ONE of the wisest and best among our English ethical writers, the author of Companions of my Solitude, says, propos 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.