ffHAP. I.] CONVERSATION AND ADDRESS. 297 



as well as words, be destroyed by the look ; according to 

 Cicero, who, recommending affability to his brother towards 

 the provincials, tells him, it did not wholly consist in giving 

 easy access to them, unless he also received them with an 

 obliging carriage. " It is doing nothing," says he, " to admit 

 them with an open door and a locked-up countenance." 

 " Nil interest habere ostium apertum, vultum clausum."8r 

 We learn also that Atticus, previous to the first interview 

 between Cicero and Csesar, in which the issue of the war 

 was involved, seriously advised his friend, in his letters, to 

 compose his countenance and assume a calm tranquillity. 

 But if the management of the face alone has so great an 

 effect, how much greater is that of familiar conversation, 

 with all its attendants. Indeed the whole of decorum and 

 elegance of manners seems to rest in weighing and maintain- 

 ing, with an even balance, the dignity betwixt ourselves and 

 others ; which is well expressed by Livy, though upon a 

 different occasion, in that character of a person, where he 

 says, that I may neither seem arrogant nor obnoxious ; that 

 is, neither forget my own nor others' liberty.^ 



On the other side ; a devotion to urbanity and external 

 elegance terminates in an awkward and disagreeable affec- 

 tation. For what is more preposterous than to copy the 

 theatres in real life? And though we did not fall into 

 this vicious extreme, yet we should waste time and depress 

 the mind too much by attending to such lighter matters. 

 Therefore, as in universities, the students, too fond of company, 

 are usually told by their tutors, that friends are the thieves 

 of time ; so the assiduous application to the decorum of con- 

 versation steals from the weightier considerations. Again, 

 they who stand in the first rank for urbanity, and seem born, as 

 it were, for this alone, seldom take pleasure in anything else, 

 and scarce ever rise to the higher and more solid virtues. On 

 the contrary, the consciousness of a defect in this particular 

 makes us seek a grace from good opinion, which renders all 

 things else becoming ; but where this is wanting, men endea- 



* De Petit. Consulatus, xi. 44. 



•^ Speech of Hanno. ** Nunc interroganti senatori, poeniteatne me 

 adhuc suscepti adversus Romanes belli 1 si reticeam, aut superbua aut 

 obnoxius videar ; quorum alterum est homiuis alieu» libertivtis oblitl, 



tei-um su*.** Livy, br xxiii, c. I'i. 



i 



