I tore it open, and found a very disquieting epistle.

It is about half as long as Saint Paul's Epistle to the Corinthians, and one-fourth as long as the Irish Land Act of 1881.

The words of this inscription recall to mind those of St. Paul, in his First Epistle to Timothy, (v. 3-16,) and especially the verse, "If any man or woman that believeth have widows, let them relieve them, and let not the church be charged.

It was a long epistle, full of wise and faithful advice, and showing most loving interest in his young friend's welfare.

With greater energy and exclusiveness than before, he read Thucydides, Theocritus, and Anacreon; he translated parts of Propertius, and he wrote a heroic epistle in Latin, after the manner of Ovid, and a Greek epigram.

His villa at Liternum on the Campanian coast is described by Seneca in his 86th epistle; it was small, and without the comforts and conveniences of the later country-house; but its real significance lies not so much in the increasing wealth that could make a residence possible without a farm attached to it, but in the growing sense of individuality that made men wish for such a retreat.

You heard these words read in the Epistle for to-day.

St. Paul tells us in the first chapter of the Epistle to the Romans.

I say, writes St. Paul, in the epistle which you heard read just now, 'that the heir, as long as he is a child, differs nothing from a servant, though he be lord of all; but is under tutors and governors, until the time appointed by his father.

Not so, says St. Paul, all through this very Epistle to the Galatians.

St. Paul explains it in the Epistle.

Now, if you will look two or three chapters back, in the Epistle to the Corinthiansat the 11th and 12th chaptersyou will see that these Corinthians were behaving to each other very much as people are apt to do in England now.

His whole Epistle to Philemon is an appeal, most delicate and graceful, to Philemon's sense of honourto the thought of what he owed Paul, of what Paul wished him to repay, not with money, but with generosity.

"Brethren, pray for us"this is the token in almost every Epistle.

"If any man obey not our word by this epistle, note that man.

In often and soften, some think it silent; but it seems rather to take here the sound of f. In chasten, hasten, fasten, castle, nestle, whistle, apostle, epistle, bustle, and similar words, with their sundry derivatives, the t is said by some to be mute; but here it seems to take the sound of s; for, according to the best authorities, this sound is beard twice in such words.

Of the same kind were Addison's epistle to Sacheverel, entitled An Account of the Greatest English Poets, and Pope's Essay on Criticism, 1711, which was nothing more than versified maxims of rhetoric, put with Pope's usual point and brilliancy.

He was more careful in his literary workmanship than his great forerunner, and in his Moral Essays and Satires he brought the Horatian epistle in verse, the formal satire and that species of didactic poem of which Boileau had given the first example, to an exquisite perfection of finish and verbal art.

In the Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot, the satirical sketch of Addisonwho had offended Pope by praising a rival translation of Homeris as brilliant as any thing of the kind in Dryden.

His epistle of Eloisa to Abelard is declamatory and academic, and leaves the reader cold.

But his sober convictions were on the side of liberty and human brotherhood, and are expressed in The Twa Dogs, the First Epistle to Davie, and A Man's a Man for a' that.

Therefore the odour of honey and milk, so evocative of fresh flowers and fields, was spoilt that morning for me; and it was some time before I slipped on that beautiful Japanese dressing-gown, which I shall never see again, and read the odious epistle.

TICKELL, Richard, Epistle from the Hon.

The Epistle selections of the ancient church.

SEE LENSKI, R. C. H. The interpretation of St. Paul's First and Second Epistle to the Corinthians.