Or in Keble's, referring to an event of momentous issue for all times: "Thought has not colours half so fair, That she to paint that hour may dare, In silence best adored." Mrs. Browning aptly appends to her fine translation of a hymn prayer of John of Damascus the avowal: "After this deep pathos of Christianity, we dare not say a word; we dare not even praise it as poetry; our heart is stirred, and not ‘idly.' The only sound which can fitly succeed the cry of the contrite soul is that of Divine condonation or of angelic rejoicing. Let us who are sorrowful still be silent too."

It is suggestively told us of Hilda, in Hawthorne's Transformation, that she never had much to say about what she most profoundly admired; but that even her silent sympathy was so powerful that it drew your own along with it, endowing you with a second sight that enabled you to see excellencies with almost the depth and delicacy of her own perceptions. Shelley commemorates the

silence which doth follow talk, that causes The baffled heart to speak with sighs and tears,

When wildering passion swalloweth up the pauses

Of inexpressive speech."

Expressive silence is the supplement and complement of inexpressive speech; says much more, and means all it says. Eloquent dumb truths-the phrase may be a paradox, but paradoxes only study appearances.

On the new monument erected by the conqueror of Marignan to the memory of Madonna Laura, an epitaph was inscribed, which contained these lines:

"O gentille ame, estant fort estimée,

Qui te pourra louer qu'en se taisant ?
Car la parole est toujoursre primée,
Quand le sujet surmonte le disant."

Lord Brooke,

And as with dead womanhood, so with living. in the celebrated imaginary dialogue with Sir Philip Sidney, playfully upbraids the tendency of womankind to "have no favour or mercy for the silence their charms impose on us.

Little are they aware of the devotion we are offering to them, in that state whereinto the true lover is ever prone to fall, and which appears to them inattention, indifference, or moroseness. We must chirp before them eternally, or they will not moisten our beaks in our cages."

In the imaginary conversation on Milton, between Southey and Landor, the latter says, after they have devoutly discussed together a grand passage that Southey has read from him: "Will you go on, after a minute or two, for I am inclined to silence?" What better could Milton have asked? To be inclined to silence; to be constrained to silence; listeners in this way best recognise the sway of genius, and genius in this way best asserts its power over them. Take Burns for instance, at St. Mary's Isle, asked to recite his ballad of "Lord Gregory." "He did recite it; and such was the effect that a dead silence ensued." It was such a silence, explains one who was present, as a mind of feeling naturally produces, when touched with that enthusiasm which banishes every other thought but the contemplation and indulgence of the sympathy evoked. And what homage so eloquent, because dumb, to music, as rapt enraptured silence? A popular author happily illustrates this, in his description of the effect produced on a throng of German listeners by a masterly minstrel. Every ear was struggling, he tells us, that no softest sound might escape unheard; and when at last the instrument was silent, no one could have marked the moment when it had ceased to sing. "For a few moments there was perfect silence in the room, and the musician still kept his seat with his face turned upon his instrument. He knew well that he had succeeded, that his triumph had been complete, and every moment that the applause was suspended was an added jewel to his crown." Il piu grand 'omaggio alla musica sta nel silenzio.

Campbell never wrote anything more spirited than the Battle of the Baltic; nor is there a more telling passage in it—nor perhaps, of its kind, in universal literature-than that noble picture of the British fleet in line for action, and the Danes that confronted and defied them :

"It was ten of April morn by the chime :
As they drifted on their path,

There was silence deep as death;

And the boldest held his breath,
For a time . . . ”

Shakspeare's description-purposely high wrought and rhetorical (for it is mouthed by a professional player, declaiming to order) of Pyrrhus suddenly arrested in his onset against reverend Priam, contains an image of those intervals of hushed suspense in nature, when, as Virgil puts it, simul ipsa silentia terrent, the very silence is dreadful :

"But, as we often see, against some storm,

A silence in the heavens, the rack1 stand still,
The bold winds speechless, and the orb below
As hush as death: anon the dreadful thunder

Doth rend the region : so, after Pyrrhus' pause."

In one of Dryden's paraphrased translations from Boccace, an "awful pause" occurs, on the onrush of the grisly sprite to seize and slay the visionary maid: "The pale assistants," we read (an instance of the use, by our old writers, of the word assist in what is sometimes assumed to be an exclusively French sense):

"The pale assistants on each other stared,
With gaping mouths for issuing words prepared;
The stillborn sounds upon the palate hung,
And died imperfect on the faltering tongue :"

a silence perhaps the more shocking for the bootless effort to break it, in fragmentary spasms of inarticulate speech. And it is the more a silence that (like the Egyptian darkness) may be felt, because of the immediate antecedent of an outburst of cries-the shrieks of women, mingled with the hoarse baying of the wild huntsman's hounds.

Byron makes this sort of silence audible to us in a well known

stanza:

"Thrice sounds the clarion; lo, the signal falls,

The den expands, and expectation mute
Gapes round the silent circle's peopled walls."

1 Light clouds.

So does Scott, in the brawl at bridal feast :

"While thus for blows and death prepared,
Each heart was up, each weapon bared,
Each foot advanced,—a surly pause
Still reverenced hospitable laws.
All menaced violence, but alike
Reluctant each the first to strike
Thus threat and murmur died away,
Till on the crowded hall there lay
Such silence as the deadly still

Ere bursts the thunder on the hill."

And he opens the next canto with this note of interrogation :

"Hast thou not marked, when o'er thy startled head

Sudden and deep the thunder peal has roll'd,

How, when its echoes fell, a silence dead

Sunk on the wood, the meadow, and the wold?

Snatches of festive silence, so to speak, are interspersed here and there through a banquet scene in Leigh Hunt's poem of the Palfrey; as where the king suddenly calls out the name of Sir Guy de Paul,—whereat

"The music stopped with awe and wonder,

Like discourse when speaks the thunder;
And the feasters, one and all,

Gazed upon Sir Guy de Paul."

Anon the revelry is renewed, and laughter runs riot in tumultuating excess, until of a sudden again

"Out spoke the king with wrathful breath,

Smiting the noise as still as death."

Can aught be stiller than that? The poet implies as much,

affirms as much, when presently a new spectacle attracts all gazers,

"And, as the king had given command,

In rode a couple, hand in hand,

Who made the stillness stiller."

Plutarch works up the scene of Numa's election to be king of Rome with a critical hush on the part of an expectant crowd. The chief of the augurs covered Numa's head, and stood behind him, praying, and watching for flight of birds or other signal from the gods. "An incredible silence reigned among the people, anxious for the event, and lost in suspense, till the auspicious birds appeared and passed on the right hand." Whereupon the people burst from silence into tumultuous shouting, and hailed the Sabine king.

Dr. Blair, that very modern Longinus, was captivated exceedingly by the famous image in Tacitus, quale magni metus et magnæ iræ silentium est; a passage which competent classical criticism has allowed to be well and fully represented in the latest of English translations: it is descriptive of Galba being hurried to and fro with every movement of the surging crowd, the halls and temples all around being thronged with spectators of this dismal sight: "Not a voice was heard from the people or even from the rabble. Everywhere were terror-stricken countenances, and ears turned to catch every sound. It was a scene neither of agitation nor of repose, but there reigned the silence of profound alarm and profound indignation." Magni metus et magnæ iræ silentium—for a while.

Gibbon's description of the excitement in Rome on the night of the assassination of the emperor Commodus, vilest of the vile, includes this passage on the demeanour of the senate, called together on a sudden before the break of day, to meet the guards, and ratify the election of a new emperor (Pertinax). "For a few minutes they sat in silent suspense," occasioned by doubt as to the reality-too good to be true?—of their unexpected deliverance, and by suspicion of Commodus only playing them some cruel trick. No sooner, however, were the conscript fathers assured that the tyrant was no more, than