11 OCTOBER 1890, Page 44

The New Universal Letter - Writer. By J. McLaughlin. (Hachette.) —This gives

us a variety of models in English and French, some of them doubtless worthy of imitation, and likely to be useful, but some not likely to assist the person who uses them. To translate a French model with the idea of making it an English model, is obviously absurd. An English son would hardly write, "My little Ernest cannot be consoled for not being able to embrace his dear grandfather and grandmother," nor an English daughter that her letter is "much happier than she." A friend, again, would at least hesitate before he wrote, in congratulating a father (addressed, by-the-way, formally as " Sir ") on the birth of a son : "If this child but follows the example of his father, and imitatea the virtues of his mother, he will, like them, enjoy the esteem of all honest people." There is a letter asking for the loan of a hundred pounds, and a " favourable " reply. Why not also an " unfavourable b model, much more wanted, we venture to think ? Some of the English is doubtful or worse. " Ingineer " is not an accepted spelling. And what is "a row of yoke elms in a pretty vast enclosure "P