So, when any one comes to you with a tale, examine it on its merits, regardless of the informant's age, general conduct, or skill in speech. The more plausible he is, the greater need of care. Never trust another's judgement—it may be in reality only his dislike—but reserve the inquiry to yourself; let envy, if such it was, recoil upon the backbiter, your trial of the two men's characters be an open one, and your award of contempt and approval deliberate. To award them earlier, carried away by the first word of slander—why, God bless me, how puerile and mean and iniquitous it all is!
And the cause of it, as we started with saying, is ignorance, and the mystery that conceals men's characters. Would some God unveil all lives to us, Slander would retire discomfited to the bottomless pit; for the illumination of truth would be over all.
H.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] 'Cratinus was the first to limit the number of actors to three.... There were no further innovations, and the number of the actors in comedy was permanently fixed at three.' Haigh's Attic Theatre.
[2] Odysseus.
THE HALL
As Alexander stood gazing at the transparent loveliness of the Cydnus, the thought of a plunge into those generous depths, of the delicious shock of ice-cold waters amid summer heat, was too much for him; and could he have foreseen the illness that was to result from it, I believe he would have had his bath just the same. With such an example before him, can any one whose pursuits are literary miss a chance of airing his eloquence amid the glories of this spacious hall, wherein gold sheds all its lustre, whose walls are decked with the flowers of art, whose light is as the light of the sun? Shall he who might cause this roof to ring with applause, and contribute his humble share to the splendours of the place,—shall such a one content himself with examining and admiring its beauties without a word, and so depart, like one that is dumb, or silent from envy? No man of taste or artistic sensibility, none but a dull ignorant boor, would consent thus to cut himself off from the highest of enjoyments, or could need to be reminded of the difference between the ordinary spectator and the educated man. The former, when he has carried his eyes around and upwards in silent admiration, and clasped ecstatic hands, has done all that can be expected of him; he ventures not on words, lest they should prove inadequate to his subject. With the cultured observer, it is otherwise: he, surely, will not rest content with feasting his eyes on beauty; he will not stand speechless amid his splendid surroundings, but will set his mind to work, and as far as in him lies pay verbal tribute. Nor will his tribute consist in mere praise of the building. It was well enough, no doubt, for the islander Telemachus to express his boyish amazement in the palace of Menelaus, and to liken that prince's gold and ivory to the glories of Heaven;—his limited experience afforded him no earthly parallel: but here, the very use to which the hall is put, and the distinguished quality of the audience, are an essential part of the praise bestowed upon it.