allow the crop of young thieves and rascals who fill them to be perpetually cultivated too. The satires of Swift are terribly scathing, and bitterly and blackly does he paint and describe the state of mankind; but he never could say anything half bitter enough against creatures who quietly allow their young to be mistaught, untaught, misled, and corrupted, and who then complain about the large crop of criminals, and of the sad effects and terrible cost of crime. GENTLE WORDS. IN some of those wise verses which the Laureate wrote when a very young man, a little more than twenty, indeed, he dared to give advice to a statesman, and it is such advice as statesmen from age to age may listen to : "Watch what main currents draw the years: Cut Prejudice against the grain : But gentle words are always gain: And if we could but remember that line in italics always to mean peers, addresses them with hot words, like Achilles when he scolds Nestor. This is a sad mistake: when he has done so he is sorry for it. He had better have treated "his peers" as born fools, for to fools all wise men are tender. Perhaps, to a sensible man, the most painful feelings of being in the wrong box-a box which almost all of us at one time or another get into-are occasioned by his having been betrayed into using hard words. There is even in that deep a deeper still, and that is, when he has written hard wordswords which he would give all the world, if he had it, to recall, but which remain spoken, or worse, written in black and white. Fielding, in his wonderful book, wonderful because of its deep insight into human nature, makes a husband and wife, no less than the great Jonathan and his spouse, quarrel, and then very affectionately make it up. This is every-day life, and all very well; but there is a hard word which sticks between them, and the gentleman is ashamed of having used it, and the lady of having endured it. So this comes continually up; it rises like Banquo's ghost, not in agony, but in a very unpleasant fashion. “Why, Mr. Wild,” says the wife, "why did you say so-and-so?" and Mr. Wild, flinging himself out of the room in a fury, makes the quarrel perpetual. An ill-tempered letter, once sent, will embitter a lifetime. We once saw an old gentleman, with a wise, fine head, calm face, and most benevolent look, but evidently thin-skinned and irascible, beg of a postmaster to return him a letter which he had dropped into the box. To do so, as everybody knows, is illegal; but, won over by the old gentleman's importunity, the postmaster complied, upon full proof, in comparing the writing, &c., being given. Then, with a beaming face, the old gentleman tore the letter into fragments, and, scattering them to the wind, exclaimed, “Ah! I've preserved my friend." The fact is, he had written a letter in a state of irritation, which was probably unjust and hurtful, but which he had wisely recalled. "Written words remain,” is not only a proverb, but a very grave caution; and hence the advice, never to write in anger, or, at any rate, to keep your letter till you are cool. A very good practice, when you are indignant at any one's conduct, is to write a letter couched in the strongest terms possible, as abusive as you can make it, as satirical and as ill-natured as the matter will afford, and having done all this, to direct, seal, and put it in your desk for a few hours, then read it for your own satisfaction, and— tear it up. The fact is, all hard words are a mistake. Most of our quarrels arise from a total misunderstanding of each other, and few of us are so bad as to deserve the rabid censure which ill-temper will pour upon us. It would be absurd to deny the fact that the most conscientious men do not sometimes provoke the harshest terms and constructions being applied to their conduct; and yet conscientious men, we may be sure, think they are in the right when they act. Then comes the corollary to be drawn from this, that when two conscientious men quarrel, both think they are in the right, and neither deserves hatred or vituperation. Hard words, at One might as well try to least, will not mend the matter. mend glass windows by pelting them with stones. Soft words, however, fall like a healing balm on the hearts of all, and we are told that they turn away wrath : if so, it is worth while employing them. We are all of us fond of gentle words. A female philosopher, and one to whom few women, or men either, could compare in depth of observation and shrewdness, said, that "Politeness costs nothing, and gains everything ;" an observation which is directly opposed to the common rough proverb, "Soft words butter no parsnips." The very existence of this proverb is a proof that it is not a true one, at least applied in the raw and inconclusive way in which some persons put it. It really is an apologetic proverb, and it means that, after all, the hearer is tickled with the politeness, but 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, and which "butter his parsnips" exceedingly well. All of us like a polite man, and most of us are susceptible of a compliment; yet there seems to be a general feeling that a man or woman who is complimentary is false. It is not often, nor is it necessarily so. A man may be a complimentary man simply out of the benevolence of his heart: he may say pleasant things to you because he really thinks so. His praise may take the highest form of compliment, and be |