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CONVERSATION.

"The good in conversation,

To whom I give my benison."

PERICLES.

FAMILIAR as the word is, true conversation is a great rarity. It implies a disinterested communion of thought, an interchange of ideas. It is essentially a play of the mind, but one that calls out the grace and vigor acquired in its severest toils. Most people of intelligence either argue or discourse; they find no pleasure in receiving your thought and carrying it forward, or increasing its volume, but accept it rather as a hint from which to start on a rhetorical survey, or an antagonist to exercise their logical skill. A celebrated English reviewer of the present day is one of the most brilliant talkers in London society. His language and his information seem equally inexhaustible, and they absolutely inundate the listener; but, for this very reason, he is altogether unsatisfactory in conversation; for, in case his auditor has the energy to resist the impetuosity of manner and flood of words, and insists upon throwing in occasionally a thought of his own, the other party has recourse to argument. Thus he lectures with the weak, and fights logical battles with the strong, but converses with neither. His contact with the one is like that of the Nile with the Egyptian fields; and with the other, it exactly resembles the adroit, keen, and flashing encounter of a gentleman's foil. He must either communicate or oppose; but is incompetent to assimilate with, or felicitously draw out

another's mind; and this is the secret charm of genuine conver

sation; for if we look narrowly at the process, the very distinction between it and the task of the professed advocate or clergyman, is that in conversation we are unconscious of the limits of our own part; there is so mutual an unfolding of the subject, such an identity of the mental action, that we can say with the poet,

"It seemed, as I retraced the ballad line by line,

That but half of it was his, and half of it was mine."

Indeed, the primal quality of conversation is its suggestiveness. It would otherwise be no more desirable than a sermon or a plea-a thing to be received and considered as a whole, instead of the gradually progressive current made up of tributary streams, which harmoniously blend and flow onward. Perhaps there is no way in which conversation can be more clearly recognised as such, than by its effect. This is always refreshing. We are weary at a dull sermon, or irritated at a long speech, because the mind is forced to an inactive endurance, while in conversation, it is animated by having to respond as well as accept. Hence there are few more rational solaces for the ills of life than conversation. It acts almost magically upon some temperaments, diverting the mood, quickening the faculties, and giving elasticity to the spirits; for, like everything relating to human beings, conversation has its physiological relations; and it is partly because these are so vaguely realized, that its utility is unappreciated. I was struck with the remark of an eccentric. physician, for one of whose patients I inquired. "Sir," he replied, "she needs gossip." It appeared the lady was living in a silent family, and found no vent for her repressed spirits in small-talk. A few chatty visitors were provided, and she was

a new being. The volubility of the sex has long been a staple idea for playwrights and cynics; but there is nothing truly characteristic in nature that is not justified by a general and wise law. Expression is a moral and physical necessity; discourage it entirely, and the mind is disordered or overthrown. Hence the controversies in regard to solitary confinement in prison discipline. Nearly all the tragic catastrophes of human life originate in baffled utterance. A deep feeling allowed to accumulate and centralize in the soul, without breathing itself in friendly conference, or song, or prayer, becomes so intense that it finally absorbs consciousness; hence fanaticism and insanity. Now the best hygiene for the mind is conversation. A painful idea or an emotion, when it is made objective by being talked over, loses, in a great degree, its horror or its woe. There is exquisite nature in the desolate queen's adjuration,

"Come, let us sit upon the ground,

And tell sad stories of the death of kings."

But these are exigencies only. As a preventive to that unhealthy excess into which opinion and sentiment are apt to run, when too much individualized and partially cherished, conversation is at once natural and effective. To the stagnant or overwrought brain, the stimulus of agreeable colloquy gives a wonderful relief. There is between speech and thought a relation far more complex than philosophy has yet discovered. From the inarticulate moan of an infant, to the most eloquent utterance of the poet, the growth and integrity of the mind is vitally associated with expression.

It is said that taciturn women are never healthy; and Congreve declares, in one of his comedies-"Once a man comes to

his soliloquies, I give him up for gone," an indirect tribute to the salubrity of free discussion. The "Noctes" of Wilson are one of the most successful attempts to give the zest of conversation to writing; but even these grow tedious occasionally, from the absence of the living voice and naturalness of suggestion; yet they convey an excellent idea of the relief which active minds

experience in mere utterance.

One sympathizes with the need.

of the shepherd to let off the poetical electricity harvested by his moorland reveries, and fancies him going back to his solitude with a less teeming brain and more quickened fancy.

Nature asserts herself with peculiar freedom in some persons, especially the candid, imaginative, and ardent. In the present state of society, it is difficult to say what safety-valve for these anti-conventionalists is available, except free utterance. In action, that formidable duenna, Respectability, checks impulse quite effectually; but as there must be a vent somewhere for the unaccepted yet constantly generated produce of the brain, it finds its way out through the tongue, and the most provoking of all auditors are the literal class ;—those who have a natural incapacity for taking a joke, look solemn at the announcement of a daring speculation, and remain entrenched in the fortress of material propriety, while the speaker is revelling in the world of fancy. It is the rarest thing in life to meet with a fellowcreature whose influence does not, at some point, veto the play of our idiosyncrasies. It requires so much liberality of mind, such a quickness and breadth of sympathy, and thorough trustworthiness, to be the recipient, at once, of the faith, the thought, and the humor of another, that most of us are driven, by necessity, into a kind of conversational eclecticism,—having a mood for each friend, and a phase of character ready to revolve in sight, according to the demands of every new companion.

Shelley and Allston excelled in superstitious talk. Their ghoststories affected the auditor, even if the circumstances were viewed with levity, on account of the spiritual insight which breathed from the narrative. The conversation of a distinguished living wit has been compared to the successive discharge of a Liliputian park of artillery, so apt, quick, and effective, in a small way, is his most incidental byway talk. The concealed bitterness of Swift's apparently good-natured conversation, the fine rhetoric of Burke's animated observations on a public question, and the good sense of Reynolds in discussing a point of taste, are quite characteristic of the men, the order of their genius, and the spirit of their lives.

Shakspeare frequently realizes the connexion between habitual speech and principles of action, or the morale of conversation. Thus Octavia's temperament is perfectly described by the fact cited, that she "is of a holy, cold, and still conversation." Prince Henry banishes Falstaff and his companions,

"Till their conversations

Appear more wise and modest to the world."

"I praise God for you, sir," says another of his characters; "your reasons, at dinner, have been sharp and sententious, pleasant without scurrility, witty without affectation, audacious without impudency, learned without opinion, and strange without heresy." And Hamlet thus commends his friend :

The appliances so generally considered needful when people come together, in order to speed the time, is a glaring proof of the rarity of conversational gifts. Games of chance, tableaux,