Words are words, says Shakspeare’s Brabantio, and never yet heard he that the bruised heart was relieved through the ear. When, towards the close of Campbell’s metrical tale of fair Wyoming, on Susquehanna’s side, “prone to the dust, afflicted Waldegrave hid his face on earth, him watched, in gloomy ruth, his woodland guide; but words had none to soothe the grief that knows not consolation’s name.” But the Oneyda chief was not on that account Waldegrave’s least efficient comforter. What though others around him, less reticent, and more demonstrative, found utterance easy, and shaped their kind common-place meaning into kind common-place words? “Of them that stood encircling his despair, he heard some friendly words, but knew not what they were.” Wise-hearted, too, was Southey’s young Arabian, in watching silently the frantic grief of the newly childless old diviner: in pitying silence Thalaba stood by, and gazed, and listened: “not with the officious hand of consolation, fretting the sore wound he could not hope to heal.” It has been called the last triumph of affection and magnanimity, when a loving heart can respect the suffering silence of its beloved, and allow that lonely liberty in which alone some natures can find comfort. A late author portrayed in one of his tales a dull, common-place fellow enough, of limited intellect and attainments, whose, however, was one of those kind and honest natures fortunately endowed with subtle powers of perception that lie deeper than the head. Accordingly he is described, in the capacity of an unofficious condoler, as appreciating perfectly the grief of his friend; at his side throughout the day, but never obtruding himself, never attempting jarring platitudes of condolence: “in a word he fully understood the deep and beautiful sympathy of silence.” So with Adela and Caroline in _The Bertrams_,—interchanging those pressures of the hand, those mute marks of fellow-feeling, “which we all know so well how to give when we long to lighten the sorrows which are too deep to be probed by words.” But though we all may know so well how to give these mute marks, we do not all and always practice what we know. ’Tis true, ’tis pity; pity ’tis ’tis true. Adam Bede’s outburst of maddened feelings, uttered in tones of appealing anguish, when the loss of Hetty is first made clear to him, is noted in silence by the discreet rector, who is too wise to utter soothing words at present, as he watches in Adam that look of sudden age which sometimes comes over a young face in moments of terrible emotion. As Bartle Massey elsewhere describes this silent sympathizer, “Ay, he’s good metal; ... says no more than’s needful. He’s not one of those that think they can comfort you with chattering, as if folks who stand by and look on knew a deal better what the trouble was than those who have to bear it.”