome of the French, and indeed of the general, eighteenth century.

Nor are letters important only in the larger portrayal of historical periods and movements. They are full of information about human life and character in all lines. A keen observer, one who is naturally and instinctively interested in the workings of motive and passion, will note and jot down in intimate correspondence the most exquisitely suggestive details of the dramas that are constantly playing about him. This is especially true of women letter writers. They are not always fertile in abstract discussion of great problems; but they are inexhaustible in watching and catching those little bits of emotion and experience that tell us more about souls than the pompous and academic