Blinder than a mole. The ancients thought moles had no eyes, but they have two small eyes, affording them so mush sight, as to enable them to know when they have emerged through the earth, and they no sooner perceive the light, than they return into their burrows, where alone they can be safe. This proverb is applied to persons who are exceedingly slow in conceiving, or understanding what is said to them; also to persons searching for what lays immediately before them. "If it was a bear," we say, "it would bite you." To the same purport is "Leberide caecior." By the leberis, the Latins meant the dry and cast skin of a serpent, or of any other animal, accustomed to change its coat, in which the apertures for the eyes only remain. With us, it is usual, in censuring the same defect, to say, "He is as blind as a beetle." "We are all of us used to be Argus's abroad, but moles at home," but how much better would it be to correct an error in ourselves, than to find an hundred in our neighbours.

"Who has been used to carry a calf, may in time carry an ox." The adage is said to have taken its rise from the story of a woman who took delight in nursig and carrying about with her a calf, and as the animal grew, her strength so increased, that she was able to carry it when it became an ox. Or, as Erasmus conjectures, from the story of Milo the Crotonian, who was said, with great ease to take up an ox, and carry it on his shoulders; but who perished miserably, "Wedged in the oak which he strove to rend." It may be used to shew the force of habit or custom, and its influence both on our mental and bodily powers, which may by use be increased to an almost incredible degree. Also to shew the necessity of checking and eradicating the first germs of vice in children, as, if they be suffered to fix themselves, they will in time become too powerful to be subdued.