order that when your correspondent opens your letter, no part of the writing may be torn. Write your name at length, with particular distinctness and uniformity, and in a rather larger character than that in which your letter is written. Avoid postscripts, except when they are necessary for the mentioning of some circumstance that occurred after your letter was written. Fold, direct, and seal your letter neatly and properly.

To write with ease and expedition a good, uniform, and perfectly legible hand, is indispensable in business; and is highly useful in every station and in all circumstances of life. Good hand-writing sets off and recommends the best composition, and is some apology for the worst. "I maintain," says an ingenious author, "that it is in every man's power to write what hand he pleases, and, consequently, that he ought to write a good one."*

* On the subject of writing, the_following directions may be of use to young persons.-Form every letter and word distinctly. As soon as you can write well, learn to write quick; not a stiff, formal hand, but a genteel and liberal one, or, what is called a running-hand, which is most favourable to ease and expedition: but be particularly careful that your writing may be large and strong enough, to be easily legible by others, and by yourselves, when you advance in life. Let the lines on every page of your letter, correspond exactly to each other; leave sufficient spaces between them, to exhibit the writing on one line quite distinct from that on the preceding and the following line; and make them even and regular, which, by attention and habit, you can readily accomplish, without accustoming yourselves to the use of ruled lines. Let your ink be good, and of a proper blackness; which contributes, very materially, to neat.

Dashes, underlinings, and interlineations, are much used by unskilful and careless writers, merely as substitutes for proper punctuation, and a correct, regular mode of expression. The frequent recurrence of them greatly defaces a letter, and is equally inconsistent with neatness of appearance and regularity of composition. All occasion for interlineations may usually be superseded by a little previous thought and attention. Dashes are proper only when the sense evidently requires a greater pause than the common stops designate. And in a well-constructed sentence, to underline a word is wholly useless, except on some very particular occasion we wish to attract peculiar attention to it, or to give it an uncommon degree of importance or emphasis.

Of the propriety of leaving a vacancy for the seal, the following circumstance, which is similar to what frequently occurs, affords a striking proof. "I had a letter from a friend, lately," says Mr. Orton, in a letter to a young clergyman, "who desired me to transact some business for him, which was the chief purport of his letter; but he had unfortunately put the wafer on the most material part of the commission, so that I could not tell what he had desired me to do for him."

ness and distinctness in writing. Learn to make and mend your own pens: do not, however, let your writing depend too much on your pen; but accustom yourselves, upon occasion, to write well, or at least legibly, with an indifferent, or even a bad pen.

Postscripts have a very awkward appearance; and they generally indicate thoughtlessness and inattention. To make use of them in order to convey assurances of respect or affection to the person to whom you write, or to those who are intiinately connected with him, is particularly improper: it seems to imply that the sentiments which you express are so slightly impressed on your mind, that you had alınost forgotten them, or thought them scarcely worth mentioning.

I WRITE from a small port near the southern extremity of Ceylon, where we are waiting for a fair wind, in order to embark for Calcutta, and where I am happy to steal the first few moments of leisure which have occurred to me for some time, to tell you that we are all three well, that we have received good accounts of our dear little Harriet, and that we are thus far prosperously advanced in our voyage to rejoin her. We left Bombay, where I had been detained much longer than I expected, on the 15th of last month, and had a favourable voyage to this island, of which we have now seen a considerable portion. All which we have seen is extremely beautiful, with great variety of mountain, rock, and valley, covered from the hill-tops down to the sea with unchanging verdure, and, though so much nearer the Line, enjoying a cooler and more agreeable temperature than either Bombay or Calcutta. Here I have been more than ever reminded of the prints and descriptions in Cook's Voyages. The whole coast of the island is marked