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Nemo repente fuit turpissimus no one becomes altogether filthy in an hour runs the old Roman saying, which is as true to-day as it was 2,000 years ago, and whether it be spoken of body or of soul, it is easier to wash the feet than the whole being. When they understand what lies before them certain of the young shrink back and grasp Mercy's outstretched arms.

For there is great truth in the old maxim "Nemo fecit repente 'turpissimus;" or "no man was ever all at once a rogue." So in the case of these persons, as of all others, they must have been vicious by degrees: they must have shewn symptoms of some deviations from rectitude, before the measure of their iniquity could have been completed.

"Nemo repente turpissinus semper fait, No man is wholly bad all at once." "The father did as you would have advised, brother. He kept the youth; he remonstrated with him: he did more, he gave him the key of the bureau. 'Take what I have to give, said he; 'I would rather be a beggar than know my son a thief." "Right! And the youth repented, and became a good man?" exclaimed my father.

The respectable man did not commit this action without some iron passing through his own soul Nemo repente turpissimus. The first letter he opened it was like picking a lock. He writhed and blushed, and his uncertain fingers fumbled with another's property as if it had been red-hot.

Davy would have placed his 'Nemo repente fuit turpissimus' no person of unblemished character wades straight into 'innocent blood, to use his own phrase. The Recorder summed up against Elizabeth. He steadily assumed that Nash was always right, and the neighbours always wrong, as to the girl's original story. He said nothing of Bennet; the tanner's dog had done for Bennet.

This is hee, quoth she, which is his Counsellor, and perswadeth him to forsake me, and now being at the point of death he lieth prostrate on the ground covered with his bed, and hath seene all our doings, and hopeth to escape scot-free from my hands, but I will cause that hee will repente himselfe too late, nay rather forthwith, of his former intemperate language, and his present curiosity.

The admiration of a beautiful woman, though the wife of our dearest friend, may at first perhaps be innocent, but let us not flatter ourselves it will always remain so; desire is sure to succeed; and wishes, hopes, designs, with a long train of mischiefs, tread close at our heels. In affairs of this kind we may most properly apply the well-known remark of nemo repente fuit turpissimus.

-Repente ad studium hunc se applicasse musicum Amicum ingenio fretum, haud natura sua-. And in the later prologue to the -Adelphi- he says

Non enim, ut olim, universæ legiones deducebantur cum tribunis et centurionibus et suis cujusque ordinis militibus, ut consensu et caritate rempublicam efficerent, sed ignoti inter se, diversis manipulis, sine rectore, sine affectibus mutuis, quasi ex alio genere mortalium repente in unum collecti, numerus magis quam colonia Tacit. Annal.

"Symptoms," answered the surgeon, "are not always regular nor constant. I have known very unfavourable symptoms in the morning change to favourable ones at noon, and return to unfavourable again at night. Of wounds, indeed, it is rightly and truly said, Nemo repente fuit turpissimus.