This method of looking in proverbs for an higher meaning than any which lies on their surface, or which they seem to bear on their fronts; or rather of searching out their highest intention, and claiming that as their truest, even though it should not be that perceived in them by most, or that which lay nearest to them at their first generation, is one that will lead us in many interesting paths. And it is not merely those of heathen antiquity which shall thus be persuaded often, and that without any forcing, to render up a Christian meaning;

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themselves deep in the woods, when indeed they were in the centre of the city. But with deeper cravings of the human heart after love and affection, the proverb was claimed in an higher sense. We may take in proof these striking words of De Quincey, which are the more striking that neither they nor the context contain any direct reference to the proverb: "No man,” he says, ever was left to himself for the first time in the streets, as yet unknown, of London, but he must have felt saddened and mortified, perhaps terrified, by the sense of desertion and utter loneliness which belongs to his situation. No loneliness can be like that which weighs upon the heart in the centre of faces never ending, without voice or utterance for him; eyes innumerable that have 'no speculation' in their orbs which he can understand; and hurrying figures of men and women weaving to and fro, with no apparent purposes intelligible to a stranger, seeming like a masque of maniacs, or a pageant of shadowy illusions." A direct reference to the proverb is to be found in some affecting words of Lord Bacon, who glosses and explains it exactly in this sense;" For a crowd is not company, and faces are but a gallery of pictures, and talk but a tinkling cymbal, where there is no love."

but (as was indeed to be expected) still more often those of a later time, even those which the world had seemed to claim for its own, shall be found to move in a spiritual sphere as their truest. Let me offer in evidence of this these four or five, which come to us from Italy: He who has love in his heart, has spurs in his sides;-Love rules without law;-Love rules his kingdom without a sword;-Love knows nothing of labour;-Love is the master of all arts.* Take these, even with the necessary drawbacks of my English translation; but still more, in their original beauty; and how exquisitely do they set forth, in whatever light you regard them, the free creative impulses of love, its delight to labour and to serve; how worthily do they glorify the kingdom of love as the only kingdom of a free and joyful obedience. While yet at the same time, if we would appreciate them at all their worth, is it possible to stop short of an application of them to that kingdom of love, which, because it is in the highest sense such, is also a kingdom of heaven? And then, what precious witness do these utterances contain, the more precious as current among a people nursed in the theology of Rome, against the shameless assertion that selfishness is the only

* Chi ha l'amor nel petto, ha lo sprone a i fianchi.— Amor regge senza legge. (Cf. Rom. xiii. 9, 10.)-Amor regge il suo regno senza spada.-Amor non conosce travaglio. (Cf. Gen. xxix. 20, 30.)—Di tutte le arti maestro è amore. Di tutto condimento è amore.

motive sufficient to produce good (?) works: for in such an assertion the Romish impugners of a free justification constantly deal; evermore charging this that we hold, of our justification by faith only, (which, when translated into the language of ethics, is at least as important in the province of morality as it is in that of theology,) with being an immoral doctrine, and not so fruitful in deeds of love as one which should connect these deeds with a selfish thought of promoting our own safety thereby.

There are proverbs which reach the height of evangelical morality. "Little gospels"* the Spaniard has somewhat too boldly entitled his; and certainly there are many which at once we feel could nowhere have arisen or obtained circulation but under the influence of Christian faith, being in spirit, and often in form no less than in spirit, the outbirths of it. Thus is it with that exquisitely beautiful proverb of our own: The way to heaven is by Weeping-Cross;† nor otherwise with the Spanish: God never wounds with both hands; not with both, for He ever reserves one with which to bind up and to heal. And another Spanish, evidently intended to give the sum and substance of all which in life is to be desired the most, Peace and patience, and death with penitence, § gives this

Evangelios pequeños.

Der Weg zum Himmel geht durch Kreuzdorn. Compare the medieval obverse of the same: Via Crucis, via lucis.

No hiere Dios con dos manos.

§ Paz y paciencia, y muerte con penitencia.

sum certainly only as it presents itself to the Christian eye. And this of ours is Christian both in form and in spirit: Every cross hath its inscription;—the name, that is, inscribed upon it, of the person for whom it was shaped; it was intended for those shoulders upon which it is laid, and will adapt itself to them; that fearful word is never true which a spirit greatly vexed spake in the hour of its impatience: "I have little faith in the paternal love which I need; so ruthless or so negligent seems the government of this earth."*

So too is it with that ancient German proverb: When God loathes aught, men presently loathe it too. He who first uttered this must have been one who had watched long the ways by which shame and honour travel in this world; and in this watching must have noted how it ever came to pass that even worldly honour tarried not long with them from whom the true honour which cometh from God had departed. For the worldly honour is but a shadow and reflex that waits upon the heavenly; it may indeed linger for a little, but it will be only for a little, after it is divorced from its substance. Where the honour from Him has

* Memoirs of Margaret Fuller, vol. 3, p. 266. In respect of words like these, wrung out from moments of agony, and not the abiding convictions of the utterer, may we not venture to hope that our own proverb, For mad words deaf ears, is often graciously true, even in the very courts of heaven?

+ Wenn Gott ein Ding verdreufst, so verdreufst es auch bald die Menschen.

been withdrawn, he causes in one way or another the honour from men ere long to be withdrawn too. When He loathes, presently man loathes also. The saltless salt is not merely cast out by Him, but is trodden under foot of men. (Matt. v. 13.) A Louis the Fifteenth's death-bed is in its way as hideous to the natural as it is to the spiritual eye.*

We are told of the good Sir Matthew Hale who was animated with a true zeal for holiness, an earnest desire to walk close to God, that he had continually in his mouth the modern Latin proverb, We perish by permitted things. Assuredly it is one very well worthy to be of all remembered, searching as it does into the innermost secrets of men's lives. It is no doubt true that nearly as much danger threatens the soul from things permitted as from things unpermitted-in some respects more for these being disallowed altogether, do not make the insidious approaches of those, which, coming in under allowance, do yet so easily slip into dangerous excess.

It would be interesting to collect, as with reverence one might, variations on scriptural proverbs or sayings, which the proverbs of this world supply; and this, both in those cases where the latter

* The following have all a right to be termed Christian proverbs: Chi non vuol servir ad un solo Signor, à molti ha da servir;-E padron del mondo chi lo disprezza, schiavo chi lo apprezza ;-Quando Dios quiere, con todos vientos llueve.

† Perimus licitis.