How to write romantic and passionate love letters.

The best love-letters are the direct promptings of the heart. A loving heart naturally imparts its glow to the written page, and this warmth is communicated by the mysterious power of words to the heart of the reader. It is this pleasure that excites the affections and awakens dormant friendships. How the heart beats with expectation in the perusal of a letter from one we love. How endeared becomes our connection by this spiritual communion, in which our minds, with an ardent zeal and devotedness, become united, and an eloquence and freedom indulged, perhaps never more felicitously. The charm in correspondence arises from the degree of congeniality in tastes, from the impressed individuality and unstudied naturalness of the writer, from his genuine representations of affection and avoidance of strained or artificial expressions. Love-letters written in sincerity and faith need but little guidance except from the heart of the writer. The true lover will find the words he seeks flow easily from his pen, and probably the eyes resting next upon them will not criticize very severely. It is best to entirely avoid flattery in such letters. The fact that you love the person to whom they are addressed is a sufficient proof of your appreciation of any merit or beauty he or she may possess, and the praises of lovers are apt to become too warm to appear perfectly sincere. A lady's letter should be always dignified. Al- though there may be an engagement existing at the time of writing, it may be severed, or others may chance to see the epistles intended for one person's perusal only. Be sure that your betrothed will respect you more for a quiet, affectionate dignity in writing, than if you put too much of the most sacred of all feelings upon paper. The love-letter ought to be more easy to write than any other, premising always that the writer is really under the influence of the grand passion. Upon first addressing the object of your regard, there should be no prudent hesitation about committing yourself too far. You either love the fair being whom you address, or you do not. If you are not decided upon that point, you do wrong to write at all; but if you earnestly desire to unite your destiny with hers you must, in the first instance, give her to understand that you entertain for her a sincere and earnest admiration. Your letters should express respect blended with exalted and overpowering passion, and this applies more particularly to your first letter. A tame, hesitating lover cannot make a strong impression upon the hearts of the gentle sex. The writer must show the woman of his choice that his love is too real and too violent to be prudent, or to have any place for a selfish fear of compromising himself. He must compromise himself, fearlessly and thoroughly, in his first address to her, and have his mind made up to stand the hazard of the die; for the first thing a man has to do when disclosing his love for a woman is to convince her that he does love her, and that he loves her a great deal, and her alone. Let this be the aim of your letters; speak just as you feel, and speak out all that you feel, in straight-forward, simple, honest language -- which is always the language of strong emotion -- and if she be a woman whose heart has not been hackneyed by the arts of coquetry, she will know how to estimate your sincerity and your devotion. A celebrated writer has said, that " to write a good love-letter, you must begin without knowing what you are going to say, and finish without knowing what you have said "; and as the true secret of all successful letter writing lies in the power of conveying the thoughts, feelings, and desires of the writer to his correspondent, the remark may be to some extent correct. Such a letter would undoubtedly reflect the state of the writer's heart, agitated and distorted by the tumultuous throbs of his passion; but as the zeal of young persons generally in matters affecting the heart is very apt to out- run their discretion, he would unconsciously give expression to absurd and foolish pretensions, or to romantic and extravagant adulation of the object of his attachment. To obviate this tendency regard should be had, in the composition of them, to propriety of diction, correctness of taste, and purity of style, avoiding all the bombast and affectation, and that morbid sentimentalism which too frequently characterizes epistles on these subjects.