And worse than this is the glorification of revenge which speaks out in too many of them. I know nothing of its kind calculated to give one a more shuddering sense of horror than the series which might be drawn together of Italian proverbs on this matter; especially when we take them with the commentary which Italian history supplies, and which shows them no empty words, but the deepest utterances of the nation’s heart. There is no misgiving in these about the right of entertaining so deadly a guest in the bosom; on the contrary, one of them, exalting the sweetness of revenge, declares, _Revenge is a morsel for God_.[56] There is nothing in them, (it would be far better if there were,) of blind and headlong passion, but rather a spirit of deliberate calculation, which makes the blood run cold. Thus one gives this advice: _Wait time and place to act thy revenge, for it is never well done in a hurry_;[57] while another proclaims an immortality of hatred, which no spaces of intervening time shall have availed to weaken: _Revenge of an hundred years old hath still its sucking teeth_.[58] We may well be thankful that we have in England, at least as far as I am aware, no sentiments parallel to these, embodied as the permanent convictions of the national mind. How curious again is the confession which speaks out in another Italian proverb, that the maintenance of the Romish system and the study of Holy Scripture cannot go together. It is this: _With the Gospel one becomes an heretic_.[59] No doubt with the study of the Word of God one does become an heretic, in the Italian sense of the word; and therefore it is only prudently done to put all obstacles in the way of that study, to assign three years’ and four years’ imprisonment with hard labour to as many as shall dare to peruse it; yet certainly it is not a little remarkable that such a confession should have embodied itself in the popular utterances of the nation. [Sidenote: Italian proverbs.]