PROFESSIONAL PROVERBS.

This requires to be explained. I mean those which relate to the three that have been called the Learned Professions, Law, Medicine, and Divinity.

Let the Lawyers lead the way.

An old physician and a young lawyer.

And confide in both with equal frankness. The Italian's bid

Dal medico ed avocato

Non tener il ver celato.

which may be roughly rendered,

Whatever you do, whatever you say,

Tell your doctor and lawyer the truth alway!

Law is a losing affair or else how could the lawyer's live? As Chief Justice Bovill remarked during the Tichbourne trial,

The lawyers have too sober sense

To argue at their own expense.

lawyers, tho' keen,

Like sheers cut not self, but the stuff that's between.

Lawyers' cloaks are lined by their clients.

A lawyer was defined by the late Lord Brougham as 'a learned gentleman, who rescues your estate from your enemy, and keeps it for himself.'

The Law settles questions of Meum and Tuum
By quietly arranging to make the thing Suum.

The last thing that a wise man will do is to go to law.

It is recorded of a famous judge that he used often

to say, though with cautious privacy, that, as a matter of economy, he would allow himself to be robbed of any one of his fields rather than attempt to prevent this by an action at law, and that even though 'Possession is nine points of the law!'

Ut habeas quietum tempus perde aliquid,

is an old Latin adage, which we may construe,

It's well worth while letting oneself be cheated sometimes. Troublesome people, who could not be got rid of in any other way, have been known to disappear entirely after a judiciously advanced loan. But though law is to be avoided, this by no means always follows as to lawyers. Under what exceeding obligations is our English nation to those great men who have established, and administer the laws that fence our freedom.

Then again, what would have become of many an ancient family but for the invaluable guardianship of the old family lawyer! That Oyster example is not all that there is to be said on the subject. The old Craven Street epigram has a very fair remonstrance. was the offered warning, when lawyers settled in a Street where the Thames ran at the bottom.

At the top of the street the lawyers abound
And down at the bottom the barges are found

Fly, Honesty! fly to some safer retreat,

For there's craft on the river, and craft in the street!—

To which the answer.

Why should Honesty fly to a safer retreat

From attorneys and barges, I wot 'em?

For the lawyers are just at the top of the street,

This

Jas. Smith.

And the barges are just at the bottom.-Sir G. Rose.

One other law proverb must by no means be omitted. He who is his own lawyer has a fool for his client.

We will take the Clergy next. Some of the sayings

concerning them, belong more to the times of the The monks seem to

Church of Rome than our own.

have soon become unpopular.

Beware of an ox before, a horse behind,
And a monk on all sides.

did man ere live,

Saw priest or woman yet forgive?—I. R. Lowell.

The bite of priests and wolves are hard to heal.

Good priests are like good women, there are plenty of them, but they're all under ground.—Ital.

Patres vocantur, et saepe sunt.-Erasmus.

Mel in ore, verba laetis,

Fel in corde, fraus in factis.—

quoted by Dr. Kenealy in Tichbourne Trial.

Every priestling conceals a popeling.

As precious as a priest's wife.-Russian.

As foul as a priest's ear.—Irish.

Preti, frati, monachi, e polli
Non ci trovan mai satolli.

Fowls' and friars' greedy eye
Hopeless 'tis to satisfy.

The remarks then become more general.

Next to the minster, last to mass.

They're not a' saints that get holy water.-Scotch.

Every glow worm is not a fire.-Ital.

Many to market few to church.

Attend your church, the parson cries,
To church each fair one goes;
The old ones go to close their eyes,
The young to eye their clothes.

This charge of closing the eyes' is a very old story. John Wesley speaks of having been much refreshed' under a very long sermon. Dean Ramsay relates how

a Scotch clergyman thought to rouse his audience by reproaching them that they were 'all asleep except the idiot Jamie!' Upon which that individual promptly retorted,

‘An if I had na been an idiot, I should have been asleep too!' That other admonition, to the whispering school children, was a trifle more happy,

Hush children, if you speak so loud you'll wake up the old folks!

Quite as many sharp things however have been said on the other side. There is an ignorant impatience of preaching now arising in the lay mind, which demands that the sermon shall last just ten minutes, and yet clearly embody all the leading truths of the gospel. By our preacher perplexed,

How shall we determine ?
"Watch and pray!" says the text,
Go to sleep! says the sermon.

The ladies praise our curate's eyes
I never see their light divine,
For when he prays, he closes them,

And, when he preaches, closes mine.

What is a Visitation? was one day asked by an enquiring parishioner of his legal representative, the churchwarden. 'Why the parsons all meet together to talk and to exchange sermons.' 'What a pity!' was the desponding comment 'that our man always gets the worst of it!'

I've lost my portmanteau

I pity your grief!

All my sermons are in it,
I pity the thief!

To the church then I went

But I grieved and I sorrowed

For the season was Lent,

And the sermon was borrowed.

Dean Ramsay tells another story of a learned divine who had come to preach, and was much disquieted by

the effects of a shower of rain he had experienced. 'Bide a wee, Doctor' was the soothing observation, Bide 'a wee! Ye'll be dry enough presently when ye get into 'the pulpit !'

Other sayings are these

A house going parson makes a church going people.

Pectus facit theologum.

Heart attracts hearers.

"I believed, and therefore will I speak."

clericus in foro

Est piscis in arido.

Parsons, who in the market stand,
Are like a fish upon dry land.

The souls of ministers should be purer than sunbeams. Goldsmith gives of one such, this beautiful description, Allured to brighter worlds, and lead the way!

Sir Walter Scott in his Antiquary,' thus thinks to hit off the three professions. The Clergy live by our sins, the Medical Faculty by our diseases, and the Lawyers by our misfortunes!' How far the former, at any rate, make a living in this way may be doubted; or a living at all in many instances; this has been a difficulty and a danger in all ages. High class cooks get more than curates. But

Scandalous maintenance makes a scandalous ministry.
Matt. Henry.

Church work goes on slowly.

As Dr. Guthrie used to say of his lay brethren,

They expect the piety of an apostle,

The accomplishments of a scholar,
The manners of a gentleman,

it may very fairly be added,

For the pay of a page!'

Proverbs supply thus much of comfort, and show