Philosophy, or Belles Lettres, at the nearest bookstall, for a few shillings, we obtain the needed volume. Therein is contained the author's learning, labour, skill and industry; it represents his anxious ponderings, his hopes, his fears, his long years of study; and yet this is all ours for a few counters. Again, that great handmaid to knowledge, the printing press, multiplies this, seed-like, a thousand fold; so that we moderns need only have the desire to learn, and without difficulty, with little inconvenience, and with only a pleasurable amount of toil, we can dive into the recesses of wisdom, and lave to our heart's content in a sea of knowledge. How different with the primitive ancients; they lived in isolated districts, tending their flocks and herds. No paper, no printing, no journals, no instructive biographies, no cheap bibles, no entertaining novels, nor any tracts, asking, as they do, in significantly printed headings, "Where are we all going to "? Knowledge must have been with them the result of actual experience, and of a facile and retentive memory, capable of receiving the impress of tradition.

An old man would gather around him the eager youth, and would expound to them what he knew of the phases of nature, would recite to them the heroic deeds of one ancestor, and dilate upon the peaceful virtues of another. There was, we should imagine, a mutual sympathy between the teacher and the taught; his words would become stereotyped in their memories, and, when confirmed by actual results, would instantly be brought back vividly to the mind, as "these were the foregone conclusions of my teacher." The phrases became the watchwords for the growing youth; now warning, now stimulating, now cheering; and the identical words, agreeably and briefly couched, were in after time lisped by the infant, uttered by the rising youth, and confirmed by the man,thus handed down to us as a "legacy from the past to the present," in the shape of household words and proverbs.

The Hebrew-Semitic and the Hellenic races for a long time pursued their sphere of activity unknown to each other; their orbits touched not one another. The former had to combat with the remains of Egyptianism, with foes within and without, but invariably, in their mental capacity, triumphed over their neighbours. After a very long period, when the visible interposition of favour for this race had ceased, and merely the memory and traditions of it kept the spirit of knowledge and truth living in their midst, these two races came into actual collision.

When the great Alexander with his phalanx pierced the heart of Asia, he came, it is said, within sight of the capital of Palestine, and went away again; whether this be fact or not, true it is Alexander did not interfere with the inhabitants of Palestine. Upon the death of this youthful conqueror, the kingdoms, subdivided and ruled by his generals, imported everywhere a little Greece. Hellenism was rampant on every side, and Jerusalem, among the rest of cities, was not free from it. The better and wealthier "Jews of the period thought it quite the ton to imitate the customs, the manners, and the language of their polished neighbours. The grand and musical language of their fathers was discarded for the more polite and sonorous Greek. Temples of Venus, and the mad Saturnalia of the beautiful strangers, were preferred to the simple and more spiritual worship of their ancestors; the lyre of the Shepherd King was to be thrown aside for the harp of the blind bard; in fact, "the crisis had arrived," Greek met Semite, the former in the shape of Antiochus Epiphanes, the latter in Judas Maccabeus; the one or the other must have prevailed for ever. But what was in the eyes of the Greek a barbarous, untaught, untrained youth, rose up like an avalanche, and, true to the tales of their bards and seers, drove back for all time the overwhelming tide of Hellenism. The victory was of so much

greater importance to the world, as the object of the SyroGreek was less the personal conquest, than the mental subjugation of Semiticism; it was less even a human struggle, it was a combat between "Mount Olympus" and "Mount Zion."

Rome was the propagator and successor of Hellenism, but, unlike Greece, was tolerant to every custom and tradition, except to that of the Hebrew-Semitic race. "Credat Judæus Apella” was about the summing-up of the majority of the Latins. The inhabitants of imperial Rome would pay respect to a new Osiris or Isis; any plastic deity, or a new beautiful form was always welcomed to the national Valhalla; but this race, hailing from remote lands beyond the seas, to claim superiority in mind and tradition to the city of Romulus, was out of the question; they could not understand persons meeting in four walls and being edified; it was ridiculous. When, after a long and severe struggle, the chosen city had fallen, a shout of joy rang through the classic lands, "Hierosolyma est perdita," and echoed and re-echoed from city to city, as if indeed Jove had triumphed. The very conquest of the Jews tended to level the Olympian heights everywhere; knots of this race had penetrated and settled in the Roman empire, and carried with them their Asian tales and ethics, gaining many hearers; and when a small band of Hebrews, obedient to their teacher's call, proclaimed in every land those precepts that lived for ages among their ancestors, Rome and Hellas tottered, reeled, and at last submitted captive to those old Semitic tales that erst she despised.

But a burning, lingering hatred to the Semitic race took place after this; the humiliation was so deep, so lasting, that there must needs be some revenge for this. For fifteen centuries everything was taught in the Greek and Latin

languages; every avenue that could lead to studying Oriental tongues was sealed; every trace of Hebrew literature was shut out and garbled, translated and seen under the green spectacles of prejudice; so that it was made to appear as though everything good was the offspring of other races, but that from which the world imported its faith and morals.

Womanly equality and virtue especially, were attributed to Germanic influence, the sublime and beautiful to Hellenic inspirations, and jurisprudence to Rome and Byzantium.

The Semite looked on and smiled; he had been taught patience in the school of adversity; he knew well that, as the earth turns upon its axis and sees again the sun, so would the sun smile upon him again. Reviled, insulted, tortured, persecuted, and hated with fiendish hate, he studied on, and sang on (for music and study are the Hebrew-Semite's chief pleasure); besides, he knew himself triumphant even under contumely; he saw every palace, every hut, every town, every village, nay, every lonely ship that sailed upon the broad ocean, re-echo those sayings, and read for consolation the vicissitudes of those Semitic peasants, for whom he fought so long and so well, to hand down to posterity.

But the chains forged by men to keep their fellow men in mental bondage were burst, and this also not a little owing to the genius of the Semitic race. The mind was declared free, and the fountain of learning was opened unstintingly to the thirsting for knowledge. Within the last two hundred years, there has been a gradual and increasing struggle for information; the hitherto sealed books of Oriental lore have been opened to us, and the majority of savans, of every race and denomination (to their credit be it said), fearlessly expound the result of their learning, not caring whether it clashes with this or the other preconceived notion; and when

they find a fact that has hitherto been withheld, they say with Cicero

"Non est meum contra auctoritatem,
Senatus dicere."

The Hebrew literature, commencing in the dawn of the world's existence, bloomed and flourished in those periods. usually termed (whether with justice or no it is for history to decide) the "dark ages," and exists still, vigorously, and with ever fresh and youthful charms.

The first series of Proverbs, originating in so distant a period that they are lost in the mist of time, I intend to lay before you, are in deference to "place aux dames,” relating to the gentler sex. I exclude of course all those that are to be found in that part of Semitic literature called sacred.

66

66

'A good wife is a good present."

'Happy the man that has a pretty wife; his days are increased." "Descend a step to choose a wife; ascend a step to choose a

friend."

"If your wife is little, stoop to her."

A woman can love a poor lad better than a rich dotard."

'A man's first marriage dissolved, his feast is over."

"A man can only find real delight in one wife."

“When the wife is asleep, the basket sleeps as well."

"A wife speaks and spins."

“That woman is faithless for apples, and divides them among the poor."

“A man should not, whilst drinking from one cup, look into the other."

"The virtuous are honoured, though they be poor; as a lion is feared, even when he sleeps. Vice, though it be rich, is despicable, as the dog wearing a golden collar."

I have only quoted a few of the many proverbs on this subject that lie scattered everywhere in the Hebrew literature; and it is perfectly evident, that woman occupied as high and respectable a position as she does at the present day. It has