Page:The New Monthly Magazine - Volume 099.djvu/172

158 harmless lizard so often darts across your path, He who has been bitten by a serpent is alarmed by a lizard—another reading of what the Jewish Rabbis had said long before, He who has been bitten by a serpent, is afraid of a rope's end; even that which bears so remote a resemblance to a serpent as this does, shall now inspire him with terror; and similarly the Cingalese, with imagery borrowed from their own tropic clime, say, The man who has received a beating from a firebrand, runs away at sight of a fire-fly.

Another proverb of many tongues, One sword keeps another in the scabbard, furnishes Mr. Trench with a text against the "puling yet mischievous babble of our shallow Peace Societies, which, while they profess to embody, and they only to embody, the true spirit of Christianity, proclaim themselves in fact ignorant of all which it teaches; for they dream of having peace the fruit, while the evil root out of which have grown all the wars and fightings that have ever been in the world, namely, the lusts which stir in men's members, remain as vigorous and strong as ever." And another, Far-off water will not quench near fire, is his motto for an appeal to keep our English coasts guarded by an English fleet:—"for let us only suppose that a blow were struck at the empire's heart, at the home and sanctuary of its greatness—no improbable supposition, when force and fraud are met together, and are watching their opportunity to strike it—what profit would it be then that her mighty armaments covered the distant seas, that her soldiers were winning comparatively barren victories in Africa and India?" By the way, Mr. Trench loses no opportunity of "taking a rise" out of a certain imperial personage—bidding us observe, for instance, in confirmation of the proverb Extremes meet, how, "as lately in France, a wild and frantic democracy may be transformed by the base trick of a conjuror into an atrocious military tyranny;"—and again, still more bitterly, in noticing the too characteristic Egyptian proverb, If the monkey reigns, dance before him, he proceeds to say, "The monkey may reign in other lands besides those of the East; but the examples in a neighbouring land, not merely of statesmen and warriors, of men such as Guizot and Changarnier, but of many more in every class, erect amid a too general prostration, abundantly testify that reign as the monkey may, simia in purpurâ, all will not therefore count it their part and their wisdom to dance before him." If Napoléon-le-petit should settle in Buckingham Palace, let not Mr. Trench count on a private chaplaincy: indeed, as a matter of "prudential morality," it might be well (verbum sap.) to eschew a too frequent discussion of so ill-esteemed a character, if regard be had to the proverb, Talk of So-and-80 in Black, and he's sure to appear. Fancy the French Imperator's "sure appearance," press-censors en suite, and Mr. Trench within shot—or invited to dinner, without a long spoon.