Robert Chambers

“ We have just got the jib half-stowed, 'after a fashion,' when our messmate sings out: 'Hold hard, Jack!' and we cling for dear life. The next instant, a wave rolls a fathom high over our head, and we emerge, spluttering and gasping from a genuine cold salt-water bath, such as the hydropathists have no idea of. Before our nice little job is completed, we get two or three more comfortable duckings, and finally crawl on board half-drowned, and thankful that we were not altogether washed away, as many better fellows have been, at that same blessed task of jib-furling on a stormy night. ”

“ High mountainous ridges, the castles of nature, tower on every side, whose bosoms sometimes display the naked grey rock encircled with fern and heath, and, at other times, excellent verdure. But no cultivated field greets the eye, and the solemn stillness which reigns around is only broken by the gentle murmuring of the rivulet. The situation of the old tower is well chosen, as, from the direction in which the hills run, a sort of circle is formed, which not only screens it from the north and east winds, but could easily debar all intercourse with the neighbouring country. ”

“ Men were accustomed to violence in all forms, as to their daily bread. The house of a man of consideration was a kind of castle: at the least, it was a tall narrow tower, with a grated door and a wall of defence. No one in those days had any general conceptions regarding the processes of nature. They saw the grass grow and their bullocks feed, and thought no more of it. Any extraordinary natural event, as an eclipse of the sun or an earthquake, still more a comet, affected them as an immediate expression of a frowning Providence. ”

“ As you pass about nine, you observe, on looking in, that the discipline and rigour of shop-life has dissolved. Master, men, and boys, feel the approach of the moment of emancipation, with a peculiar salience of thought, alternating with a deep and tranquil delight. The confessor reigns in the spirit of this glorious hour, and his laugh, and his joke, and his news, and his proffered pinch, are listened to, re-echoed, and partaken of by his devotee, with a pleasure of the keenest nature, and ominous, you may make sure, of oysters and gin punch on the way home. ”

“ Where, for instance, was the perfection of musical genius ever found accompanied with a good understanding? Are not porters and chairman the smallest-minded among mankind? Is not cunning the lowest of the human faculties, and always found most active in the illiberal mind? And what lady’s man, what cavaliere serviente, what squire of dames, what man of drawing-rooms and boudoirs, ever yet exhibited the least trace of greatness or nobility of intellect? Jock, who has all these qualifications in himself, may be considered as outweighing at least four other men who severally possess them. ”

“ Seeing, too, that the elders had so much power, how should it have been that one challenged by an elder with cabbage-gathering on a Sunday, answered insolently, ‘What have ye to do with it?’ and, ‘Who will nail my lug to the Tron for it?’ When society bore so generally a Christian tone, how happened it that William Dewar, farmer in Horsley, should have been so pagan-like as to take a lamb from his flock, and put its head on the top of his chimney, as a charm against the liver-crook in his flock? ”

“ Behold, then, the wonderful unity of the whole system. The grades of mind, like the forms of being, are mere stages of development. In the humbler forms, but a few of the mental faculties are traceable, just as we see in them but a few of the lineaments of universal structure. In man the system has arrived at its highest condition. The few gleams of reason, then, which we see in the lower animals, are precisely analogous to such a development of the fore-arm as we find in the paddle of the whale. Causality, comparison, and other of the nobler faculties, are in them rudimental. ”

“ Can there be anything more delightful, they think, than sailing about on the wide ocean, visiting far-distant regions of the earth, and seeing the strange manners of different countries? Little are they aware of the constant toil to which the poor mariner is exposed—the perils he encounters, the thankless life he is generally doomed to lead. He is, in fact, compelled to endure pretty much the lot of a slave; for, as is well known, government on shipboard is a species of despotism, often a cruel tyranny. Remonstrance in nearly every circumstance is in vain—it is mutiny. ”

“ Between the eastern suburbs of Edinburgh and the village of Restalrig stands a solitary house named Marionville, enclosed in a shrubbery of no great extent, surrounded by high walls. Whether it be that the place has become dismal in consequence of the rise of a noxious fen in its neighbourhood, or that the tale connected with it acts upon the imagination, I cannot pretend to decide, but unquestionably there is about the house an air of depression and melancholy such as could scarcely fail to strike the most unobservant passenger. ”

“ When once a resolution is formed to leave a house, it is amazing how many holes are picked in its character, many of them literal. The wind gets in at a hundred places; we can see daylight through stone walls and double-deafened ceilings. Then, there is such a draught up the staircase, and into the best bed-room, that positively there is no enduring it. I think another six months of this house would fairly make an end of me. It’s not a house for tender folk. You might sometimes as well sit in the open street, as by the fireside. You burn your shins, and all the time your back is freezing. ”

“ A bloody sword, a bloody sword, a bloody sword for thee, O Scotland! Many miles shall ye travel and shall see nothing but desolation and ruinous wastes in thee, O Scotland! The fertilest places shall be desert as the mountains in thee, O Scotland! Oh the Monzies, the Monzies, see how they run! how long will they run? Lord, cut their houghs and stay their running. The women with child shall be ript up and dashed in pieces. Many a preaching has God waired (spent) on thee, O Scotland! ”

“ Alexander Elder in Earl-seat would be beaten very often. He is but soft, and could never defend himself in the least, but would greet and cry when he would be scourging him. But Margaret Wilson would defend herself finely, and cast up her hands to keep the strokes off her; and Bessie Wilson would speak crusty, and be belling again to him stoutly. He would be beating us all up and down with cords and other sharp scourges, like naked ghaists, and we would still be crying: “Pity, pity, mercy, mercy, our Lord!” ”