sion, if it should be deemed expedient, the fulfilment of our purpose to enter still other walks of this rich old poesy of the Latin Church, and especially to trace the interesting literary history of the two most precious and widely honored of its products. We allude, of course, to the "Dies Ira" and the "Stabat Mater," each of which, as our readers are aware, has been made the subject of an elaborate and scholarly monograph by a living German divine, F. G. Lisco, of Berlin.

ART. V. On the Lessons in Proverbs. By RICHARD CHENEVIX TRENCH, B. D. New York: Redfield. 1853.

WHEN Chesterfield wrote, in his heartless code of courtesy, that "a gentleman never uses a proverb," he contributed an emphatic hint towards settling the question, Wherein consists the essence of a proverb? According to his fastidious view of them, proverbs are worn vulgar by being so often in mouths that sip soup from pewter spoons. A proverb is a curt and pithy expression which embodies an admitted truth, and is current among the million. As the pronoun, to use a schoolmaster's definition, is used in place of a noun, to avoid its too frequent repetition, so the proverb is a representative phrase resorted to for the purpose of shunning tedious explanation or argument. It offers an apology for jumping at conclusions by a single stride, without the fatigue of picking one's steps over the difficult highways of logic. Its strength is based on the principle that, as "good wine needs no bush,"

so sound sense can command assent without the flourishes of fine rhetoric.

Among the Greeks, proverbs were called apoiμía, “wayside idioms," to describe their adaptedness for meeting everyday wants, and to distinguish them from the more logical and discriminating language of scholars and philosophers. In Rome, they were termed adagia; so called, according to Festus, because they were ad agendum apta, practical maxims fitted for solving the problems of daily life.

These synonymes clearly determine one of the prime elements of a proverb, its concrete, practical force and currency among the masses. It is a pair of seven-league boots for a man's thought to jump into, when it would take long strides and hurry to a safe conclusion. Let some crude, dull thinker, with a slender vocabulary, undertake to argue a question in politics or morals, and he will flounder about in mire and thick fog, vainly cudgelling his brains to strike a light, until his memory hits upon an apt proverb, and thenceforward his course is jubilant. To clinch the argument with an old saw, is to come off with flying colors, in his own undisguised estimation. Nor is he entirely in the wrong. The cause that has a sturdy, resolute proverb on its side, is a cause not to be altogether despaired of. A syllogism would have had no force with the ignorant teamster, who doubted if he could draw an inference, but was sure his horses could, if the traces were only strong enough. But ask this rude, yet conscientious teamster, if it is right to do evil that good may come; with a lighting up of the eye, like a mathematician's over his quod erat demonstrandum, and with a click of his lips like the premonition of a rifle's discharge, he will tell you that "A wild goose never lays a tame egg." That settles the question for him.

The mystery that hangs over the origin of our raciest proverbs adds to their charm and authority with the uneducated many. Having existed during a period whereof the memory of man runneth not to the contrary, they form a code of ethics almost as binding on the popular conscience as is the common law in English courts. An aged woman who had known heavy sorrows, and had often consoled herself with the sentiVOL. LXXXV. NO. 176. 15

ment that "God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb," was seized with excessive grief when told she was indebted for her comfort to a mind so filthy and blasphemous as that of Laurence Sterne. Not knowing the authorship of this saying, her fancy had clothed it with a sacred character.

A genuine proverb is always concise, and either figurative, or alliterative, or antithetic, or rhymed, or in some way peculiar, so as to make a notch in the memory, and thus to be easily recalled. It may be alliterative: "He who sends mouths, sends meat." It may be antithetic: "If the doctor cures, the sun sees it; if he kills, the earth hides it." It may be rhymed:

"The devil fell sick, the devil a monk would be;

The devil got well, the devil a monk was he.”

A proverb expresses a truth in the fewest words possible, without any impertinent and offensive surplusage of epithets and adverbs, which, even outside of the domain of moral and social axioms, are quite as apt to cumber as to comfort with the help they bestow. There is scarcely a more verbose, thought-diluting book in our language than the one absurdly mistitled "Proverbial Philosophy." A more seemly christening would have been, "Tricks of Speech," or "Every-day Thoughts ambitiously paraphrased." The old saying, “A short horse is soon curried," if Tupperized, would read, "The abbreviated pony, diminutive offspring of cold Canada, rejoices in a right speedy discharge from the brisk manipulations of the hired hostler."

The proverbs of a nation are its autographs of character. In them, as in "a sanctuary of intuitions," may be found its confession of religious faith, its maxims of social and political philosophy, and an epitome of its genius, wit, and sentiment. They form a treasury of choicest wisdom, to which poets resort for the burden-words of their songs. Historians follow them as clews in the investigation of popular usages and manners. Orators catch from them their key-notes, when they would pipe tunes to which the people will consent to dance. As an illustration of their connection with national character, we might cite the Spanish proverb, "The nearer