tion them further. I would rather bring now to your notice that even where they do not spring, as they can not all, from the centre of a people's heart, nor declare to us the secretest things which are there, but dwell more on the surface of things, in this case also they have often local or national features, which to study and trace out may prove both curious and instructive. Of how many, for example, we may note the manner in which they clothe themselves in an outward form and shape, borrowed from, or suggested by, the peculiar scenery or circumstances or history of their own land; so that they could scarcely have come into existence, not certainly in the shape which they now wear, and where besides. Thus our own, Make hay while the sun shines, is truly English, and could have had its birth only under such variable skies as ours-not, at any rate, in those southern lands where, during the summer time at least, the sun always shines. In the same way there is a fine Cornish proverb in regard of obstinate wrong-heads, who will take no counsel except from calamities, who dash themselves to pieces against obstacles, which, with a little prudence and foresight, they might easily have avoided. It is this: He who will not be ruled by the rudder must be ruled by the rock. It sets us at once upon some rocky and wreckstrewn coast; we feel that it could never have been the proverb of an inland people. And this, Do not talk Arabic in the house of a Moor; that is, because there thy imperfect knowledge will be detected at once: this we should confidently affirm to be Spanish, wherever we met it. So also a traveler, with any experience in the composition of Spanish sermons and Spanish ollas, could make no mistake in respect of the following: A sermon without Augustine is as a stew without bacon. Thus, Big and empty, like the Heidelberg tun, could have its home only in Germany; that enormous vessel, known as the Heidelberg tun, constructed to contain nearly 300,000 flasks, having now stood empty for hundreds of years. As regards, too, the following, Not every parishpriest can wear Dr. Luther's shoes, we could be in no doubt to what people it appertains. And this, The world is a carcase, and they who gather round it are dogs, plainly proclaims itself as belonging to those Eastern lands, where the unowned dogs prowling about the streets of a city are the natural scavengers, that would assemble round a carcase thrown in the way. So too the form which our own proverb, Man's extremity, God's opportunity, assumes among the Jews, namely this, When the tale of bricks is doubled, Moses comes, plainly roots itself in the early history of that nation, being an allusion to Exod. v: 9-19; and without a knowledge of that history, would be unintelligible altogether. But while it is thus with some, which are bound by the very conditions of their existence to a narrow and peculiar sphere, or at all events move more naturally and freely in it than elsewhere, there are others, on the contrary, which we meet all the world over. True cosmopolites, they seem to have traveled from land to land, and to have made themselves a home equally in all. The Greeks obtained them probably from the older East, and again imparted them to the Romans; and from these they have found their way into all the languages of the western world. Much, I think, might be learned from knowing what these truths are, which are so felt to be true by all nations, that all have loved to possess them in these compendious forms, wherein they may pass readily from 1858.] The Proverbs of Nations Compared. : 169 mouth to mouth which, thus cast into some happy form, have commended themselves to almost all people, and have become a portion of the common stock of the world's wisdom, in every land making for themselves a recognition and a home. Such a proverb, for instance, is, Man proposes, God disposes; one which I am inclined to believe that every nation in Europe possesses, so deeply upon all men is impressed the sense of Hamlet's words, if not the words themselves: "There's a divinity that shapes our ends, Sometimes the proverb does not actually in so many words repeat itself in various tongues. We have indeed exactly the same thought, but it takes an outward shape and embodiment, varying according to the various countries and periods in which it has been current; we have proverbs totally diverse from one another in their form and appearance, but which yet, when we look a little deeper into them, prove to be at heart one and the same, all these their differences being thus only, so to speak, variations of the same air. These are almost always an amusing, often an instructive, study; and to trace this likeness in difference has an interest lively enough. Thus the forms of the proverb, which brings out the absurdity of those reproving others for a defect or a sin, to whom the same cleaves in an equal or in a greater degree, have sometimes no visible connection at all, or the very slightest, with one another; yet, for all this, the proverb is at heart and essentially but one. We say in English: The kiln calls the oven, "Burnt house;" the Italians, The pan says to the pot, Keep off, or you'll smutch me," the Spaniards," The raven cried to the crow, "Avaunt, blackamoor," the Germans, One ass nick-names another, "Long-ears;" while it must be owned there is a certain originality in the Catalan version of the proverb: Death said to the man with his throat cut, "How ugly you look." Under how rich a variety of forms does one and the same thought array itself here. 66 Let me quote another illustration of the same fact. We probably take for granted that Coals to Newcastle is a thoroughly English expression of the absurdity of sending to a place that which already abounds there-water to the sea, fagots to the wood-and English of course it is in the outward garment which it wears; but in its innermost being it belongs to the whole world and to all times. Thus the Greeks said, Owls to Athens, Attica abounding with these birds; the rabbis, Enchantments to Egypt, Egypt being of old esteemed the headquarters of all magic; the Orientals, Pepper to Hindostan; and in the Middle Ages they had this proverb, Indulgences to Rome-Rome being the centre and source of this spiritual traffic; and these by no means exhaust the list. Let me adduce some other variations of the same descriptions, though not running through quite so many languages. Thus compare the German, Who lets one sit on his shoulders, shall have him presently sit on his head, with the Italian, If thou suffer a calf to be laid on thee, within a little they'll clap on the cow; and again, with the Spanish, Give me where I may sit down; I will make where I may lie down. They all three plainly contain one and the same hint that undue liberties are best resisted at the outset, being otherwise liable to be followed up by other and greater ones; but this under how rich and humorous a variety of forms. Not very different are these that follow. We say: Daub yourself with honey, and you'll be covered with fliesthe Danes: Make yourself an ass, and you'll have every man's sack on your shoulders-while the French: Who makes himself a sheep, the wolf devours him-and the Persians: Be not all sugar, or the world will swallow thee up; to which they add, however, as its necessary complement, nor yet all wormwood, or the world will spit thee out. Or again, we are content to say without a figure, The receiver's as bad as the thief; but the French, He sins as much who holds the sack, as he who puts into it; and the Germans, He who holds the ladder is as guilty as he who mounts the wall. We say, A stitch in time saves nine; the Spaniards, Who will not repair his gutter, repairs his whole house. We say, Misfortunes never come single; the Italians have no less than three proverbs to express the same popular conviction: Blessed is that misfortune which comes single; and again, One misfortune is the vigil of another; and again, A misfortune and a friar are seldom alone. Or once more, the Russians say, Call a peasant "Brother," he'll demand to be called "Father;" the Italians, Give a peasant your finger, he'll grasp your fist. Many languages have this proverb, God gives the cold according to the cloth; it is very beautiful, but attains not to the tender beauty of our own, God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb. And, as in that last example, so not seldom will there be an evident superiority of a proverb in one language over one, which however resembles it closely in another. Moving in the same sphere, it will yet be richer, fuller, deeper. Thus our own, A burnt child fears the fire, is good; but that of many tongues, A scalded dog fears cold water, is better still. Ours does but express that those who have suffered once will henceforward be timid in respect of that same thing whence they have suffered; but that other the tendency to exaggerate such fears, so that now they shall fear even where no fear is. And the fact that so it will be, clothes itself in an almost infinite variety of forms. Thus one Italian proverb says: A dog which has been beaten with a stick, is afraid of its shadow; and another, which could only have had its birth in the sunny south, where the glancing but harmless lizard so often darts across our path: Whom a serpent has bitten, a lizard alarms. With a little variation from this, the Jewish rabbis had said long before: One bitten by a serpent, is afraid of a rope's end, even that which bears so remote a resemblance to a serpent as this does, shall now inspire him with terror; and the Cingalese, still expressing the same thought, but with imagery borrowed from their own tropic clime: The man who has received a beating from a firebrand, runs away at sight of a firefly. Some of our Lord's sayings contain the same lessons which the proverbs of the Jewish rabbis contained already; for he was willing to bring forth even from his treasury things old as well as new; but it is very instructive to observe how they acquire in his mouth a dignity and decorum which, it may be, they wanted before. We are all familiar with that word in the Sermon on the mount, "Whosoever shall compel 1858.] The Manger and the Cross. 171 thee to go a mile, go with him twain." The rabbis had a proverb to match, lively and piquant enough, but certainly lacking the gravity of this, and which never could have fallen from the same lips: If thy neighbor call thee an ass, put a packsaddle on thy back; do not, that is, withdraw thyself from the wrong, but rather go forward to meet it. But thus, in least, as in greatest, it was his to make all things new. Sometimes a proverb, without changing its shape altogether, will yet on the lips of different nations be slightly modified; and these modifications, slight as often they are, may not the less be eminently characteristic. Thus in English we say, The river past, and God forgotten, to express with how mournful a frequency, he whose assistance was invoked, it may have been earnestly, in the moment of peril, is remembered no more, so soon as by his help the danger has been surmounted. The Spaniards have the proverb too; but it is with them, The river past, the saint forgotten, the saint being in Spain more prominent objects of invocation than God. And the Italian form of it sounds a still sadder depth of ingratitude: The peril past, the saint mocked; the vows made to him in peril remained unperformed in safety; and he treated something as, in Greek story, Juno was treated by Mandrabulus the Samian, who, having under her auspices and through her direction discovered a gold mine, in his instant gratitude vowed to her a golden ram; which he presently exchanged in intention for a silver one; and again this for a very small brass one; and this for nothing at all; the rapidly descending scale of whose gratitude, with the entire disappearance of his thank-offering, might very profitably live in our memories, as so perhaps it would be less likely to repeat itself in our lives. THE MANGER AND THE CROSS.-It is a noteworthy fact, that Christendom has chosen its symbols from the deepest humiliation of its Head. It is not ashamed of its creed. The birth in the manger, and the death on the cross, are the Alpha and the Omega of its glorying. The astonishing miracles of his life, the glorious attestations of his Divine Sonship, the majesty of his rising, the crowning glory of his ascension, seal his divinity, and call forth the glad praises of his people; but it is the manger and the cross that are the chosen symbols of their faith. That birth so humbling, that death so shameful, are the song and the boast of the millions of his followers. And well may they be so. Well may we glory in the depths of that voluntary humiliation by which the Lord of glory wrought out our salvation. Well may we wear within our hearts the memory of his birth and death as the most sacred of all memories, the sources of our life, our strength, and our salvation. The remembrance of his death is our boast, but it is a boast clad in cypress; it is a glory wrapped in darkness and grief, heralded by a shrouded sun, and a quaking earth. The remembrance of his birth is equally our glory and our boast, but it is a glory wreathed with green, fragrant with frankincense and myrrh, glistening with the beams of the star of Bethlehem, and hymned by the blessed angels of God. In its mystery of humiliation each is wonderful beyond computation; but at the cross we wonder with contrite grief, whilst at Bethlehem we wonder with a glad, exulting joyfulness. CREDIT. WRITTEN DURING THE COMMERCIAL REVULSION OF 1857. "OWE no man any thing," said God of old. Mere shadows were transformed to substances, Inspires 'twixt man and man, transformed, became A goddess, decked with charms, whose liberal hand Dispersed around abundance upon all Her votaries. All sought for Credit now: The humble artizan, who once content With health, and strength to work, and competence, And gradual increase, patient Industry's Most sure reward, on borrowed capital Branched out, a fortune seeking now to make By grinding labor wrung from other hands. The merchant, worth ten thousand stock in trade, Aspired to be a millionaire, on trust, Moving along in all the pride and pomp Of business immense without a base, And counterfeited wealth. And all the arts, The manufactures, agriculture e'en, (Where nature's thousand varied processes Now Mammon's myriad altars in the banks, That, Midas-like, transmuted into gold Whate'er it touched. Alas! it did much more-- |