John Ayrton Paris

“ I do not believe that the coin was known to Pinkerton when he wrote his Essay.”
“There is, certainly,” said Mr. Seymour, “something very inexplicable in the tastes and enthusiastic feelings of you patrons of antiquity.”
“The antiquary,” observed the vicar, “does not regard a cabinet of medals as a treasure of money, but of knowledge; nor does he fancy any charms in gold, but in the figures that adorn it; it is not the metal, but the erudition, that stamps it with value.” ”

“ Seymour, “can only be set in motion, or, when in motion, be brought to rest, by the impression of some force, it must follow, that it can only move in the direction in which such a force may act; and, moreover, that the degree of motion, or the velocity, must, other things being equal, be in proportion to the degree of force used.”
“Why, truly,” cried the vicar, “my young friends must of necessity admit that fact; for the body, not having any will of its own, as you say, must needs, if it move at all, go the road it is driven.” ”

“ Crane’s horse had taken fright; away he dashed through thick and thin; stones flying and sparks flashing at every bound. Crane’s flimsy garments fluttered in the air, as he stretched his long lank body away over his horse’s head, in the eagerness of his flight. The goblin pressed hard upon him; he was not more than a yard behind him, when he was seen to take up his head, and with gigantic force to hurl it at the pedagogue; it encountered his cranium with a tremendous crash ”

“ Seymour; “and to follow up your illustration, it is only necessary to state, that Nature, like a considerate master, always apportions the number of horses to the burthen that is to be moved, so that her loads, whatever may be their weight, always travel at the same rate; or, to express the fact in philosophical instead of figurative language, gravitation, or the force of the earth’s attraction, always increases as the quantity of matter, and, consequently, that heavy and light bodies, when dropped together from the same altitude, must come to the ground at the same instant of time.” ”

“ It is scarcely possible so to strain the imagination as to conceive the velocity with which light travels. “What mere assertion will make any man believe,” asks Sir W. Herschel, “that in one second of time, in one beat of the pendulum of a clock, a ray of light travels over 192,000 miles, and would therefore perform the tour of the world in about the same time that it requires to wink with our eyelids, and in much less than a swift runner occupies in taking a single stride?” ”

“ In short, madam, music has lost its power over the passions of mankind, and this can only have happened in consequence of its having degenerated from its ancient purity and grandeur. If any one should have the hardihood to deny this my position, let him attend a modern rout in London. I have seen, my dear Miss Villers, a party at a whist-table, a dozen persons in tête-à-têtes, and as many solitary individuals, sitting like automatons, not one of them being moved by the concord of sweet sounds, with which some lady has been endeavouring to delight them. Had Timotheus appeared amongst them! ”

“ Seymour. “The recesses to which you allude are semi-domes; and if a person whispers in the focus of one of them, he will be distinctly heard by another stationed in the focus of the opposite one. Two inanimate busts may be thus made to appear as if holding a conversation, by placing them in the foci of two large concave mirrors constructed of pasteboard, and arranged opposite to each other; when a whisper uttered to the one will seem to proceed from the other by the reflection of sound.” ”

“ Seymour admitted the justice of this remark, and proceeded in his explanation.
“I think,” said he “you will readily allow that matter cannot, in itself, possess any power of changing its condition: it can, therefore, no more destroy, than it can originate its own motion; when it is at rest, it must ever remain so, unless some force be applied that can impart to it activity; and, when once in motion, it must continue to move until some counteracting force stops it. To believe otherwise you must suppose that matter possesses in itself a power to alter its condition, which is perfectly absurd.” ”

“ Seymour,” said the major, “welcome to Osterley Park. You find me, as usual, engaged with our friend in a learned controversy, and I begin to fear that my warmth may have offended him.”
“Offended me!” exclaimed the vicar, “oh no. No, indeed, my dear Major Snapwell; a difference of opinion on an antiquarian subject may excite my regret, and in some cases, as in the present instance, awaken my pity; but it cannot offend me; it can never occasion any feeling like anger: that would be to visit the folly of others upon myself.” ”

“ Twaddleton, to discover the structure of different countries?”
“Which the geologist infers,” replied the vicar, “from a few patterns, picked up at random on the road side!”
“Mr. Twaddleton,” said Mr. Seymour, “I will meet you on your own ground: you are an antiquary; if an ancient monument of art be so inestimable, is not a knowledge of the antiquity of the globe itself, at least, of equal interest?” ”

“ Those who are not acquainted with the operations by which the mind is enabled to arrive at truth, are too apt to attribute to accident that which is the result of great intellectual labour and acuteness. Observation, analogy, and experiment are the three great stepping-stones by which the philosopher is enabled to ascend from darkness to light: it is true that his foot may accidentally be placed upon the first, but his own efforts are required to complete the ascent. ”

“ Tom begged that his father would explain to him how it could possibly be that the earth should not possess any weight.
“Weight, my dear boy, you will readily understand, can be nothing more than an effect arising out of the resisted attraction of a body for the earth: you have just stated, that all bodies have a tendency to fall, in consequence of the attraction of gravitation; but if they be supported, and prevented from approaching the earth, either by the hand, or any other appropriate means, their tendency will be felt, and is called weight.” ”

“ Twaddleton,” cried Mr. Seymour, “you look at every sport with the eye of a classic or antiquary; I, on the other hand, as you well know, cautiously examine every action, to discover whether some scientific principle may not find an illustration. On the present occasion, I am desirous of directing the attention of the children to the manner in which yonder skilful player hurls his quoit.”
“I do not exactly comprehend the object they have in view in throwing the quoits,” said Louisa. ”

“ The vicar appeared on horseback, bustling in all directions, now conversing with the major, now with Mr. Seymour; at one time moderating the pace of the horsemen, and at another, keeping back the pedestrians, whose eagerness to push forward created an inconvenient crowd in the foremost ranks. Mr. Twaddleton held in his right hand a wand decorated with ivy leaves, and which resembled in appearance the thyrsus of Bacchus, except that the cone on its summit had been replaced by a bunch of roses. ”

“ Seymour, “will also explain a fact which you must have frequently observed, that a body is stable or firm in proportion to the breadth of its base; hence the difficulty of sustaining a tall body, like a walking stick, upon its narrow base; of that of balancing a hoop upon its edge, or a top upon its point; while, on the contrary, it is almost impossible to upset the cone or the pyramid, since, in the latter cases, the line of direction falls within the middle of the base, the centre of gravity of the body being necessarily low.” ”

“ The gardener at Overton Lodge was immediately sought and consulted; and cheering as were his predictions, they scarcely succeeded in dispelling the gloom which shaded many a fair countenance. The apprehension of disappointment was, however, suddenly relieved; for between nine and ten o’clock the sun re-appeared, beaming in all his glory, and shedding the brightest refulgence on the scene of the approaching festivities. At this period hundreds of villagers, dressed in their holiday attire, were seen pouring along the high road, or winding their way through the verdant valleys. ”

“ What have we, my dear Miss Villers, to compare with the soft ‘Lydian,’ the grave ‘Dorian,’ or the furious ‘Phrygian;’ to say nothing of the subaltern modes of Aristides Quintilianus and others; such, for example, as the ‘erotic,’ ‘comic,’ and ‘encomiastic?’ What modern strains can produce the effects which are recorded to have followed the performance of Timotheus, the director of the music of Alexander the Great? ”

“ They will learn from it that there is not any pursuit, however exalted, that may not be assailed by the weapons of ridicule, especially when wielded by those penurious philosophers whose ideas of utility are circumscribed within the narrow limits of direct and immediate profit.”
“It is too true,” cried Mrs. Seymour, “that we are all apt to depreciate those branches of knowledge which do not bear directly upon the comforts or necessities of life; and the applications of geology are, perhaps, so remote as scarcely to be discovered by the mass of mankind.” ”

“ This rapid movement was admirably represented in the phantasmagoria: at first the figure appeared extremely diminutive, and at a great distance; but almost immediately its size became gigantic, and it seemed as if within a few feet of the audience, and then suddenly vanished. After an instant of utter darkness, the figure was again visible at a great distance: the schoolmaster, Crane, was also seen belabouring the starveling ribs of his steed, old Gunpowder, and quickening his pace towards the very spot where the spectre was stationed. The whole audience were breathless with horror. ”

“ A clock is nothing more than a piece of machinery to maintain the action of the pendulum, and at the same time to count and register the number of its oscillations; and by that peculiar property, that one vibration commences exactly where the last terminates, no part of time is lost or gained in the juxtaposition of the units so counted. ”

“ To understand the principle of a mechanical power, we must revert to the doctrine of momentum. It will be remembered, that a small ball, weighing only two pounds, and moving at the rate of 500 feet in a second, will produce as much effect as a cannon ball of ten pounds in weight, provided it only moved at the rate of 100 feet in the same time; in like manner a ball weighing one pound may be made to balance another of five pounds, by placing it five times farther from the centre of motion ”

“ Did you not learn in our conversation of yesterday, that air has weight, and exerts a pressure as much upwards as downwards and laterally? Were this not the case, how could the air in the interior of our bodies counteract the pressure of the atmosphere? The form of the bubble proves the same fact in a different way; for, had the air in its cavity pressed more in any one direction than in another, the bubble could not have been round, or, to speak more correctly, a sphere. ”

“ Seymour; “viz. some exertion which is called Force; thus the force of my hand put your ball in motion; while gravitation was the force which made it fall to the earth; and I must, moreover, inform you, that a body always moves in the direction of the force which impels it, and with a velocity, or rate of motion, which is proportional to its degree, or strength; and, were there no other forces in action but that which originally produced the motion, the body would proceed onwards in a right line, and with a uniform velocity for ever.” ”

“ Undoubtedly, my dear; the quicker a body moves, the greater must be the force with which it would strike against another body; but we also know that the heavier a body is, the greater also will be its force; so that momentum, you perceive, must have a relation to both these circumstances, viz. velocity, and weight; or, to speak more correctly, the momentum of a body is composed of its quantity of matter, multiplied by its quantity of motion: for example, if the weight of a body be represented by the number 3, and its velocity also by 3, its momentum will be represented by 3 x 3 = 9 ”

“ Seymour. “The lower stratum of the atmosphere rests upon the ground, but the strata above it do not fall, because they are supported by the particles beneath them, in the same manner as the water at the surface of a basin is supported by that at the bottom: the only difference in these two cases arises from the one being an elastic, and the other an inelastic fluid; so that the air after compression resumes its original dimensions; and since the atmosphere, by the action of gravity, is always in a state of compression, so is it always endeavouring to expand itself.” ”

“ In short, gentlemen, without exhausting your patience with a long recital of my adventures, suffice it to say, that I have always been able to keep my pipe smoking by my puffs, my pot boiling by the ebullition of my wit, and my grate blazing by the fire of my genius; while paste and scissors have never failed to secure a constant supply of cabbage, upon which I have thrived like any caterpillar.”
Here Hopkins returned to the porch, and took a draught as deep as ever Bitias drank, or the Athenian Diotimus, nicknamed the Funnel, ever swallowed. ”

“ Nor is not mov’d with concord of sweet sounds,
Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils;
The motions of his spirit are dull as night,
And his affections dark as Erebus:
Let no such man be trusted.’” “Are you satisfied?” asked Mr. Seymour; “if not, I will proceed to tell you how Palma, a Neapolitan, induced a creditor who came to arrest him, not only to remit his debt, but to contribute a sum for his support. ”

“ The cycloid is remarkable as being that path, with the exception of the perpendicular, through which a body will move with the greatest velocity; suppose, for example, a body is to descend from any one point to any other, by means of some force acting on it, together with its weight: a person unacquainted with mechanics would say at once, that a straight line is the path it must take to effect this in the shortest possible time, since that is the shortest of all lines that can be drawn between two points. ”