Eloquence in three languages is good; but it is not the best. To us, as already hinted, the Lord Abbot's eloquence is less admirable than his ineloquence, his great invaluable 'talent of silence!' _'"Deus, Deus,"_ said the Lord Abbot to me once, when he heard the Convent were murmuring at some act of his, "I have much need to remember that Dream they had of me, that I was to rage among them like a wolf. Above all earthly things I dread their driving me to do it. How much do I hold in, and wink at; raging and shuddering in my own secret mind, and not outwardly at all!" He would boast to me at other times: "This and that I have seen, this and that I have heard; yet patiently stood it." He had this way, too, which I have never seen in any other man, that he affectionately loved many persons to whom he never or hardly ever shewed a countenance of love. Once on my venturing to expostulate with him on the subject, he reminded me of Solomon: "Many sons I have; it is not fit that I should smile on them." He would suffer faults, damage from his servants, and know what he suffered, and not speak of it; but I think the reason was, he waited a good time for speaking of it, and in a wise way amending it. He intimated, openly in chapter to us all, that he would have no eavesdropping: "Let none," said he, "come to me secretly accusing another, unless he will publicly stand to the same; if he come otherwise, I will openly proclaim the name of him. I wish, too, that every Monk of you have free access to me, to speak of your needs or grievances when you will."' The kinds of people Abbot Samson liked worst were these three: _`Mendaces, ebriosi, verbosi,_ Liars, drunkards, and wordy or windy persons;'--not good kinds, any of them! He also much condemned 'persons given to murmur at their meat or drink, especially Monks of that disposition. We remark, from the very first, his strict anxious order to his servants to provide handsomely for hospitality, to guard 'above all things that there be no shabbiness in the matter of meat and drink; no look of mean parsimony, in _novitate mea,_ at the beginning of my Abbotship;' and to the last he maintains a due opulence of table and equipment for others: but he is himself in the highest degree indifferent to all such things.