Holy George Herbert shall furnish us with a versicle to the purpose. As ever, he is looking upwards when he says,—

"Indeed the world's Thy book

Where all things have their leaf assign'd:

Yet a meek look

Hath interlined.

Thy board is full, yet humble guests

Find nests."

But more pertinent, and less quaintly obscure, is that stanza from another little lyric of his, in which the Country Parson exalts the exalting power of a simple trust in God and devotion to His service:

"A servant with this clause

Makes drudgery divine:

Who sweeps a room, as for Thy laws,
Makes that and the action fine."

THE WRATH-DISPELLING POWER OF A SOFT

WH

ANSWER.

PROVERBS XV. I.

7HILE it is the effect, if not the end and aim, of grievous words to stir up anger,- a soft answer turneth away wrath." Though "the wrath of a king is as messengers of death, a wise man will pacify it." "By long forbearing is a prince persuaded, and a soft tongue breaketh the bone."

When the men of Ephraim, enraged at Gideon's failing to invoke their aid when he went to fight with the Midianites, chided with him sharply, his soft answer was of instant avail to turn away their wrath. What had he done now in comparison of them? the champion deferentially exclaimed; and what was he able to do in comparison of them? Was not the mere gleaning of the grapes of Ephraim better than the entire vintage of Abi-ezer? "Then their anger was abated toward him, when he had said that." What threatened to be a very

bone of contention,-well, so soft a tongue as that of Jerubbaal, who is Gideon, breaketh the bone.

Discussing Lord Aberdeen's settlement of the vexed question of the right of search, in 1843, the historian of Europe observes that never was there a truer maxim than that it requires the consent of two persons to make a quarrel; a soft word, a seasonable explanation, often turns aside wrath, and sometimes prevents the most serious wars that threaten to devastate the world. Æsop Smith says he never knew a downright quarrel yet, where two people were not in the wrong; "drop your battledore, and the shuttlecock will fall. A soft answer turneth away wrath.' No doubt it does, in nine cases out of ten," -but not quite always, this authority affirms; there being some unreasonable quarrellers, who will batter the peacemaker when he drops his battledore. But as a rule, and on the authority of an older and still more widely recognised maker of proverbs, the mere fact of yielding pacifieth great offences.

The historian of the conquest of Peru tells us how Gasca was assailed by reproaches and invectives which, however, had no power to disturb his equanimity; he patiently listened, and replied to all in the mild tone of expostulation best calculated to turn away wrath. "By this victory over himself," says Garcilasso, "he acquired more real glory, than by all his victories over his foes." As Spenser has it,-

"Words well-disposed

Have secret power t' appease inflamèd rage."

Sir Matthew Hale's celebrated letter of advice includes this counsel, if a person be passionate, and give you ill language, rather to pity him than be moved to anger. We shall find, the pious judge asserts, that silence, or very gentle words, are the most exquisite revenge for reproaches; they will either cure the distemper in the angry man, and make him sorry for his passion, or they will be a severe reproof and punishment to him. "But at any rate," adds Sir Matthew, "they will preserve your innocence, give you the deserved reputation of wisdom and moderation, and keep up the serenity and composure

of your mind. Passion and anger make a man unfit for everything that becomes him as a man or as a Christian."

The fact is, maintains the author of "The Gentle Life," all hard words are a mistake: most of our quarrels arise from a total misunderstanding of each other; and at any rate, hard words will not mend the matter. One might as well, he says, try to mend glass windows by pelting them with stones. Soft words, on the other hand, fall like a healing balm on the hearts of all. "Such power," in the words of one who loved to be written, if not to write himself, Leontius, "such power has the least shadow of a pleasant speech, to do away an ill-feeling of the moment, in the complacency it produces, both in the giver and receiver." To apply, again, a passage from Spenser, descriptive of a damsel's success in deterring two doughty knights from mortal encounter, so effective was her speech to

"calm the sea of their tempestuous spite :

Such power have pleasing words! Such is the might
Of courteous clemency in gentle heart!"

We are all of us fond of gentle words, once more to quote an ex titulo authority on all that concerns gentle living; and he denies the truth of the common rough proverb, "Soft words butter no parsnips," which is shown to be, after all, an apologetic proverb, meaning that the hearer is tickled with the politeness, albeit real satisfaction is not yet made. "Soft words do butter parsnips; and many an oily fellow, whose talent, industry, and conscientiousness are small, owes his position and advancement in life to the soft words which drop continually from his mouth." The soft answer that avails to dispel wrath, comes of practised patience; and when patience has its perfect work, it works miracles, as detailed by that fine old forgotten poet, Decker :

"It is the greatest enemy to law

That can be, for it doth embrace all wrongs,

And so chains up lawyers and women's tongues;

And last of all, to end a household strife,
It is the honey 'gainst a waspish wife."

This reminds us of a passage in "The Gordian Knot,” where the gentle laying of a husband's hand in an irritated wife's, or vice versa, is recommended (by example) as a good plan to adopt in conjugal discussions when differences arise. The tongue, says our author, is very proud, abominably proud and sulky, and often refuses to say what the heart desires should be said; but the fingers know their duty, and are ready to convey an apologetic or forgiving pressure, which, he makes bold to assert, "will stop ninety-nine quarrels out of a hundred, if the parties love one another."

The greatest, widest, deepest of all observers of human nature puts into the mouth of one of the sagest of kings this counsel to a younger son, in respect to his bearing towards the elder :

"Blunt not his love;

For he is gracious, if he be observed; *

Yet notwithstanding, being incensed, he's flint :

As humorous as winter, and as sudden

As flawst congealed in the spring of day.

His temper, therefore, must be well observed:
Chide him for faults, and do it reverently,

When you perceive his blood inclined to mirth :
But being moody, give him line and scope;

Till that his passions, like a whale on ground,
Confound themselves with working."

In a later one, again, of his noble series of English history plays-indeed the latest-Shakspeare makes a ducal politician, astute in practical psychology as well as in politics, utter this apophthegm, of his own coinage :

66 Anger is like

A full-hot horse, who being allowed his way,
Self-mettle tires him."

* That is, if attention be shown him.

Gusts of wind.

A TWICE-TOLD TALE OF YEARS.

ECCLESIASTES vi. 6.

TH HE preacher, whose text was Vanity of vanities, all is vanity, pictures in one section of his homily a man who has lived many years, 'so that the days of his years be many," but whose soul is not filled with good, but aches rather with a gnawing sense of emptiness, so that his many years, gloomy as they have been, are all too few. "Yea, though he live a thousand years twice told, yet hath he seen no good : do not all go to one place?" What more tedious than such a twicetold tale of years? Yet, to look back upon, how fleet their transit, how imperceptible their lapse, how petty the sum of them! That tale is soon told, even if told twice.

The days of our life are threescore years and ten, and though men be so strong that they come to fourscore years, yet is their strength then but labour and sorrow; nor do the fourscore seem longer to the retrospective reviewer than do to the sexagenarian his sixty years, or to the septuagenarian his threescore and ten. The most popular of contemporary authors describes a man of seventy-eight, of whom a loveless, sad-hearted questioner asks whether his seventy-eight years would not be seventy-eight heavy curses, if he could say to himself, as the questioner can, "I have secured to myself the love and attachment, the gratitude or respect, of no human creature; I have won myself a tender place in no regard; I have done nothing good or serviceable to be remembered by." The Royal Preacher would apply context as well as text to such a retrospect, with an "I say, that an untimely birth is better than he. For he cometh in with vanity, and departeth in darkness, and his name shall be covered with darkness. Moreover he hath not seen the sun, nor known anything this hath more rest than the other. Yea, though he live a thousand years twice told, yet hath he seen no good."

:

The same questioner, already cited, asks the same old man if his childhood seems far off,-if the days when he sat at his mother's knee seem days of very long ago? To which