There is a capital old proverb, often quoted but not so often acted on, called 'Let sleeping dogs lie;' a proverb which, if we were to abide by its injunction, would keep us out of many a mess that we get into now, because we cannot let well alone. Certainly we fall into trouble sometimes, or rather we drift into it--we allow it to gather round us--for want of a frank explanation to clear off small misunderstandings. At least novelists say so, and then make a great point of the anguish endured by Henry and Angelina for three mortal volumes, because they were too stupid to ask the reason why the one looked cold the other evening at the duchess's ball, and the other looked shy the next morning in the park. But then novelists, poor souls, are driven to such extravagant expedients for motives and matter, that we can scarcely take them as rational exponents of real life in any way; though the very meaning and final cause of their profession is to depict human nature as it is, and to show the reflex action of character and circumstances somewhat according to the pattern set out in the actual world. But, leaving novelists alone, on the whole we find in real life that if speech is silvern, silence is essentially golden, and that more harm is done by saying too much than by saying too little; above all, that infinite mischief arises by not letting sleeping dogs lie. People are so wonderfully anxious to stir up the dregs of everything, they can never let things rest. Take a man or woman who has done something queer that gets noised abroad, and who is coldly looked on in consequence by those who believe the worst reports which arise as interpretations. Now the wisest thing undoubtedly is to bear this coldness as the righteous punishment of that folly, and to trust for rehabilitation to the mysterious process called 'living it down.' If there has been absolutely no sinfulness to speak of, nothing but a little imprudence and a big glossary of scandalous explanation, a little precipitancy and a great deal of ill-nature, by all means wake up the sleeping dog and set him howling through the streets. He may do good, seeing that truth would be your friend. But if there be a core of ugly fact, even if it be not quite so ugly as the envelope which rumour has wrapped round it, then fall back on the dignity of 'living it down,' and let the dog lie sleeping and muzzled.