a knowledge of that history would be unintelligible altogether. The same may be said of this: _We must creep into Ebal, and leap into Gerizim_; in other words, we must be slow to curse, and swift to bless. (Deut. xxvii. 12, 13.) But while it is thus with some, which are bound by the very conditions of their existence to a narrow and peculiar sphere, or at all events move more naturally and freely in it than elsewhere, there are others on the contrary which we meet all the world over. True cosmopolites, they seem to have travelled from land to land, and to have made themselves an home equally in all. The Greeks obtained them probably from the older East, and again imparted them to the Romans; and from these they have found their way into all the languages of the western world. Much, I think, might be learned from knowing what those truths are, which are so felt to be true by all nations, that all have loved to possess them in these compendious forms, wherein they may pass readily from mouth to mouth: which, thus cast into some happy form, have commended themselves to almost all people, and have become a portion of the common stock of the world’s wisdom, in every land making for themselves a recognition and an home. Such a proverb, for instance, is _Man proposes, God disposes_;[70] one which I am inclined to believe that every nation in Europe possesses, so deeply upon all men is impressed the sense of Hamlet’s words, if not the words themselves: “There’s a divinity that _shapes_ our ends, _Rough-hew_ them how we will.” [Sidenote: Proverbs compared.]