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but rising and falling between the generations of men, as ships rise and fall between waves, hidden at times, but not sunken. A fit speech is like a sweet and favorite tune. Once struck out, it may be sung or played forever. It flies from man to man, and makes its nest in the heart as birds do in trees.

This is is remarkably exemplified in maxims and proverbs. A generation of men, by their experience, prove some moral truth, and all know it as a matter of consciousness. By and by some happy man puts the truth into words, and ten thousand people say, He got that from me; for a proverb is a child born from ten thousand parents. Afterward the proverb has the liberty of the world. A good proverb wears a crown and defies revolution or dethronement. It walks up and down the earth an invisible knight-errant helping the needy. A man might frame and set loose a star to roll in its orbit, and yet not have done so memorial a thing before God as he who lets go a golden-orbed speech to roll through the generations of time.

The tongue may be likened to an organ, which, tho but one instrument, has within it an array of different pipes and stops, and discourses in innumerable combinations. If one man sits before it not skilled to control its powers, he shall make it but a monstrous jargon. But when one comes who knows its ways, and has control of its powers, then it becomes a mountain of melody, and another might. well think he heard the city of God in the hour of its singing. The tongue is the key-board of the soul; but it makes a world of difference who sits to play upon it. "Therewith bless we God, and therewith curse we men. It is sweeter than honey; it is bitterer than gall. It is balm and consolation; it is sharper than a serpent's tooth. It is a wand that touches with hope and lifts us up; it is a mace that beats us down, and leaves us wounded upon the ground. One trumpet, but how different the blasts blown upon it, by love, by joy, by humility, or by hatred, pride, anger!

A heart that is full of goodness, that loves and pities,

that yearns to invest the richest of its mercy in the souls of those that need it-how sweet a tongue hath such a heart! A flute sounded in a wood, in the stillness of evening, and rising up among the leaves that are not stirred by the moonlight above, or by those murmuring sounds beneath; a clock, that sighs at half-hours, and at the full hour beats the silver bell so gently, that we know not whence the sound comes, unless it falls through the air from heaven, with sounds as sweet as dewdrops make, falling upon flowers; a bird whom perfumes have intoxicated, sleeping in a blossomed tree, so that it speaks in its sleep with a note so soft that sound and sleep strive together, and neither conquers, but the sound rocks itself upon the bosom of sleep, each charming the other; a brook that brings down the greeting of the mountains to the meadows, and sings a serenade all the way to the faces that watch themselves in its brightness;-these, and a hundred like figures, the imagination brings to liken thereunto the charms of a tongue which love plays upon.

Even its silence is beautiful. Under a green tree we see the stream so clear that nothing is hidden to the bottom. We cast in round, white pebbles to hear them splash, and to see the crystal-eyed fish run in and sail out again. So there are some whose speaking is like the fall of jasper stones upon the silent river, and whose stillness follows speech as silent fish that move like dreams beneath the untroubled water! It was in some such dreaming mood, methinks, Old Solomon spoke, "A wholesome tongue is a tree of life.” And what fruit grows thereon he explains when he afterward says, "A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in baskets of silver,"-beautiful whether seen through the silver network of the sides, or looked upon from above, resting their orbed ripeness upon the fretted edge of the silver bed.

GENIUS AND COMMON SENSE

BY WILLIAM HAZLITT

We hear it maintained by people of more gravity than understanding, that genius and taste are strictly reducible to rules, and that there is a rule for everything. So far is it from being true that the finest breath of fancy is a definable thing, that the plainest common sense is only what Mr. Locke would have called a mixed mode, subject to a particular sort of acquired and undefinable tact. It is asked, "If you do not know the rule by which a thing is done, how can you be sure of doing it a second time?" And the answer is, "If you do not know the muscles by the help of which you walk, how is it you do not fall down at every step you take?" In art, in taste, in life, in speech, you decide from feeling, and not from reason; that is, from the impression of a number of things on the mind, which impression is true and well-founded, tho you may not be able to analyze or account for it in the several particulars. In a gesture you use, in a look you see, in a tone you hear, you judge of the expression, propriety, and meaning from habit, not from reason or rules; that is to say, from innumerable instances of like gestures, looks, and tones, in innumerable other circumstances, variously modified, which are too many and too refined to be all distinctly recollected, but which do not therefore operate the less powerfully upon the mind and eye of taste. Shall we say that these impressions (the immediate stamp of nature) do not operate in a given manner till they are classified and reduced to rules, or is not the rule itself grounded upon the truth and certainty of that natural operation? How, then, can the distinction of the understanding as to the manner in which they operate be necessary to their producing their due and uniform effect upon the mind? If certain effects did not regularly arise out of certain causes in mind as well as matter, there could be no rule given for them; nature does

not follow the rule, but suggests it. Reason is the interpreter and critic of nature and genius, not their lawgiver and judge. He must be a poor creature indeed whose practical convictions do not in almost all cases outrun his deliberate understanding, or who does not feel and know much more than he can give a reason for. Hence the distinction between eloquence and wisdom, between ingenuity and common sense. A man may be dextrous and able in explaining grounds of opinions, and yet may be a mere sophist, because he only sees one-half of a subject. Another may feel the whole weight of a question, nothing relating to it may be lost upon him, and yet he may be able to give no account of the manner in which it affects him, or to drag his reasons from their silent lurkingplaces. This last will be a wise man, tho neither a logician nor rhetorician. Goldsmith was a fool to Dr. Johnson in argument; that is, in assigning the specific grounds of his opinions; Dr. Johnson was a fool to Goldsmith in the fine tact, the airy, intuitive faculty with which he skimmed the surfaces of things, and unconsciously formed his opinions. Common sense is the just result of the sum-total of such unconscious impressions in the ordinary occurrences of life, as they are treasured up in the memory, and called out by the occasion. Genius and taste depend much upon the same principle exercised on loftier ground and in more unusual combinations.

ON CONVERSATION

BY WILLIAM COWPER

Servata semper lege et ratione loquendi.—HORACE.
Your talk to decency and reason suit,
Nor prate like fools or gabble like a brute.

In the comedy of the "Frenchman in London," which we are told was acted at Paris with universal applause for several nights together there is a character of a rough Eng

lishman, who is represented as quite unskilled in the graces of conversation; and his dialog consists almost entirely of a repetition of the common salutation of "How do you do?" Our nation has, indeed, been generally supposed to be of a sullen and uncommunicative disposition; while, on the other hand, the loquacious French have been allowed to possess the art of conversing beyond all other people. The Englishman requires to be wound up frequently, and stops as soon as he is down; but the Frenchman runs on in a continual alarm. Yet it must be acknowledged that as the English consist of very different humors, their manner of discourse admits of great variety; but the whole French nation converse alike; and there is no difference in their address between a marquis and a valet-de-chambre. We may frequently see a couple of French barbers accosting each other in the street, and paying their compliments with the same volubility of speech, the same grimace and action, as two courtiers on the Tuileries.

I shall not attempt to lay down any particular rules for conversation, but rather point out such faults in discourse and behavior as render the company of half mankind rather tedious than amusing. It is in vain, indeed, to look for conversation where we might expect to find it in the greatest perfection, among persons of fashion; there it is almost annihilated by universal card-playing; insomuch that I have heard it given as a reason why it is impossible for our present writers to succeed in the dialog of genteel comedy, that our people of quality scarce ever meet, but to game. All their discourse turns upon the odd trick and the four honors; and it is no less a maxim with the votaries of whist than with those of Bacchus, that talking spoils company.

Every one endeavors to make himself as agreeable to society as he can; but it often happens that those who most aim at shining in conversation, overshoot their mark. Tho a man succeeds, he should not (as is frequently the case) engross the whole talk to himself; for that destroys the very essence of conversation, which is talking to

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