Memorable words of illustrious men will frequently not die in the utterance, but pass from mouth to mouth, being still repeated with complacency, till at length they have received their adoption into the great family of national proverbs. Such were the gnomes or sayings of the Seven Wise Men of Greece, supposing them to have been indeed theirs, and not ascribed to them only after they had obtained universal currency and acceptance. So too a saying, attributed to Alexander the Great, may very well have arisen on the occasion, and under the circumstances, to which its birth is commonly ascribed. When some of his officers reported to him with something of dismay the innumerable multitudes of the Persian hosts which were advancing to assail him, the youthful Macedonian hero silenced them and their apprehensions with the reply: _One butcher does not fear many sheep_; not in this applying an old proverb, but framing a new, and one admirably expressive of the confidence which he felt in the immeasurable superiority of the Hellenic over the barbarian man;—and this word, having been once set on foot by him, has since lived on, and that, because the occasions were so numerous on which a word like this would find its application. And taking occasion from this royal proverb, let me just observe by the way, that it would be a great mistake to assume, though the error is by no means an uncommon one, that because proverbs are popular, they have therefore originally sprung from the bosom of the populace. What was urged in my first lecture of their popularity was not at all intended in this sense; and the sound common sense, the wit, the wisdom, the right feeling, which are their _predominant_ characteristics, alike contradict any such supposition. They spring rather from the sound healthy kernel of the nation, whether in high place or in low; and it is surely worthy of note, how large a proportion of those with the generation of which we are acquainted, owe their existence to the foremost men of their time, to its philosophers, its princes, and its kings; as it would not be difficult to show. And indeed the evil in proverbs testifies to this quite as much as the good. Thus the many proverbs in almost all modern tongues expressing scorn of the “villain” are alone sufficient to show that for the most part they are very far from having their birth quite in the lower regions of society, but reflect much oftener the prejudices and passions of those higher in the social scale. [Sidenote: A Spanish proverb.]