to ethics, to nature, to science, and to society.  Some are allusions to God, and others to the duties between man and man.  Many are devoted to the duties of women, applicable to the sex in all times.  They are not on a level of the Psalms in piety, nor of the Prophecies in grandeur, but they recognize the immutable principles of moral obligation.  In some cases they seem to be worldly-wise,—­such as we might suppose to fall from the mouth of Benjamin Franklin or Cobbett,—­recognizing worldly prosperity as the greatest of blessings.  Sometimes they are witty, again ironical, but always forcible.  In some of them there is awful solemnity.

There are no more terrific warnings and exhortations in the sacred writings than are found in the Proverbs of Solomon.  The sins of idleness, of anger, of covetousness, of gossip, of falsehood, of oppression, of injustice, of intemperance, of unchastity, are uniformly denounced as leading to destruction; while prudence, temperance, chastity, obedience to parents, and loyalty to truth are enjoined with the earnestness of a man who believes in personal accountability to God.  The ethics of the Proverbs are based on everlasting righteousness, and are imbued with the spirit of divine philosophy; their great peculiarity is the constant exhortation to wisdom and knowledge, to which young men are especially exhorted.  Like Socrates, Solomon never separates wisdom from virtue, but makes one the foundation of the other.  He shows the connection between virtue and happiness, vice and misery.  The Proverbs are inexhaustible in moral force, and have universal application.  There is nothing cynical or gloomy in them.  They form a fitting study for youth and old age, an incentive to virtue and a terror to evil-doers, a thesaurus of moral wisdom; they speak in every line a lofty and comprehensive intellect, acquainted with all the experiences of life.  Such moral wisdom would be imperishable in any literature.  Such utterances go far to redeem all personal defects; they show how unclouded is a mind trained in equity, even when the will is enslaved by iniquity.  What is still more remarkable, the Proverbs never apologize for the force of temptation, and never blend error with truth; they uniformly exalt wisdom, and declare that the beginning of it is the fear of the Lord.  There is not one of them which seeks to cover up vice with sophistical excuses; they show that the author or authors of them love moral beauty and truth, and exalt the same,—­as many great men, with questionable morals, give their testimony to the truths of Christianity, and utterly abhor those who poison the soul by plausible sophistries,—­as Lord Brougham detested Rousseau.  The famous writings of our modern times which nearest approach the Proverbs in love of truth and moral wisdom are those of Bacon and Shakspeare.