“ As yet no means are known which call so much into action as a great war, that rough energy born of the camp, that deep impersonality born of hatred, that conscience born of murder and cold-bloodedness, that fervour born of effort in the annihilation of the enemy, that proud indifference to loss, to one's own existence, to that of one's fellows, to that earthquake-like soul-shaking which a people needs when it is losing its vitality. ”

“ None of the Roman poets can people a purely imaginary world with such spontaneous fertility of fancy as Ovid. In heart and mind he is inferior to Lucretius and Catullus, to Virgil and Horace, perhaps to Tibullus and Propertius; but in the power and range of imaginative vision he is surpassed by no ancient and by few modern poets. This power of vision is the counterpart of his lively sensuous nature. He has a keener eye for the apprehension of outward beauty, for the life and colour and forms of nature, than any Roman or perhaps than any Greek poet. ”

“ Charles was undeniably plain. He confessed that he was by nature ugly, but that as artists usually painted him uglier than he was, strangers on seeing him were agreeably disappointed. The protruding lower jaw and the thin pale face were redeemed by the fine open brow and the bright speaking eyes. He was, moreover, well made, and in youth had an incomparable leg. Above all no man could doubt his dignity; Charles was every inch an emperor. ”

“ Anna and Wronsky have no true ideal to cling to. He, as their passion cools, finds the tie irksome and a hindrance to his career. She grieves for her lost and dearly-loved son, and frets as she sees that Wronsky's devotion is waning, recognizing too late that he loved her chiefly for vanity's sake, that they are slipping daily asunder, and growing displeasing to each other. Her past life is closed to her, the future opens like an abyss. ”

“ The old quarters which preserve in our time an aspect so singularly picturesque with their sloping and tortuous streets, the fine hotels of darkened stone sculptured in the Spanish fashion, and the magnificence of the Place of the hôtel de ville were buried behind an enceinte of walls pierced by eight lofty gates flanked with one hundred and twenty-seven round towers at almost equal distance from each other like the balls of a crown. ”

“ Her husband, who tended her alone on the night of her decease, wrote to Miss Blagden: “Then came what my heart will keep till I see her again and longer—the most perfect expression of her love to me within my whole knowledge of her. Always smilingly, happily, and with a face like a girl’s, and in a few minutes she died in my arms, her head on my cheek. . . . There was no lingering, nor acute pain, nor consciousness of separation, but God took her to himself as you would lift a sleeping child from a dark uneasy bed into your arms and the light. Thank God.” ”

“ He was a man cast in a giant mould, with massive chest and powerful limbs, and an expression ardent and commanding, with a dash of roughness; features of stern beauty, a long black beard, and a deep sonorous voice. There was something of immense strength, talent and resolution in his whole frame and manner, and a power of ruling men on high occasions which no one could escape noticing. ”

“ In all the multifarious branches of trade capital has its combinations; and, whether intended or not, they crush the manly hopes of labour and trample poor humanity in the dust. We mean no conflict with legitimate enterprise, no antagonism to necessary capital, but men, in their haste and greed, blinded by self-interests, overlook the interests of others and sometimes violate the rights of those they deem helpless. We mean to uphold the dignity of labour, to affirm the nobility of all who earn their bread by the sweat of their brows. ”

“ To the learned Rome might serve up authority with a garnish of neo-Scholastic metaphysics; for average mankind authority pure and simple was enough. Terrified out of their lives at the way in which science and criticism were taking one theological citadel after another, the more militant section of the clergy declared war on thought itself. Not only was faith made independent of reason, but it was considered all the purer, the less it owed to any kind of mental process. If it was a merit to believe without evidence, it was a shining virtue to believe in the teeth of evidence. ”

“ The twelve constellations of the zodiac form an ingenious machine, a great wheel with buckets, which pour into the sun and moon, those shining ships that sail continually through space, the portions of light set free from the world. ”

“ He faces life with an invincible courage, an inextinguishable hope and heavenward trust, and the dignity of a benevolent will which no compulsion can break or bend. The billows of his soul are not waves, but hills which tempests ruffle but can never heave. ”

“ In every case the exterior is left plain and austere, as if the architect intended thus to heighten by contrast the splendour of the interior. Within, the palace is unsurpassed for the exquisite detail of its marble pillars and arches, its fretted ceilings and the veil-like transparency of its filigree work in stucco. Sun and wind are freely admitted, and the whole effect is one of the most airy lightness and grace. ”

“ The volumes of our lyrist owe part of their popularity to the fact of their being an epitome of melodies, moods and memories that had belonged for centuries to the national life, the best inspirations of which have passed into them. But in gathering from his ancestors Burns has exalted their work by asserting a new dignity for their simplest themes. He is the heir of Barbour, distilling the spirit of the old poet’s epic into a battle chant, and of Dunbar, reproducing the various humours of a half-sceptical, half-religious philosophy of life. ”

“ It is light, airy and soft of movement, yet sharp and precise in its details; every face is a portrait, and the whole a group in clear photography. The blanket of the night is drawn aside; in full ruddy gleaming light these rough tatterdemalions are seen at their boisterous revel wringing from Fate another hour of wassail and good cheer. ”

“ As things can be known only through their opposites, Being can only be known through Not-being, wherein as in a mirror Being is reflected; and this reflection is the phenomenal universe, which accordingly has no more reality than a shadow cast by the sun. Its central point is Man, the microcosm, who reflects in himself all the Divine attributes. Blackened on one side with the darkness of Not-being, he bears within him a spark of pure Being. The human soul belongs to the spiritual World and is ever seeking to be re-united to its source. ”

“ It has done more than all gifts of impulsive charity to foster a sense of human brotherhood and of common interests. It has done more than all repressive legislation to destroy the gambling spirit. It is impossible to conceive of our civilization in its full vigour and progressive power without this principle which unites the fundamental law of practical economy, that he best serves humanity who best serves himself, with the golden rule of religion, “Bear ye one another’s burdens.” ”

“ Buffon was violent and impatient; Daubenton, gentle and patient; Buffon was rash in his judgments, and imaginative, seeking rather to divine than to discover truths; Daubenton was cautious, and believed nothing he had not himself been able to see or ascertain. From nature each appeared to have received the qualities requisite to temper those of the other; and a more suitable coadjutor than Daubenton it would have been difficult for Buffon to obtain. ”

“ To get possession of a ship, to sail to the East, to plunder the “Moors” to sell the booty in New England or the Carolinas, to spend the produce in riotous living, and go to sea on the same errand again, was the round of life of the large class of known pirates, who formed a recognized element of the population of Massachusetts and New York at the end of the 17th century. These are the men we know best, for they were encouraged by the tolerance shown them to come into the light. Others are buried in, or only dimly visible in, obscurity. ”

“ She is honest, frank and well endowed by nature, and has an innate striving after truth and beauty in art and in life, but her early marriage with Karenina (who is double her age, reserved and taciturn) , while socially advantageous, has dulled and stunted her ideals. Ignorant of the meaning of love, she despises it, and it is not till she meets Wronsky that she realizes to the full the emptiness of her existence. Wronsky, young, handsome, impassioned, recognizing no principle but his own desires, offers her the rich wine of life at a draught. ”

“ The freshness of the new field which was opened up to the imagination—so full of vivid lights and shadows, light-hearted fun, grinding hardship, stirring adventure, heroic action, warm friendships, bitter hatreds—was in exhilarating contrast to the world of the historical romancer and the fashionable novelist, to which the mind of the general reader was at that date given over. ”

“ In the numerous churches the music was renowned, the archduke Leopold being passionately given to the art, maintaining at his own cost forty or fifty musicians, the best of Italy and Germany. Under the windows of the palace stretched the same park that we admire to-day, open all the year to privileged persons and twice a year to the public, a park filled with trees of rare essences and the most delicious flowers so artistically disposed, and so refreshing to the eyes, that M. de la Serre declared that if he had seen there an apple tree he would assuredly have taken it for an earthly Paradise. ”

“ His old friend and commander the duke of York paid a just tribute to the great soldier’s memory in general orders: “His steady observance of discipline, his ever-watchful attention to the health and wants of his troops, the persevering and unconquerable spirit which marked his military career, the splendour of his actions in the field and the heroism of his death, are worthy the imitation of all who desire, like him, a life of heroism and a death of glory.” ”

“ Looking west from the Pont de Bordeaux, the view embraces a crescent of wide and busy quays with a background of lofty warehouses, factories and mansions, behind which rise towers and steeples. Almost at the centre of the line of quays is the Place des Quinconces, round which lie the narrow, winding streets in which the life of the city is concentrated. Outside this quarter, which contains most of the important buildings, the streets are narrow and quiet and bordered by the low white houses which at Bordeaux take the place of the high tenements characteristic of other large French towns. ”

“ He was founder of a distinct school of American journalism, characterized by an equal fidelity and temperance, energy and dignity. Though it is as a poet that he most emphatically belongs to history, his verse was the expression of only the gentler motions of his mind; and it gathers influence, if not lustre, when behind it is seen a life intrepid, upright, glad, and ever potent for the nobler choice in all the largest affairs of his time. ”

“ What parallel can be drawn between a small town, in which half the population are slaves, and every freeman has a direct voice in the government, and a great modern state, in which there is not a single slave, while freemen exercise their sovereign powers at long intervals, and through the action of delegates and representatives? Propositions as vague as those of Montesquieu may indeed be asserted with more or less plausibility. But to take any leading head of positive law, and to say that monarchies treat it in one way, aristocracies and democracies in another, is a different matter. ”

“ Parliament had long been ferociously demanding Mary’s execution, not because she was guilty but because she was dangerous to the public peace. She alone could have given the Spanish Armada any real chance of success; and as the prospect of invasion loomed larger on the horizon, fiercer grew the popular determination to remove the only possible centre of a domestic rising, without which the external attack was bound to be a failure. Elizabeth resisted the demand, not from compassion or qualms of conscience, but because she dreaded the responsibility for Mary’s death. ”

“ He whom we hear in the Gāthās has had to face, not merely all forms of outward opposition and the unbelief and lukewarmness of adherents, but also the inward misgivings of his own heart as to the truth and final victory of his cause. At one time hope, at another despondency, now assured confidence, now doubt and despair, here a firm faith in the speedy coming of the kingdom of heaven, there the thought of taking refuge by flight—such is the range of the emotions which find their immediate expression in these hymns. ”

“ A dispassionate criticism recognizes the force and splendour of his rhetoric. The “purple patches” have stood the wear and tear of time. Byron may have mismanaged the Spenserian stanza, may have written up to or anticipated the guide-book, but the spectacle of the bull-fight at Cadiz is “for ever warm,” the “sound of revelry” on the eve of Waterloo still echoes in our ears, and Marathon and Venice, Greece and Italy, still rise up before us, “as from the stroke of an enchanter’s wand.” It was, however, in another vein that Byron achieved his final triumph. ”

“ SIEGE (O. Fr. sege, siege, mod. siège, seat, ultimately from sedere, to sit, cf. Class. Lat. obsidium, a siege) , the “sitting down” of an army or military force before a fortified place for the purpose of taking it, either by direct military operations or by starving it into submission (see Fortification and Siegecraft) . A special form of coin is known as a “siege-piece.” These are coins that were struck during a siege of a town when the ordinary mints were closed or their issues were not available. ”

“ Taking up the idea of a divine education of the human race, which Lessing and Herder had made so familiar to the modern mind, and firmly believing that to each of the leading nations of antiquity a special task had been providentially assigned, Ewald felt no difficulty about Israel’s place in universal history, or about the problem which that race had been called upon to solve. The history of Israel, according to him, is simply the history of the manner in which the one true religion really and truly came into the possession of mankind. ”

“ Moreover, in the universal unrest and oversetting of all authority, Christianity itself was in danger of perishing, not only as the result of the cultured paganism of the Renaissance, but also through the brutish ignorance of the common folk, deprived now of their traditional religious restraints. To the urgency of this peril the reformers were fully alive; and they sought its remedy in education. “Let the people be taught,” said Luther, “let schools be opened for the poor, let the truth reach them in simple words in their own mother tongue, and they will believe.” ”

“ In arguing the question of free trade, he urges that every advantage given to one interest over another is injurious to the public. No trade is unprofitable to the public; if it were, it would be given up; when trades thrive, so does the public, of which they form a part. Prices must determine themselves, and cannot be fixed by law; and all forcible interference with them does harm instead of good. No people can become rich by state regulations,—only by peace, industry, freedom and unimpeded economic activity. ”

“ Had it been at all possible to act with that group of men of genius whom history calls the Girondins, Danton, Lazare Carnot, Robert Lindet, and even Billaud-Varenne, would have sooner thrown in their lot with them than with Robespierre, whom they thoroughly understood; but the Girondins, spurred on by Madame Roland, refused to have anything to do with Danton. Government became impossible; the federalist idea, which would have broken France to pieces in the very face of the enemy, grew and flourished, and the men of action had to take a decided part. ”