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.