Lean not on earth, 'twill pierce thee to the heart,
A broken reed at best, but oft a spear;

On its sharp point peace bleeds and Hope expires!

It is true, 'Every cloud has a silver lining,' but then it has a great deal in it besides.

What remedy's best for a bootless bale?
She answered, Endless weeping!

For the mother knew that her only son

In the Strid's dark depths was sleeping.-Rogers.

But how often

When bale is hext

Boot is next.

As the Spanish turnspit consoled himself,

The largest leg of mutton must get done at last.

God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb.

says Mr. Sterne; a grand piece of sentiment, but not the Scripture, it is often supposed to be. It was a beautiful thought of the Greeks, in their old time mythus, to leave Hope at the bottom of the box of Pandora.

Look to the light,

All will be right.

Morning is ever the daughter of night,

All that was dark shall be all that is bright.

The Italians think women more hopeful than men, La Speranza è feminina.

Again

La Speranza è il pan dei poveri.
Hope is the poor man's daily bread.

Hope springs eternal in the human breast.

As a modern poet has sweetly sung

Hope that lives

On what God gives

Is Christian Hope, well founded!

Cum duplicantur lateres venit Moyses.

When the tale of bricks is doubled Moses appears.

Such was one proverb generated by a hope in God that had good foundation. And there is another still earlier.

And now we come to Charity, with its two fold acceptation, through our, in this instance, English poverty of language. Caritas is love-a loving heart, and what that leads to; saying and doing, not saying and not doing, according as God may be most honoured and man best advantaged.

Charity gives out at the door, and God puts in at the window.

Indiscriminate charity is the bane of society.

Thus much of the ordinary acceptation of Charity. It also implies all that kindliness of principle from which such acts flow.

Kindness is conquering.

Col miel e nom coľ aceto si pigliano le mosche. A drop of honey will catch more flies than a pint of vinegar.

Frightening a bird's not the way to catch it.

Love rules his kingdom without a sword.

"Charity suffereth long and is kind."

I Cor. xiii, 4.

To quote all St. Paul's enconiums would be to copy out the whole chapter. It were well that all had it at heart, and by heart, that wonderful extolling and exhibiting of "the greatest of these, Charity!" All that is noble, all that is loveable, all that is truly excellent, is contained in this word.

"GOD IS LOVE."

Why speak further?

But to return to things on a lower level, observe this too, its Humility; without condoning vice, the tender, humble compassion with which Charity seeks out, and would reclaim the wanderer.

"Considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted."

Gal. vi, I.

Aut sumus, aut fuimus, vel possumus esse quod hic est.
That which is he,

We are, or were, or we might be!

As the good old Puritan used to say, so often as he saw a man lead off to execution; a thing, unhappily, but too common in his day—

But for the grace of God, there goes John Bradford !

"Charity shall cover the multitude of sins."

But not of a man's own.

I Peter iv, 8.

This perversion I shall

have to deal with in another place. It might be very convenient but it is not possible to

compound for sins, that we're inclined to,

By shunning those that we've no mind to.

or after some misdeed by seeking to balance it by an imagined good deed. This is what some of those unpleasant old robber chiefs seem to have attempted; after murdering and plundering all their life time, they would try to make it all right by founding a church or a monastery; some even sought for salvation by putting on the garments of a friar to die in.

who to be sure of Paradise

Dying, put on the robes of Dominick,

Or in Franciscan think to pass disguised.-Milton.

Too often they appear to have been encouraged in this absurdity. It has been said well and bitterly, With most men,

Success covers more sins than charity.

That

True charity will not undertake to be liberal either with ill gotten, or with other people's money. gentleman's conduct is not to be improved into a precedent, who was so much affected with the pleadings of the preacher, that he emptied the whole of his neighbour's pocket into the plate!

Ancho is charitable all must own,

He steals a pig and gives the poor the bone.-Biscayan.

REFUGIUM PROVERBIALE.

A valued friend of mine, of well known fame in the scientific world, among other valuable publications has edited a 'Refuge list for plants not otherwise classified.' I propose to make this chapter something of the same kind for proverbs.

Honesty, Content, Industry and Politeness are every bit as cardinal as any of those which the Church of Rome has canonized.

Honesty, then, let us begin with.

Honesty is the best policy.

Linea recta brevissima.

as is M. Guizot's well chosen and very excellent motto; The shortest line's the straightest 'twixt two points.Ld. Lytton.

as we, all of us, used to be informed in the nursery. Our modern poets have very properly stigmatized the way in which great fishes are often allowed to break through meshes, by which smaller offenders are infallibly caught.

'Tis mean to rob a hen roost, or a hen,

But stealing thousands makes us gentlemen!