The worst store is a maid unbestowed.

Welsh.

"A house full of daughters is a cellar full of sour beer" (Dutch).1 Chaucer says,—

"He that hath more smocks than shirts in a bucking
Had need be a man of good forelooking."

Marry your son when you will, and your daughter when you can" (Spanish)."

My son is my son till he's got him a wife;

My daughter's my daughter all the days of her life.

This is a woman's calculation. She knows that a son-in-law will submit to her sway more tamely than a daughter-in-law.

Little pitchers have long ears.

"What the child hears at the fire is soon known at the minster" (French).

Children and fools tell truth.

1

And tell it when it were better left untold.

"These

terrible children!" (French.)*

Children and fools have merry lives.

They quickly forget past sorrows, and are careless of the future.

Children suck the mother when they are young, and the father when they are old.

1 Een huis vol dochters is een kelder vol zuur bier.

2 Casa el hijo quando quisieres, y la hija quando pudieres. Ce que l'enfant oit au foyer, est bientost connu jusqu'au monstier.

• Ces enfants terribles!

YOUTH AND AGE.

A ragged colt may make a good horse.*

An untoward boy may grow up into a proper man. This may be understood either in a physical or a moral sense. "There is no colt but breaks some halter" (Italian),' otherwise it is good for nothing (French).2 Youth comes back from far" (French).3 Do not

despair of it as lost, though it runs a mad gallop; something of the sort is to be expected of all but those preternaturally sedate youths who are born, as the author of Eothen" says, with a Chifney bit in their mouths from their mother's womb.

A man at five may be a fool at fifteen.

In the days when cock-fighting was a fashionable pastime, game chickens that crowed too soon or too often were condemned to the spit as of no promise or ability. "A lad," says Archbishop Whateley, "who has to a degree that excites wonder and admiration the

Spanish: De potro sarnoso buen caballo hermoso. German: Aus klattrigen Fohlen werden die schönsten Hengste. 1 Non c'è polledro che non rompa qualche cavezza. 2 Rien ne vaut poulain s'il ne rompt son lien.

3 Jeunesse revient de loin.

character and demeanour of an intelligent man of mature years, will probably be that and nothing more all his life, and will cease accordingly to be anything remarkable, because it was the precocity alone that ever made him so. It is remarked by greyhound fanciers that a well-formed, compact-shaped puppy never makes a fleet dog. They see more promise in the loose-jointed, awkward, and clumsy ones. And even so there is a kind of crudity and unsettledness in the minds of those young persons who turn out ultimately the most eminent."

Soon ripe soon rotten.

"Late fruit keeps well" (German).1

It is better to knit than to blossom.

Orchard trees may blossom fairly, yet bear no fruit.

It early pricks that will be a thorn.

Some indications of future character may be seen even in infancy. The child is father of the man.

Soon crooks the tree that good gambrel will be.

A gambrel (from the Italian gamba, a leg) is a crooked piece of wood, on which butchers hang the carcasses of beasts by the legs.

As the twig is bent the tree's inclined.

Best to bend while it is a twig.

It is not easy to straighten in the oak the crook that grew in the sapling.-Gaelic.

1 Spät Obst liegt lange.

"What the colt learns in youth he continues in old age" (French).1 "What youth learns, age does not forget" (Danish).*

Reckless youth maks ruefu' eild. -Scotch.

"If youth knew! if age could!" (French).

1 Ce que poulain prend en jeunesse, il le continue en vieillesse.

? Det Ung nemmer, Gammel ei glemmer.

• Si jeunesse savait! si vieillesse pouvait!

NATURAL CHARACTER.

What's bred in the bone will never be out of the flesh. What is innate is not to be eradicated by force of education or self-discipline: these may modify the outward manifestations of a man's nature, but not transmute that nature itself. What belongs to it "lasts to the grave" (Italian). The ancients had several proverbs to the same purpose, such as this one, which is found in Aristophanes—“ You will never make a crab walk straight forwards"—and this Latin one, which is repeated in several modern languages: "The wolf changes his coat, but not his disposition; "-he turns grey with age. The Spaniards say he "loses his teeth, but not his inclinations."3 "What is sucked in with the mother's milk runs out in the shroud" (Spanish). Horace's well-known line,—

"Naturam expellas furca tamen usque recurret

"

Though you cast out nature with a fork, it will still return "—has very much the air of a proverb versified.

1 Chi l'ha per natura, fin alla fossa dura.

2 Lupus pilum mutat non mentem.

El lobo pierde los dientes, mas no los mientes.

* Lo que en la leche se mama, en la mortaja se derrama.