According to La Bruyère, everything tells in favour of the man who talks but little; the presumption is that he is a superior man; and if, in point of fact, he is not a sheer blockhead, the presumption then is that he is very superior indeed. His comparative freedom from folly is positively presumed to exist in the superlative degree. In another place the same observant philosopher describes in his best style the sort of people who, by a grand talent for silence, win golden opinions from all sorts of men; they look wise, and now and then enforce and re-enforce the look by a timely shrug of the shoulders, or significant shake of the head; but the assumed depth of wisdom don’t really go two inches down; scratch the surface, and you come to the bottom at once. For, as Shakspeare has it, “There are a sort of men whose visages Do cream and mantle like a standing pond; And do a wilful stillness entertain, With purpose to be dress’d in an opinion Of wisdom, gravity, profound conceit. ... O, my Antonio, I do know of those, That therefore only are reputed wise, For saying nothing; who, I am very sure, If they should speak, would⸺” _not_ be reputed wise, but the uttermost opposite, whatever that may be called. _PENAL PREVISION._ 1 SAMUEL xxvii. 19, 20. Why had Saul disquieted Samuel, to bring him up from the place of the dead, by the midnight agency of the “wise woman” of Endor? Because he would fain pry into futurity, and learn from supernatural sources his coming fate. The desired foresight was vouchsafed him. By to-morrow he and his sons were to be with the dead-and-gone seer, whose spirit he had rashly invoked. The prevision had its present penalty. “Then Saul fell straightway all along on the earth, and was sore afraid, because of the words of Samuel.” The secret things belong unto the Lord our God, and only those things which are revealed belong unto us and to our children. The tree of foreknowledge of good and evil may offer fruit that is pleasant to the sight, and seemingly to be desired to make one wise; but it is fatal food, not to be eaten of, nor to be touched, by any but the venturesome profane. Indulged to his cost with previsions of what should befall his posterity, Milton’s Adam, at sight of the Flood and its ravages, breaks out into the exclamation, “O visions ill foreseen! Better had I Lived ignorant of future! so had borne My part of evil only, each day’s lot Enough to bear.”