One of the wisest and best among our English ethical writers, the author of Companions of my Solitude, says, àpropos of gossip, that one half of the evil-speaking of the world arises, not from malice prepense, but from mere want of amusement. And I think we may even grant that in the other half, constituted small of mind or selfish in disposition, it is seldom worse than the natural falling back from large abstract interests, which they cannot understand, upon those which they can—alas! only the narrow, commonplace, and personal.

Yet they mean no harm; are often under the delusion that they both mean and do a great deal of good, take a benevolent watch over their fellow-creatures, and so forth. They would not say an untrue word, or do an unkind action—not they! The most barefaced slanderer always tells her story with a good motive, or thinks she does; begins with a harmless “bit of gossip,” just to pass the time away—the time which hangs so heavy! and ends by becoming the most arrant and mischievous tale-bearer under the sun.

Ex. gratiâ—Let me put on record the decline and fall, voluntarily confessed, of two friends of mine, certainly the last persons likely to take to tittle-tattle; being neither young nor elderly; on the whole, perhaps rather “bright” than stupid; having plenty to do and to think of—too much, indeed, since they came on an enforced holiday out of that vortex in which London whirls her professional classes round and round, year by year, till at last often nothing but a handful of dry bones is cast on shore.