8. We are often reminded of a still more important, but perhaps unwelcome, truth, that the cause of many of our failures and misfortunes is to be found in ourselves. The mill cannot grind with the water that is past, tells us but too plainly of the opportunities we have missed, never perhaps to return. A German proverb puts the same truth in a still more impressive manner, He has been through the forest and found no firewood.

9. A few proverbs there are to be found, which speak in a far less wholesome spirit. One suggests that It is better to be born lucky than wise, and another proclaims the false and desperate doctrine that Luck is all. Unhappy and unwise indeed are those who rest their hope on such an uncertain foundation.

10. The danger of encouraging bad habits is well pointed out in the words Ill weeds grow apace. The wrong act grows but too rapidly into a habit, the habit becomes our master, and we are enslaved before we are really aware of our danger. We are told on the highest authority, that of the Bible-"Be sure your sin will find you out,' and this all-important truth is confirmed by the experience of every age, and has found ample and varied expression in our proverbial literature. In an unguarded moment we utter unhallowed curses, and speedily forget them all. The well-known words Curses like chickens always come home to roost, assure us that a day of remembrance and bitter repentance will come. The ancient Greeks have left on record their experience, The mill of God grinds late, but it grinds to powder, and we express the same inevitable truth in our proverb, God comes with leaden feet, but strikes with iron hands.

11. We can often discover to what nation a proverb belongs by a little consideration. Thus, our own, Make hay while the sun shines, is truly English, and could have had its birth only in such a changeable climate as ours. So too the form which our own proverb Man's extremity, God's opportunity, assumes among the Jews, When the tale of bricks is doubled, Moses comes, has a clear reference to

1 Numbers xxxii. 23.

the early history of that nation as told in Exodus (ch. v.), and without a knowledge of that history would be quite unintelligible. We owe to India one proverb of special beauty, which rises to a much higher level of thought and feeling than the generality, The sandal-tree perfumes the axe that fells it. This contrasts very favourably with an Italian one which teaches the cruel and unchristian doctrine, that Revenge is a morsel for the gods.

12. Some special event in the history of a nation or an individual may have given rise to a proverb. One instance of this is furnished by scripture history. When Saul, on the eve of being appointed the first King of Israel, revealed quite suddenly that higher and nobler life which had hitherto been slumbering in him, undreamt of alike by himself and others, and took his place among the prophets, the question was asked, perhaps half in wonder, half in scorn, "Is Saul also among the prophets," and, therefore, we are told it became a proverb (1 Sam. x. 11).

13. The familiar expression There's many a slip 'twixt the cup and the lip comes to us from the ancient Greeks, and has a very striking story connected with it. A master treated with great cruelty his slaves who were occupied in planting a vineyard: one of the slaves, having been treated with unusual harshness, prophesied that his unfeeling master should never taste of the wine from his own vineyard. Anxious to prove this prediction false, the master took the earliest grapes, and bade the slave fill a goblet with the newly-made wine. Then taking the cup into his hand, he taunted the slave as a false prophet, who still undaunted replied, "Many things happen between the cup and the lip." At that moment a cry was raised that a wild boar had broken into the vineyard, and setting down the cup untouched, the master rushed forth to expel the wild beast, and was killed in the en

counter.

14. A Scotch proverb, He thai invented the maiden, first hanselled it, alludes to the fact that the Regent Morton,2

1 Hanselled, made the first use of.

2 Earl of Morton, Regent of Scotland during Queen Mary's reign, executed 1581.

the inventor of a new instrument of death, called the Maiden, was himself the first to suffer death by it.

15. The origin of the saying, which has now become thoroughly proverbial, You may pay too dear for your whistle, is found in the following extract from a paper by its author, the celebrated Benjamin Franklin:-"When I was a child of seven years old, my friends on a holiday filled my pockets with coppers. I went directly to a shop where they sold toys for children, and being charmed with the sound of a whistle that I saw by the way in the hands of another boy I voluntarily offered him all my money for it. I then came home, and went whistling all over the house, much pleased with my whistle, but disturbing all the family. My brothers, and sisters, and cousins, understanding the bargain I had made, told me I had given for it four times as much as it was worth. This put me in mind what good things I might have bought with the rest of the money: and they laughed at me so much for my folly that I cried with vexation, and the reflection gave me more chagrin than the whistle gave me pleasure. This, however, was afterwards of use to me, the impression continuing on my mind; so that often when I was tempted to buy some unnecessary thing, I said to myself, 'Don't give too much for the whistle;' and so I saved my money. As I grew up, came into the world, and observed the actions of men, I met with many, very many, who gave too much for their whistle."-Chiefly selected from Archbishop Trench's Lessons on Proverbs.

THE SWISS PEASANT.

1. Here the bleak Swiss their stormy mansion tread,
And force a churlish soil for scanty bread.
No vernal blooms their torpid rocks array,
But winter, lingering, chills the lap of May;
No zephyr fondly sues the mountain's breast,
But meteors glare, and stormy glooms invest.

Yet still ev'n here content can spread a charm, Redress the clime and all its rage disarm.

Though poor the peasant's hut, his feasts though small, He sees his little lot the lot of all.

3.

With patient angle trolls the finny deep,

Or drives his venturous ploughshare to the steep;
Or seeks the den where snow-tracks mark the way,
And drags the struggling savage into day.
At night returning, every labour sped,
He sits him down the monarch of a shed;
Smiles by his cheerful fire, and round surveys
His children's looks, that brighten at the blaze;
While his loved partner, boastful of her hoard,
Displays her cleanly platter on the board;
And, haply, too, some pilgrim, thither led,
With many a tale repays the nightly bed.

Thus every good his native wilds impart,
Imprints the patriot passion on his heart;
And ev'n those hills that round his mansion rise,
Enhance the bliss his scanty fund supplies.
Dear is that shed to which his soul conforms,
And dear that hill which lifts him to the storms;
And, as a child, when scaring sounds molest,
Clings close and closer to the mother's breast,
So the loud torrent and the whirlwind's roar,
But bind him to his native mountains more.