Other families of proverbs would each of them tell its own tale, give up its own secret; but I must not seek from this point of view to question them further. I would rather bring now to your notice that even where they do not spring, as they cannot all, from the centre of a people’s heart, nor declare to us the secretest things which are there, but dwell more on the surface of things, in this case also they have often local or national features, which to study and trace out may prove both curious and instructive. Of how many, for example, we may note the manner in which they clothe themselves in an outward form and shape, borrowed from, or suggested by, the peculiar scenery or circumstances or history of their own land; so that they could scarcely have come into existence, not certainly in the shape which they now wear, anywhere besides. Thus our own, _Make hay while the sun shines_, is truly English, and could have had its birth only under such variable skies as ours,—not, at any rate, in those southern lands where, during the summer time at least, the sun always shines. In the same way there is a fine Cornish proverb in regard of obstinate wrongheads, who will take no counsel except from calamities, who dash themselves to pieces against obstacles, which with a little prudence and foresight they might easily have avoided. It is this: _He who will not be ruled by the rudder, must be ruled by the rock_. It sets us at once upon some rocky and wreck-strewn coast; we feel that it could never have been the proverb of an inland people. And this, _Do not talk Arabic in the house of a Moor_,[65]—that is, because there thy imperfect knowledge will be detected at once,—this we should confidently affirm to be Spanish, wherever we met it. So also a traveller with any experience in the composition of Spanish sermons and Spanish ollas could make no mistake in respect of the following: _A sermon without Augustine is as a stew without bacon_.[66] Thus _Big and empty, like the Heidelberg tun_,[67] could have its home only in Germany; that enormous vessel, known as the Heidelberg tun, constructed to contain nearly 300,000 flasks, having now stood empty for hundreds of years. As regards, too, the following, _Not every parish-priest can wear Dr. Luther’s shoes_,[68] we could be in no doubt to what people it appertains. And this, _The world is a carcase, and they who gather round it are dogs_, plainly proclaims itself as belonging to those Eastern lands, where the unowned dogs prowling about the streets of a city are the natural scavengers, that would assemble round a carcase thrown in the way. So too the form which our own proverb, _Man’s extremity, God’s opportunity_, or as we sometimes have it, _When need is highest, help is nighest_ assumes among the Jews, namely this, _When the tale of bricks is doubled, Moses comes_,[69] plainly roots itself in the early history of that nation, being an allusion to Exod. v. 9-19, and without