484 on characteristic wifsive letters. Dec. 5. 
manners and principles of the times in which they were 
written, and by being preserved in your miscellany, serve 
as materials for future historians and biographers ; while, 
in the meantime, if accompanied with proper elucidati- 
ons, they could not fail of proving very entertaining to 
your readers. 
Much as I approve of the structure of your miscellany, 
there is no part of it that attracts my attention more 
than the ptotection it offers to fugitive papers of the 
nature I have described, which, from the want of such 
an asylum, are lost for ever, by the indiscriminate de- 
struction of what are commonly called o/d usele/s papers. 
Let us only reflect fora moment on the lights that 
have been afforded to history, science, and literature, by 
the Paper Offices, in the different repositories of the Eu- 
ropean nations, by the volumes of letters contained in 
in public libraries, and by the publication of the Commer-— 
cla Episto/ica of eminent and learned persons. How plea- 
sing it would be to find this invitation producing in the ~ 
Bee, letters of Buchanan, to Montaigne, and Montaigne’s 
answers; letters of Kirkaldy, of Grange, and Maitland ; of 
Lethington ; of Sidney, and Greville ; of Luther and The 
Elector of Saxony ; of Tycho Brache and Kepler; such as 
have never hitherto met the eye of the public, and that — 
might cast new lights on their private character and sen- 
timents. If my feeble voice could make itself be heard, 
T have little doubt that the Bee might be adorned with © 
such productions ; and feeble as it is, I raise its highest — 
notes to excite an attention to its honest and worthy pur- ' 
pose. Inthe course of.a long literary life, it has never 
been silent, and may ‘ind at last, by perseverance, what it 
could not obtain hy its importance, or its extent. I em, 
: : 4 
Sir, your wellwither, ALBANICUS. 
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