“However ye might err in after-speech, The mute expression of that voiceless woe Whereby ye sought your sympathy to show With him of Uz, doth eloquently preach,— Teaching a lesson it were well to teach Some comforters, of utterance less slow, Prone to believe that they more promptly know Grief’s mighty depths, and by their words can reach. _Seven days and nights_, in stillness as profound As that of chaos, patiently ye sate By the heart-stricken and the desolate. And though your sympathy might fail to sound The fathomless depth of his dark spirit’s wound, Not less your silence was sublimely great.” In his vivid picture of the desolation of a bereaved husband, Sir Richard Steele goes on to say, “I knew consolation would now be impertinent; and therefore contented myself to sit by him, and condole with him in silence.” “_Les consolations indiscrètes_,” says Rousseau, “_ne font qu’aigrir les violentes afflictions. L’indifférence et la froideur trouvent aisément des paroles, mais la tristesse et LE SILENCE sont alors le vrai langage de l’amitié_.” Gray writes to Mason, while yet uncertain whether the latter is already a widower or not,—“If the last struggle be over ... allow me (at least in idea, for what could I do were I present more than this,) to sit by you in silence, and pity from my heart, not her who is at rest, but you who lose her.” So it happened that Mason received this little billet at almost the precise moment when it would be most affecting. Horace Walpole, again, writes to an afflicted correspondent,—“I say no more, for time only, not words, can soften such afflictions, nor can any consolations be suggested, that do not more immediately occur to the persons afflicted. To moralize can comfort those only who do not want to be comforted.” So Marcia replies to Lucia, in Addison’s tragedy: “_Lucia._ What can I think or say to give thee comfort? _Marcia._ Talk not of comfort, ’tis for lighter ills.”