his lips;[44] while in the number that relate to farming, they bear singular witness to that strong and lively interest in agricultural pursuits, which was so remarkable a feature in the old Italian life.[45] [Sidenote: Number of Spanish proverbs.] It will not be possible to pass under even this hastiest review more than two or three of the modern families of proverbs. Let us turn first to the proverbs of Spain. I put these in the foremost rank, because the Spanish literature, poor in many provinces wherein other literatures are rich, is probably richer in this province than any other in the world, certainly than any other in the western world; and this I should be inclined to believe, both as respects the quantity and the quality.[46] In respect of quantity, the mere number of Spanish proverbs is astonishing. A collection I have been using while preparing these lectures, contains between seven and eight thousand, and yet does not contain all; for I have searched it in vain for several with which from other sources I had become acquainted. Nay, it must be very far indeed from exhausting the entire stock, seeing that there exists a manuscript collection brought together by a distinguished Spanish scholar, in which the proverbs have attained to the almost incredible amount of from five and twenty to thirty thousand.[47] [Sidenote: Spanish characteristics.] And in respect of their quality, it needs only to call to mind some of those, so rich in humour, so double-shotted with homely sense, wherewith the Squire in _Don Quixote_ adorns his discourse; being oftentimes indeed not the fringe and border, but the main woof and texture of it: and then, if we assume that the remainder are not altogether unlike these, we shall, I think, feel that it would be difficult to rate them more highly than they deserve. And some are in a loftier vein; for taking, as we have a right to do, Cervantes himself as the truest exponent of the Spanish character, we should be prepared to trace in the proverbs of Spain a grave thoughtfulness, a stately humour, to find them breathing the very spirit of chivalry and honour, and indeed of freedom too;—for in Spain, as throughout so much of Europe, it is despotism, and not freedom, which is new. Nor are we disappointed in these our expectations. How eminently chivalresque, for instance, the following: _White hands cannot hurt_.[48] What a grave humour lurks in this: _The ass knows well in whose face he brays_.[49] What a stately apathy, how proud a looking of calamity in the face, speaks out in the admonition which this one contains: _When thou seest thine house in flames, approach and warm thyself by it_;[50] what a spirit of freedom, which refuses to be encroached on even by the highest, is embodied in another: _The king goes as far as he may, not as far as he would_;[51] what Castilian pride in the following: _Every layman in Castile might make a king, every clerk a pope_. The