sublime; their general character is naïveté. The habit of men, at the present day, to communicate so much with each other by writing, which, exciting the feelings less than conversation, leads to a less animated mode of expression, and the disposition to avoid what is common, springing from the pride of intellectual cultivation inc dent to an advanced stage of society, and various causes connected with the progress of civilization, make proverbs every day more unfashionable with the most civilized European nations, particularly the English, with whom the use of a proverb (except it be one of a foreign nation) is considered almost vulgar; and the same contempt for these jewels of the multitude has spread to us. Another reason for proverbs going out of fashion may be, that the better a proverb is, the more trite it becomes; and what is trite is vulgar, and what is vulgar is inelegant. Thus a public speaker could not use the proverb, ""Twixt cup and lip is many a slip," at least, not without some apology for its triteness, although the very triteness in this, as in most other cases (such as often quoted verses), proves merit; and even this homely proverb undoubtedly has often led to care and thoughtfulness. Proverbs often save long explanations by presenting a striking image; and many a lecture has probably been superseded by the French adage, "One spoonful of honey attracts more flies than a hundred barrels of vinegar." So they may be often used with effect to point the conclusion of a ́discourse. A period on the failure of men who strive beyond their capacity, might be well closed by the Arabian saying which Burckhardt mentions, "If God purposes the destruction of an ant, he gives her wings;" and the vanity of human resolutions could hardly be set in a stronger light than by the Portuguese proverb, "Hell is paved with good intentions"-a proverb which,until it has become familiar, is awfully impressive. It requires skill to apply proverbs elegantly and judiciously in common life. As to the general worth of proverbs, we would say, with one of their number, Vor populi, vox Dei. Yet there are many directly opposed to others, and they must always be received cum grano salis; they are general views of things, and "no rule without an exception." Proverbs are plain spoken. In their view, as in the eye of the law, all are equal. They take cognizance of the virtues, and vices, and follies, of all classes, without respect of persons. They pierce the object at which they aim; and this, in fact, gives them currency, and makes them what they are. Boileau speaks of happy expressions, Qui, par le prompt effet d'un sel réjouissant, Deviennent quelquefois proverbes en naissant. Such a phrase is Napoleon's, "There is but one step from the sublime to the ridiculous," which may be almost said to have become a proverb, as is the case with many other expressions struck out in happy moments, or proceeding from conspicuous persons. The proverb is nearly related to the motto, symbol, device, sentence, apologue, fable, &c.; and the limit cannot always be easily drawn. Burckhardt gives us the following as Arabic proverbs: The wolf was asked, "For what art thou following those poor little sheep?" He replied, "The dust upon which they tread is good for my poor little eyes." And this: one man said to another, "O slave, I have bought thee." "That is thy business," replied he. "But wilt thou run away?" "That is my business," replied h. These, having at once a narrative character, and a concise, pointed expression, partake of the nature of the apologue and the proverb. Certain sallies of popular humor, ludicrous personifications, &c., which are frequently repeated, are sometimes called proverbs; as, "What a dust we kick up, as the fly said to the cart-wheel." Proverbs, being the offspring of popular feeling and experience, often serve, of course,to keep alive the recollection of peculiar views and customs; and a collection of the sayings of different nations would form an exceedingly useful and interesting work. Burckhardt collected, at Cairo, a number of Arabic proverbs, which have been published, in a quarto volume, under the title Arabic Proverbs, or the Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians (London, 1830). Sailer has published the Wisdom of the Streets, or the Meaning and Use of German Proverbs (Augsburg, 1810, in German). Many other collections of German proverbs exist, but none very complete. The East, the region of imagination and metaphor, abounds in proverbs; and the southern countries of Europe, Portugal, Spain and Italy, have many more than the cool, reflecting North. PROVERBS, BOOK OF. (See Solomon.) PROVIDENCE, the largest place and only city in Rhode Island, is situated at the head of the tide-waters of Narraganset bay, about thirty miles from the Atlantic ocean, and is forty miles south-southwest of Boston, fifteen north-north-west of Bristol, thirty north of Newport, fifty-eight north-east of New London, seventy east of Hartford, 190 north-east of New York, 394 north-east of Washington; lon. 71° 26' W.; lat. 41° 51′ N.: population, in 1820, 11,767; in 1825, 15,941; in 1830, 16,832; in 1832, about 20,000. It is thus the second town in New England, in point of population. It is built on both sides of what is usually styled Providence river, which is only an arm of the bay reaching to the mouth of Mooshasuck river, at the upper part of the city, its two sections being connected by two bridges, one ninety feet in width. Vessels of nine hundred tons burthen can come to the wharves. The buildings are chiefly wood, uniformly painted white, though there are many of granite and brick. Some of the dwelling-houses are spacious and elegant, and those on the high ground on the eastern side of the town are remarkable for beauty of situation. The chief public buildings are the state-house, of brick; the arcade, of granite; fourteen houses of public worship; the halls of Brown university; the Dexter asylum; the Friends' boarding school; five public school-houses, and several large manufacturing establishments. The arcade is the most splendid building of the kind in the Union; it has two fronts, of hammered granite, each seventy-two feet wide, presenting colonnades, of the pure Grecian Doric, of six columns each. The columns are twentyfive feet high, the shafts being twentytwo feet in length, each of a single block. The body of the building is of split stone, covered with cement, and extends from street to street, in length 222 feet. It was finished in 1828, and the whole cost was about 130,000 dollars. Of the churches, the first Baptist, the two Unitarian, and one of the Episcopal (St. John's), are handsome structures. Brown university (originally founded at Warren, in 1764, and removed to Providence in 1770) takes its name from Nicholas Brown, its most munificent benefactor. It has two halls, both of brick, viz. University hall, four stories high, 150 feet long, and forty-six feet wide, containing fifty-one rooms for officers and students, besides a chapel, library and philosophical room; and Hope college, built in 1822, four stories high, 120 feet long, forty wide, with forty-eight rooms for officers and students. They are placed on some of the highest ground in the city. The college library contains about 6000 volumes. Three other libraries within the walls, belonging to literary societies, present an aggregate of 6000 vol umes, in addition. The government of the university is vested in a board of fellows, consisting of twelve members, eight of whom, including the president, must be Baptists; and a board of trustees, of thirty-six members, twenty-two of whom must be Baptists, five Friends, five Episcopalians, and four Congregationalists. The acting officers of instruction, at present, are the president, three professors, and two tutors. There are 114 students. The philosophical apparatus, which has recently been largely increased by private munificence, may be considered very extensive and complete. Annual commencement on the first Wednesday of September. There are thrce vacations; one, from commencement,four weeks; one, from the last Friday of December, six weeks; and one, from the second Friday of May, three weeks. Whole number of graduates to 1827, inclusive, 1119. The present condition of the institution is prosperous. The Dexter asylum for the poor of Providence, finished in 1828, is a brick edifice of three stories, 170 feet long and forty-five feet wide. The Friends' boarding school, established by, and belonging to the yearly meeting of New England, is also a spacious structure, of brick, with a basement of granite, under the care of a superintendent, five male and four female teachers. There are 117 male and 70 female pupils. It has a small library. The public schools were established in 1800, and now consist of five grammar schools, five primary schools, and one African school. They originated with the mechanics' and manufacturers' association. The Providence library contains about 1600 volumes; the mechanics' apprentices' library about 1000; and that of the athenæum (an institution just commenced), about 1500. Providence was early a place of much commercial enterprise. In the first half of the year 1791, the duties paid on imports and tonnage amounted to 59,766.14 dollars; in the year 1831, the whole amount collected was 227,000 dollars, notwithstanding the diminution of the rates of duties on many articles, which reduced the sum 36,000 dollars, at least. The imports in 1831 amounted to 457,717 dollars; the exports, domestic $199,193, foreign $130,441, total $329,634. The amount of shipping registered is 12,362 tons; enrolled, 4788 tons. There are four insurance companies, with an aggregate capital of $360,000; and fifteen banks, with an aggregate capital of $4,502,800, besides a branch of the U. States bank, with a capital of $800,000, and the sav ings bank, capital $100,000. The Blackstone canal. extending from Providence to the town of Worcester (Mass.), was finished in 1828; whole cost about $700,000. It is navigated by thirty boats, from twenty-five to thirty tons each. There are ten newspapers published in Providence, two of which are daily. Providence is most distinguished for its manufactures. There are in Providence four cotton factories, two moved by steam and two by water power, employing a gross capital of $327,489. They contain 11,194 spindles, and 244 looms. They give employment to 352 persons directly, besides 739 others, dependent, more or less, on them, with an aggregate annual amount of $45,801 wages. They consume annually 434,971 pounds of cotton; spin 382,875 pounds of yarn, and weave 1,458,000 yards of cloth, mostly of the finest and most valuable quality, to the estimated value of $247,860. There are also two extensive bleacheries, in which very large quantities of cotton cloth, from many of the factories in Rhode Island and other states, are bleached, calendered and beetled; and a third one is erecting. The two in operation employ a capital of $175,000, and 195 persons, whose annual wages amount to $49,000; and the annual quantity of cloth bleached and finished at these establishments is 3,300,000 pounds, or 13,200,000 yards. There are also four dye-houses, and a factory for making candle and lamp wick, and cotton webbing. There are four iron founderies and seven machine shops, employed principally in building cotton machinery, and estimated to constitute one third of the whole amount of this business carried on in the state. These employ a capital of $250,000, and 414 persons. They work up annually about 1390 tons of iron and steel, manufacturing machinery to the value of 309,000 dollars. There are, besides, one file factory, and one of steam engines, one of steam boilers, and three brass founderies, all on a considerable scale. There are seven principal establishments for working in tin, sheet-iron, copper, brass, &c., in two of which the manufacture of stoves, pipes, and grates for anthracite coal, is carried on very extensively; one comb factory, which annually consumes $4000 worth of stock, and manufactures combs to the value of $9500; twenty-seven jewellers' and goldsmiths' shops, employing a capital of $100,200, 282 persons, and manufacturing goods to the value of $228,253; also one factory for hat bodies of wool, very extensively operating on a most use ful patented invention; one of sperm and one of linseed oil; one mill for cutting and grinding dye-stuffs. A large glasshouse, for the manufacture and cutting of flint-glass, has been in operation about a year, employing a capital of $36,000, fiftyeight men and fourteen boys, whose wages amount to $21,000 per annum, and turning out manufactured goods to the value of $1400 per week, or about $70,000 per annum. Besides the above, there is an extensive manufacture of leather, boots and shoes, soap and candles, cabinet furniture, hats, &c., and pickers, and sundry articles used in other departments of the manufacturing business. The capitalists of Providence have, besides, an amount equal to $2,000,000 invested in cotton, woollen, and other factories, in other towns of Rhode Island and the adjoining states, agencies of which are established within the city. For the consumption of the town and its vicinity, including, as this does, many manufacturing villages, there were imported, in the year 1830, 45,166 bales of cotton, and, in the year 1831, 55,707; and of bread-stuffs, in 1830, 68,473 barrels of flour, 358,181 bushels of corn, and 16,967 of rye; in 1831, 71,369 barrels of flour, 216,662 bushels of corn, and 7772 of rye.—This town was founded by Roger Williams, who was born in Wales, and educated at Oxford. He removed to America in 1631, and, after preaching at Salem and Plymouth, was settled at the latter place, as pastor of the congregational church, in 1634. He there preached against the king's patent to the Plymouth colonists, on the ground that the king had no authority to grant and dispose of the lands of the natives, without their consent. For this course, together with his peculiar religious tenets, and particularly his open and fearless declaration of the principles, not of toleration merely, but of entire and unrestricted religious freedom, and his avowal that the civil magistrate had no right "to deal in matters of conscience and religion," he was banished, and ordered to depart the Plymouth jurisdiction within six weeks. This sentence was passed in the autumn of 1635; but he was afterwards informed that permission was granted him to remain until the ensuing spring. So great, however, was the fear of his influence, that an officer was sent to apprehend and carry him on board a vessel at Nantasket, in order that he might be conveyed to England. Before the arrival of the officer, Williams, having intimation of this design, had departed for Re hoboth. Being there informed by governor Winslow that he was still within the bounds of the Plymouth patent, he crossed the Seekonk river, in the spring of 1636, and commenced a new settlement in the wilderness, near the mouth of the small river Mooshasuck, giving it, in acknowledgment of the divine protection, the name of Providence. The first settlement of the town was thus made on the point of land between the Seekonk or Blackstone river on the east, and the arm of the Narraganset bay on the west. The latter was afterwards gradually contracted by the extension of the land in the present westerly part of the town, until the two parts were, at length, connected by Weybossett bridge, now nearly in the centre of the town. The sheet of water remaining north of this bridge was thus formed into a beautiful cove, which, at its northern extremity, receives the Mooshasuck river, and forms the basin of the Blackstone canal. In 1676, during the war which was made, at the instigation of king Philip, for the extermination of the New England colonists, an attack was made on Providence by the Indians, and about forty houses burned and destroyed. In 1801, it suffered severely from an extensive fire. In 1807, a violent storm and flood destroyed nearly all the bridges, and a great number of buildings, in the town and its vicinity. In the great storm of September, 1815, about 500 buildings were destroyed by the wind and the water of the bay. The loss of property on that occasion was then estimated at more than $1,000,000; but that eventually proved of much benefit to the place, by removing a great number of old and comparatively useless buildings, whereby an opportunity was afforded for new and commodious streets in those sections which are devoted to commercial business. In October, 1831, Providence was incorporated as a city, divided into six wards. Its municipal government is vested in a mayor, a board of six aldermen, and a common council of twentyfour members. PROVIDENCE, OF NEW PROVIDENCE; the second island, in point of size, among the Bahamas, being thirty miles in length and eight in breadth; lat. 25° 2' N.; lon. 77° 20 W. A part of it is very fertile; but its principal business arises from the misfortunes of those ships which are compelled to seek it for a harbor. The port is called Nassau, and is situated on the north part of the island. Its harbor is rather shallow; but it is the capital, and VOL. X. 33 far the most commercial town of the Bahamas. The population of the island is supposed to be about 8000, the greater part of whom are slaves. (See Bahamas.) PROVIDENCE PLANTATIONS. (See New England, and Providence.) PROVINCE (provincia), among the Romans; a district of conquered country, governed by a proconsul or propretor (see Proconsul), and called therefore provincia consularis, or prætoria. But this name was only applied to lands lying beyond the boundaries of Italy. In the time of Augustus, they were divided into the provincia senatoria, or populares (the people's provinces), and the provinciæ imperatoria (the emperor's provinces). The latter comprised those which were most exposed to hostile inroads, and the administration of which was left entirely to the emperor, under the pretence of sparing the senate and people the trouble of managing them, but in reality to keep the army in his own hands. They were different according to circumstances. In modern times, the term has been applied to colonies,or to dependent countries, at a distance from the metropolis, or to the different divisions of the kingdom itself. Thus the Low Countries belonging to Austria and Spain were styled provinces (see Netherlands); and the same term is applied to some of the English colonies. The different governments into which France was divided, previous to the revolution, were also called provinces. The name has sometimes been retained by independent states. Thus the republic of Holland, after it had thrown off the Spanish yoke, was called the United Provinces; and the Argentine republic has assumed the name of United Provinces of the Plata. In England, the jurisdictions of the two archbishops are styled provinces.—Provincial is a monastic officer who has the superintendence of the monasteries of his order within a certain province or district, and is himself subordinate to the general of his order. PROVOST (from præpositus); in some of the Scotch cities, the title of the chief municipal officer. (See Prévot.) The heads of several of the colleges in the universities of Oxford and Cambridge are also styled provosts. Provost marshal of an army is an officer appointed to arrest and secure deserters and other criminals, to hinder the soldiers from pillaging, to indict offenders, and to see sentence passed upon them and executed. He also regulates weights and measures. PRUDHON, Pierre Paul; a French paint er, born in 1760, at Cluny, where he was educated by the monks of the celebrated abbey of the place. The sight of the pictures here awakened his taste for painting, which being observed by the monks, the bishop of Macon had him instructed in drawing at Dijon. After having studied in Rome, whither he was sent by the Burgundian estates, Prudhon returned to France in 1789, and lived some time in obscurity in Paris, but finally gained reputation by his celebrated allegorical picture, Crime pursued by Divine Justice. He died in 1823. His principal productions are Psyche borne away by the Zephyrs, Zephyr sporting over the Water, an Assumption, and a Dying Christ. Some have censured his design, and the sameness of his heads; but his brilliant coloring, and the fine expression and grace of his pencil, are generally admired. PRUNES. (See Plums.) PRUSSIA; the smallest of the (so called) great powers of Europe; a country in several respects singular, being composed of very heterogeneous parts, several of them not connected by any common feeling or common interest, not even by geographical situation, but merely by artificial political system; and yet it holds an influential station among the European powers. Another very striking feature of this monarchy is the care which it bestows on science and education. The sciences are no where fostered with more care, and there are few countries in which common schools are more widely diffused. Notwithstanding the effect which this must have in enlightening the people, and notwithstanding the attention which has been paid, for several generations, to the administration of justice, there is an almost incomprehensible backwardness in every thing which belongs to a civic spirit, chiefly, it is probable, from three reasons: 1. that the greatness of Prussia proceeded from, and has been supported by, military power, the power of standing armies, and the whole system of government has been carried on with something of a military spirit by numerous officers in regular gradations, who execute the orders received from their superiors. 2. That many of the various parts composing the mouarchy have no national interest, as Prussians, in each other; so that the noblest germs of civil virtue remain undeveloped in the breasts of the people, whose interests are diverse. We may add here, by the way, that Prussia, of late, has neglected the most important means of giving coherency to her population, namely, the assembling of representatives from all the various provinces in one legislative body. Nothing would have united the people more strongly than thus awakening a national feeling for a common institution. 3. That, since the time of Frederic the Great, Prussia has felt obliged to seek a strong ally in Russia to strengthen herself against Austria-an alliance which has much retarded her civil advancement. We shall now proceed to the Statistics and Geography of Prussia. The Prussian monarchy, which contained 3,000,000 of inhabitants, on 46,428 square miles, with an army of 76,000 men, when Frederic the Great ascended the throne, contained, in 1804, without reckoning Neufchatel, 9,977,497 inhabitants, upon 120,395 square miles (with 38,000,000 of Prussian dollars income, about 32,000,000 Spanish), and at the end of 1828, 12,726,823 inhabitants, upon 106,852 square miles, with 3,316,459 buildings, to which is to be added Neufchatel, with 51,580 inhabitants, upon 296 square miles; and, at the close of 1830, the number of the inhabitants 12,939,877. The whole increase of the population in 14 years has been 2,247,082. In 1826, the population stood thus:Germans,.. Of Sclavonic origin, French Walloons, Jews,... was 10,038,457 2,028,500 87,600 153,687 The military consisted, in 1829, of 165,000 regular troops (of which 17,908 were guards, 19,132 cavalry, 15,718 artillery, and 104,712 infantry of the line), and of 359,248 Landwehr (q. v.), of which 179,624 were of the first class, and 179,624 of the second class: the whole military force, therefore, comprised 524,248 men. Revenue for 1829 about 36,190,000 Spanish dollars; national debt, in 1820, 135,370,000. The revenue, for 1829, was levied thus: Domains and royal forests, $3,223,350 Salt monopoly, 712,500 712,500 9,975 773,750 487,350 3,307,887 |