PBOVENCAI. 364 PROVERB served as chairman of the Commission. Prouty is the author of two works on economics, "Transportation— Everyday Ethics" (1910), and "The Trust Prob- lem" (1911). PROVENCAL, a romance dialect that sprang up m France on the decline of literary Latin. Originally Provencal and Northern French came from the same stock, but by the 12th century they differed almost as widely as French and Italian. Owing to its rhyming facilities it was essentially the language of the troubadours and extended over the area from the Alps to the Pyrenees and the Mediterranean to the Loire, as well as in Darts of Spain and Switzerland. The first historic Provencal author was Guillem IX., Count of Poitiers, who lived toward the end of the 11th century. The following 150 years was the most brilliant period of the troubadours, and marked the highest development of Pro- vencal. With the 13th century the real literary Provencal disappeared, but in the 19th it was again revived by such poets as Jacques, Jasmin, Romanille, Mis- tral, and Aubanel, who started a move- ment for the preservation of Provencal languages and customs. See Trouba- dour. PROVENCE, formerly a maritime province of France, bounded on the S. by the Mediterranean, and comprising the modern departments of Bouches du Rhone, Var, Basses-Alpes, and parts of Alpes Maritimes and Vaucluse. Pro- vence was overrun in the 5th century by the Visigoths and Burgundians, for a time was under the Saracens, and_ in 879 was mostly incorporated with Cisjuran Burgundy and with it was attached to Germany. The main part of the region remained, however, under the Counts of Aries, also known as Counts of Provence, and was practically independent. Un- der the Angevin princes the constitution of Provence, vdth its three estates hold- ing the power of the purse, was well bal- anced and free; and it is possible that "hrough Simon de Montfort the English jjarliamentary constitution may be in- debted to it. The last of the counts, Charles, grandson of Rene the Good, be- queathed his country to the dauphin of France; and it was united to that coun- ,ry in 1486 by Charles VIII. PROVERB, an old and common say- ing; a short or pithy sentence often re- peated, and containing or expressing some well-known truth or common fact ascertained by experience or observa- tion; a sentence which briefly and forci- bly expresses some practical truth. Un- less a saying is capable of being applied to a variety of cases it can never be- come a proverb. Every Oriental collec- tion abounds in proverbs like "The ant got wings to her destruction." "They came to shoe the Pasha's horses, and the beetle held out his foot," "They asked the mule, 'Who is thy father?' 'The horse,' said he, 'is my maternal uncle.' " By purists, perhaps, these and others ot the same species, including the familiar "pot and kettle," may be denied a place among the proverbs proper ; but thej ful- fill all the functions of the proverb, and they serve moreover to show how near akin are these two venerable vehicles of old-world wisdom, the fable and the pro- verb. We are apt to use proverbs auto- matically. So completely have they en- grafted themselves that we talk of gift horses, and half-loaves, and a bird in the hand, and sauce for the goose mechani- cally and without any thought of speak- ing proverbially. There is no family, perhaps, that has not proverbs or rudi- mentary proverbs of its own, founded on some adventure or drollery or blunder of one of its members, and used proverbi- ally by all, often to the perplexity of the uninitiated dsitor; and what is true of the family is true of the community on a more extensive scale. It has its own current sayings, allusions, comparisons, similitudes, incomprehensible to the out- sider, but full of meaning to all who are to the manner born. As they pass from the family and the community to the nation, so they pass from one nation to another. The purely national proverbs form only a portion of the proverbs in any language. It is obvious that the greater number of these proverbs which seem to be com- mon property must be of Eastern birth. If we find a proverb in English, German, Italian, and Spanish, and also in Arabic, Persian, and Hindustani, which is the more likely — that it has passed from Europe to Asia, or from Asia to Europe? When David appealed to Saul it was with "a proverb of the ancients," and it was with proverbs that the prophets drove home their words, proverbs that are, many of them, in use there to this day, like "As is the mother, so is her daughter," and "The fathers have ^aten sour grapes, and the teeth of the children are set on edge." "Judge not that ye be not judged," "The straw in another's eye thou seest, but not the beam in thine own," and others, are still current in Syria. "One sows and another reaps" and "Who makes a trap for others falls into it himself" are Turkish, and "Where the corpse is there the vultures will be" is a Bengali proverb. The pro- verbs that are strictly national have an interest of another kind. Coming di-
