mally proposed without pedantry,
may be continued with ease and good humour; but which will be frequently
and effectually stopped by the listlessness, inattention, or
whispering of silly girls, whose weariness betrays their ignorance, and
whose impatience exposes their ill-breeding. A polite man, however
deeply interested in the subject on which he is conversing, catches at
the slightest hint to have done: a look is a sufficient intimation, and
if a pretty simpleton, who sits near him, seems _distraite_, he puts an
end to his remarks, to the great regret of the reasonable part of the
company, who perhaps might have gained more improvement by the
continuance of such a conversation, than a week's reading would have
yielded them; for it is such company as this, that give an edge to each
other's wit, "as iron sharpeneth iron."

THAT silence is one of the great arts of conversation is allowed by
Cicero himself, who says, there is not only an art but even an eloquence
in it. And this opinion is confirmed by a great modern[5], in the
following little anecdote from one of the ancients.

WHEN many Grecian philosophers had a solemn meeting before the
ambassador of a foreign prince, each endeavoured to shew his parts by
the brilliancy of his conversation, that the ambassador might have
something to relate of the Grecian wisdom. One of them, offended, no
doubt, at the loquacity of his companions, observed a profound silence;
when the ambassador, turning to him, asked, "But what have you to say,
that I may report it?" He made this laconic, but very pointed reply:
"Tell your king, that you have found one among the Greeks who knew how
to be silent."

THERE is a quality infinitely more intoxicating to the female mind than
knowledge--this is Wit, the most captivating, but the most dreaded of
all talents: the most dangerous to those who have it, and the most
feared by those who have it not. Though it is against all the rules, yet
I cannot find in my heart to abuse this charming quality. He who is
grown rich without it, in safe and sober dulness, shuns it as a disease,
and looks upon poverty as its invariable concomitant. The moralist
declaims against it as the source of irregularity, and the frugal
citizen dreads it more than bankruptcy itself, for he considers it as
the parent of extravagance and beggary. The Cynic will ask of what use
it is? Of very little perhaps: no more is a flower garden, and yet it is
allowed as an object of in