Page:Moral Pieces in Prose and Verse.pdf/93

 of ornament which flows from simplicity, and purity of taste. I would particularly recommend to you the epistolary style, because it is of easy attainment, and enters into all the uses of common life. It may be either sportive or sentimental; descriptive or pathetic; argumentative or consolatory; it may select its materials either from the stores of memory, fancy, or imagination; for it admits of the most incalculable variety, and its best ornaments are ease and simplicity. Most of you have felt how it alleviates the pain of separation, and animates the best feelings of sympathy and of friendship. The image of an absent acquaintance excites such a multitude of ideas and sentiments, that the judgment scarcely knows which to select, or the pen which to express, and the mind realizes such pleasure in the employment that it returns reluctantly even to the delights of society. We often gather from the page of a writer, a more correct transcript of his mental powers, than his conversation would have afforded us. Men of the most profound erudition have frequently dazzled so little in mixed company, that from their writings alone could be estimated the solidity of their talents, and the compass of their knowledge. There is often attendant on true genius, a delicacy which so fears to wound the feelings of another, a diffidence which so distrusts its own powers, that the possessor is kept silent when he might have spoken with