are hortatory or advisory in their character. What caution is couched in this profound Italian saying: "The offender never pardons." He is a happy man who has never been made to feel this bitter truth. "Metal is dangerous in a blind horse.” How excellent is this! How speedily and surely those who are both impetuous and ignorant ruin themselves! We have the proverb, "Little pitchers have great ears,” in reference to children and persons of small capacity. The French add to it thus: "And what a child hears in Paris is soon known in Savoy." The necessity of a master's oversight is quaintly expressed in the words: "The master's eye makes the horse fat." The canny Scotch proverb, "The dog winna yowl if you fell him with a bane," is very characteristic, but more shrewd than elevated in its tone. The following is as sagacious, and in a higher vein: "Ane may bind a sack before it be fu'." How many persons might save a competence if they would bind up the sack in time, who by insisting upon cramming it to repletion, topple it over and see all their substance spilt out! What a golden sentence is this of the Jews: "If a word be worth one shekel, silence is worth two." Similar is the Persian, "Speech is silvern, silence is golden;" and the Italian, "Ile who speaks sows, he who keeps silence reaps." Proverbs such as these copied into one's note-book, and glanced over day by day, could not but be helpful guides in life.

There are other proverbs that may be called wise and weighty utterances of truth, the results of old experience, the distilled essence of many wholesome herbs. These are frequently models of terse and idiomatic style. One can no where find the power of the English language more strikingly displayed than in those proverbs which embody the results of much thought and large experience. Some of our best writers have evidently improved their power of expression by their study. Lord Bacon had a great fondness for them; and his immortal essays bear many marks of that predilection. Old Fuller, whom Coleridge calls the wittiest writer in the English language, revels in their use, and rivals their point and poetry in his own brilliant sentences. Dean Swift, than whom there is no purer English writer, as to style, and none more filthy as to sentiment, has evidently paid much attention to these utter

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ances of the common heart and mind of man. ster was well acquainted with them, and employed them much in his marvellous conversation; and we can not but think that the love of them unconsciously contributed to the formation. of his matchlessly vigorous and compact style. We throw together without order a few proverbs to illustrate these remarks. We have all noticed the tenacity with which weak men adhere to opinions, which have been formed without any just reasons, and can not therefore be swept away by any argument. This familiar fact comes out in this striking form: "A wise man changes his opinions, a fool never." "It is easy to bowl down hill." Who can not succeed when things are in a position which make success a necessity? "The best fish swim near the bottom." So are we taught that nothing preeminently good is to be caught easily and on the surface. "When flatterers meet, the devil goes to dinner." He feels that his presence is no longer needed. Each will be to the other in the place of the devil to stir up his pride. The fox figures in proverbs, almost as much as in fables. The following are full of wit and convey the same general lessons: "When the fox preaches beware of the geese." The French say when they see an artful person with glozing words deluding the credulous: "The fox preaches to the hens." "The fox should not be of the jury at a goose trial." What can be more painfully true than this: "Hope is a good breakfast, but a bad supper." How quaint and sly is this admonition to too fond and indulgent mothers: "A child may have too much of its mother's blessing." Here is one which is exceedingly fine in its poetic form, most admirable in its teaching, and very rich in its application: "He that pryeth into every cloud may be stricken with a thunderbolt." What could be more beautiful and wise? It applies to him who rashly meddles with the obscure and covered troubles of his neighbors; and then it is a valuable prudential maxim. It applies no less to him who would rashly intrude into the mysteries of the dispensation of Him around whose throne are clouds and darkness; and then it becomes a sublime religious admonition; "No sunshine but hath some shadow." The prosperous know this well; and happy are they who understand the correlative truth, that there are shadows only because

there is a sun. These thoughts have been well expressed by an invalid:

"Out of my first home, warm and bright,

I passed to the cold world's lowering night;
Ill hath it ended that well begun,

Into the shadow, out of the sun!

"Out of my last home, dark and cold,

I shall pass to the city whose streets are gold;

Well shall be ended that ill begun,

Out of the shadow, into the sun!”

There is another saying which the clergy have frequent opportunities to know is singularly just: "Zeal is fit only for wise men, but is found mostly in fools."

These examples will verify the definition of proverbs with which we began our article, that they are the witty wisdom of a nation. We dwell a few moments on others with special reference to their poetry, satire, and wit.

The absurd tendency of men to reprove others for faults of which they are equally guilty, has been ridiculed in every variety of form in the proverbs of all nations. In English it is thus expressed: "The kettle calls the pot black." "The kiln calls the oven, 'burnt-house."" The Italians have it in this form: "The pan says to the pot, Keep off or you'll smutch me." The Spaniards say: "The raven cried to the crow--Avaunt, blackamoor." The Germans have it thus: "One ass nick-named another long-ears." In a Catalan variation of this proverb there is an exquisite drollery and humor: "Death said to the man with his throat cut, How ugly you look!" The transfer to Death of the disgust which a dying man may be well supposed to feel for him, is a rare touch of wit. Charles Dickens, in his Bleak House, has not given us a more terrible idea of the harrowing delays of the Court of Chancery in England, than is packed into a little sentence, which has both a frightful earnestness and a sardonic grin: "Hell and Chancery are always open."

The finest passages of the best poems have not richer and truer poetry than is to be found in many of the proverbs of the people. We have already quoted that exquisite English proverb: "Gray hairs are death's blossoms." The Italian, "Time is an inaudible file," is not less admirable. What a

noble sentiment is this: "Fame is the perfume of noble deeds." The Turkish proverb, how characteristically national and expressive, "Death is a black camel which kneels at every man's gate," that is, for the purpose of taking up a coffin. The Japanese saying, "There are no fans in hell," is strikingly national and suggestive. The following, from the Chinese, though too long and artificial to come up to our standard of its proper form, is yet highly poetical and wise: "Towers are measured by their shadows, and great men by their calumniators."

The fine wit of proverbs is usually displayed in connection with an equally admirable poetic form. One of them, which is sure to live through every generation, is, though familiar, well worth quoting, for the sake of the gloss made upon it by the author of Guesses at Truth: "Hell is paved with good intentions." The gloss is this: "Pluck up the stones, ye sluggards, and break the devil's head with them!" A ridiculous boasting before the world of the peculiar excellence of all a man owns, is well set off by a Scotch saying: "A man may love his house well without riding on the ridge." Proverbs spare no classes of persons and no forms of vice. Niggardly charity is well expressed by the Germans: "He will swallow an egg and give away the shell in alms." Learned folly, as the greatest of all, is thus humorously described: "A fool, unless he knows Latin, is never a great fool."

A fine and subtle knowledge of the human heart is constantly displayed in these wise witicisms. The Italian says: "If pride were an art, how many graduates we should have." The English saying: "As proud go behind as before," is emphatically American in its application. What a reproach is conveyed in this often too just hit at the ingratitude and forgetfulness of children: "One father supports ten children. Ten children can not support one father." There is a delicate touch in this French word: "It is easy to go afoot when one leads one's horse by the bridle." It is not difficult, but rather pleasant to change from rest to labor, from ease to hardness, from dignity and state to condescension, when rest, and ease, and dignity may be resumed at will. Admirably humorous is this description of forced and unreal resignation: "Welcome death! said the rat when the trap went down." The blacks in the Island of IIayti embody their ridicule of the mulattoes in a proverb, through which

you can see the white of contorted eyes and the grin of ivory teeth. It appears that the mulatoes, in imitation of the whites, frequently fight bloodless duels. The negroes say: "Mulattoes fight; kids die." The government of the tongue is thus recommended: "He who says what he likes shall hear what he does not like." Unreasonable expectation of finding perfection in an imperfect world, is thus expressed in English, “He expects better bread than can be made of wheat;" and thus in Portuguese : "He that will have a horse without fault let him go afoot." Very admirably is procrastination set forth by this proverb of the Spanish: "By the street of by-and-by you arrive at the house of never." r." In these proverbs, and in many others, the wisdom and poetry and wit are combined; and it is because they thus constitute a three-fold cord that they are not soon broken.

In no particular are the characteristic differences of nations more displayed than in those proverbs concerning women, matrimony, and love. Many of the Italian and Spanish are shameful; and such as can not be repeated. They show a low estimate of woman. They are almost always sneering, sarcastic, and sensual. Very different are the German. They are affectionate, laudatory, and pleasant. The English are various in their character. While many of them are coarse, and many sarcastic, there are many also that are cheerful, affectionate, and refined. One is at first surprised to find among them so many that ridicule and banter women. For although it be one of these proverbs that "England is the paradise of women," it is nevertheless true, as an old collector of proverbs has said in reference to this subject: "That it is worth noting that in no country in the world are men so fond of, so much governed by, so wedded to their wives, yet hath no language so many proverbial invectives against women." The truth is, that while in the Spanish and Italian ridicule and invective there is seen to be sincerity and passion, in the English it is evident that it is mere badinage and fun. It is the compensation which men make to themselves for knowing how fully and gladly they are bound in silken chains. It seems to be characteristic of Englishmen and Americans, that those who most admire women most play off their wit against them. Women are not wanting in the power of making just reprisals, but unfortunately for them, and fortunately for men,