We are not quite so squeamish to-day; and a thinker of our own time would scarcely deny that English society is very largely governed at this moment by the same kind of rules that Sir Walter Scott thought to be so bad.  But here we need not condemn English society in particular.  All European society has been for hundreds of years conducting itself upon very much the same principles; for the reason that human social experience has been the same in all Western countries.  I should say that the only difference between English society and other societies is that the hardness of character is very much greater.  Let us go back even to the most Christian times of Western societies in the most Christian country of Europe, and observe whether the social code was then and there so very different from the social code of the old “Havamal.”  Mr. Spencer observes in his “Ethics” that, so far as the conduct of life is concerned, religion is almost nothing and practice is everything.  We find this wonderfully exemplified in a most remarkable book of social precepts written in the seventeenth century, in Spain, under the title of the “Oraculo Manual.”  It was composed by a Spanish priest, named Baltasar Gracian, who was born in the year 1601 and died in 1658; and it has been translated into nearly all languages.  The best English translation, published by Macmillan, is called “The Art of Worldly Wisdom.”  It is even more admired to-day than in the seventeenth century; and what it teaches as to social conduct holds as good to-day of modern society as it did of society two hundred years ago.  It is one of the most unpleasant and yet interesting books ever published—­unpleasant because of the malicious cunning which it often displays—­interesting because of the frightful perspicacity of the author.  The man who wrote that book understood the hearts of men, especially the bad side.  He was a gentleman of high rank before he became a priest, and his instinctive shrewdness must have been hereditary.  Religion, this man would have said, teaches the best possible morals; but the world is not governed by religion altogether, and to mix with it, we must act according to its dictates.

These dictates remind us in many ways of the cautions and the cunning of the “Havamal.”  The first thing enjoined upon a man both by the Norse writer and by the Spanish author is the art of silence.  Probably this has been the result of social experience in all countries.  “Cautious silence is the holy of holies of worldly wisdom,” says Gracian.  And he gives many elaborate reasons for this statement, not the least of which is the following:  “If you do not declare yourself immediately, you arouse expectation, especially when the importance of your position makes you the object of general attention.  Mix a little mystery with everything, and the very mystery arouses veneration.”  A little further on he gives us exactly the same advice as did the “Havamal” writer, in regard to being frank