at few people care
to be eclipsed, and that a superiority of sense is as ill to be borne as
superiority of fortune."

"He that cannot refrain from much speaking," says Sir W. Raleigh, "is
like a city without walls, and less pains in the world a man cannot
take, than to hold his tongue; therefore if thou observest this rule in
all assemblies thou shalt seldom err; restrain thy choler, hearken much
and speak little, for the tongue is the instrument of the greatest good
and greatest evil that is done in the world."

"As it is the characteristic," says Lord Chesterfield, "of great wits to
say much in few words, so it is of small wits to talk much and say
nothing. Never hold any one by the button or the hand in order to be
heard out; for if people are unwilling to hear you, you had better hold
your tongue than them."

"The evil of this" (much speaking), says Bishop Taylor, "is very
considerable in the accounts of prudence, and the effects and plaisance
of conversation: and the ancients described its evil well by a
proverbial expression; for when a sudden silence arose, they said that
Mercury was entered, meaning that, he being their 'loquax numen,' their
'prating god,' yet that quitted him not, but all men stood upon their
guard, and called for aid and rescue, when they were seized upon by so
tedious an impertinence. And indeed, there are some persons so full of
nothings, that, like the strait sea of Pontus, they perpetually empty
themselves by their mouth, making every company or single person they
fasten on to be their Propontis, such a one as was Anaximenes, who was
an ocean of words, but a drop of understanding."

You would do well to study the lesson, _When to talk, and when to be
silent_. Silence is preferred by the wise and the good to superfluity of
talking. You may read strange stories of some of the ancients, choosing
silence to talking. St. Romualdus maintained a seven years' silence on
the Syrian mountains. It is said of a religious person in a monastery in
Brabant, that he did not speak a word in sixteen years. Ammona lived
with three thousand brethren in such silence as though he was an
anchoret. Theona was silent for thirty years together. Johannes,
surnamed Silentarius, was silent for forty-seven years. I do not mention
these as examples for your imitation, and would not have you become
_such_ a recluse. These are cases of an extreme kind,--cases of
moroseness and sullenness which neither reason nor Scrip