“Leaving their rankness and irregular course, Stoop low within those bounds they had o’erlook’d, And calmly run on in obedience.” What they are no longer free to do, is to do ill. And that freedom is as perfect servitude as the service of God is perfect freedom. In fine, and in the words (but expanding the meaning) of one of Samuel Butler’s metrical reflections:— “Law does not put the least restraint Upon our freedom, but maintain’t; Or if it does, ’tis for our good, To give us freer latitude; For wholesome laws preserve us free By stinting of our liberty.” _THE DISCREET SILENCE OF FOLLY._ PROVERBS xvii. 28. It is written among the Proverbs of Solomon, that “Even a fool, when he holdeth his peace, is counted wise.” Even the fool that shutteth his lips is esteemed a man of understanding. The wise king declares in another place, that a fool’s mouth is his destruction, and that his lips are the snare of his soul. Let him keep his mouth closed, and his folly is an unknown quantity; out of sight, out of mind. Let him keep his lips shut, and wisdom shall be imputed unto him. Of him lookers-on will say, a discreet man that. For they are only lookers-on, not listeners. To listen would break the spell. As it is, they are apt to count him as deep as he is still. Do not still waters run deep? Sir Thomas Browne—himself a silent man, but no fool; quite the other way—bids us, in one of his stately sentences, think not silence the wisdom of fools; but if rightly timed, the honour of wise men, who have not the infirmity, but the virtue of taciturnity, and speak not out of the abundance, but the well-weighed thoughts of the heart. “Such silence may be eloquence, and speak thy worth above the power of words.” Would the author of “Vulgar Errors,” however, have sanctioned for one moment the reference of the proverb on reticent foolishness to that limbo? On the contrary, the drift of his argument is wholly in favour of the proverb; for, if the silence of the wise is wisdom, as he contends, much more is a tongue-tied condition expedient in the fool. _Stultitiam dissimulare non potes nisi taciturnitate_, says the Latin adage: there is no way to conceal folly but by holding your tongue. There is something at once of pathos and almost of humorous reproach, in the appeal of the Man of Uz, in his extremity, to his too didactic and complacently dogmatical friends: “Oh that ye would altogether hold your peace! and it should be your wisdom.”