Chapter XIX: Letter XI: New York,

_My Dear Sir_,--I must be pardoned for refusing your request touching your MS. "Treatise on Pigs." I was obliged, some years ago, to come to the resolution not to express opinions of works sent to me. A candid opinion of those whose merit seemed to me small, gave offence, and I found it the best way to avoid a judgment in any case. I hope this will be satisfactory.

I am, my Dear Sir, very respectfully yours,

JOSEPH L. MILLER, ESQ.

Mr. Irving's hand writing is common-place. There is nothing indicative of genius about it. Neither could any one suspect, from such penmanship, a _high finish_ in the author's compositions. This style of writing is more frequently met with than any other. It is a very usual clerk's hand--scratchy and _tapering_ in appearance, showing (strange to say)--an eye deficient in a due sense of the _picturesque_. There may be something, however, in the circumstance that the epistle to Mr. Miller is evidently written in a desperate hurry. Paper very indifferent, and wafered.