malignity in her
whisper that it blights like an easterly wind, and withers every
reputation it breathes upon. She has a most dexterous plan at making
private weddings. Last winter she married about five women of honour to
their footmen. Her whisper can rob the innocent young lady of her
virtue; and fill the healthful young man with diseases. She can make
quarrels between the dearest friends, and effect a divorce between the
husband and wife who never lived on any terms but the most peaceful and
happy. She can stain the character of the clergymen with corruption,
against which no one could ever utter the faintest moral delinquency.
She can beggar the wealthy, and degrade the noble. In short, she can
whisper men base or foolish, jealous or ill-natured; or, if occasion
requires, can tell you the failings of their great-grandmothers, and
traduce the memory of virtuous citizens who have been in their graves
these hundred years.

A few words more respecting the Whisperer taken from the Bible. The
Psalmist regarded those who whispered against him as those who hated
him. "All that hate me whisper together against me: against me do they
devise my hurt" (Ps. xli. 7). "A whisperer separateth chief friends," is
the declaration of the wise man (Prov. xvi. 28). And again, he says,
"Where there is no whisperer (marginal reading) the strife ceaseth"
(Prov. xxvi. 20). "Whisperers" is one of the names given by St. Paul to
the heathen characters which he describes in the first chapter of
Romans. Let my reader, then, beware of the Whisperer. Give no ear to his
secrets. Guard against an imitation of his example. Favour the candid
and honest man who has nothing to say but what is truthful, charitable,
and wise. Cultivate the same disposition in your own bosom, and so avoid
in yourself the disreputable character of a Whisperer, and prevent the
mischievous consequences in others.

XIV.

_THE HYPERBOLIST._

"He was owner of a piece of ground not larger
Than a Lacedemonian letter."--LONGINUS.

"He was so gaunt, the case of a flagelet was a mansion for
him."--SHAKESPEARE.

The habit of this talker is to exaggerate. He abides not by simple truth
in the statement of a fact or the relation of a story. What he sees with
his naked eye he describes to others in enlarged outlines, filled up
with colours of the deepest hues. What he hears with his naked ears he
repeats to others in words which destroy its simplicity,