John Timbs

“ It is surely wiser and more manly to walk silently by the shore of that silent sea, than to boast with puerile exultation over the little sand-castles which we have employed our short leisure in building up. Life can never be matter of exultation, nor can the progress of arts and sciences ever really fill the heart of a man who has a heart to be filled. ”

“ The history of the locomotive is itself the strongest argument against relying too much on these floating seeds of invention and favouring circumstances, and taking too little account of inventors. If the Killingworth brakesman had died in his youth, it is scarcely too much to say that we should probably not yet be travelling by steam. We owe it to George Stephenson’s keen insight and resolute temper that the locomotive was forced upon an unbelieving world, no one can say how long before circumstances would otherwise have called it into existence. ”

“ Tierra del Fuego, with its innumerable islands and rocky islets, like mountain ranges half sunk in ocean, combines every variety of aspect—storm-beaten rocky summits, several thousand feet above the sea—glaciers so extensive that the eye cannot trace their limits—densely wooded hillsides—grand cascades and sheltered sandy coves,—altogether such a combination of Swiss, Norwegian, and Greenland scenery as can hardly be realized or believed to exist near Cape Horn. Yet, even there—by lake-like waters, though so near the wildest of oceans—thousands of savages exist, and migrate in bark canoes! ”

“ The fairest productions of human wit, after a few perusals, like gathered flowers, wither in our hands and lose their fragrancy; but these unfading plants of Paradise become, as we are accustomed to them, still more and more beautiful. Their bloom appears to be daily heightened; fresh odours are emitted and new sweets extracted from them. He who hath once tasted their excellences will desire to taste them yet again; and he who tastes them oftenest will relish them best. ”

“ Each succeeding generation has employed itself in adding something more to that mass of evil which the great philosopher felt and denounced. If the mind of Bacon was shocked at the tangled labyrinth of our Statute Law in the reign of James I., if Sir Matthew Hale occupied his mind with the same subject in the reign of Charles II., what would they have said could they have foreseen the 10,000 statutes passed in the reign of George III., and the Ossa which the industry of the last forty-five years has piled upon the shoulders of that mighty Pelion? ”

“ I thought that philosophers were virtuous, upright men, who loved wisdom, and were above the little passions and foibles of humanity. I thought they assumed that proud title as an earnest to the world, that they intended to be something more than mortal; that they engaged themselves to be patterns of excellence, and would utter no opinion, would pronounce no decision, but what they believed the quintessence of truth; that they always acted without prejudice and respect of persons. ”

“ One of fortune’s favourites, on being reminded of the uncertainty of life, replied, in a confident tone, that had he suffered such a thought to possess him, he should never have got on in the world—the doubt being to him an unwelcome intruder. Every record of human character—every volume of reminiscences that we can take up—almost every day’s newspaper,—abounds with evidence of the uncertain tenure of our existence. ”

“ The politician studies the past merely as his guide for the future. If he is learned, wise, and at all an adept in the science which he professes—than which no other is of so momentous an import—he will consider past history as the barometer which must guide him in predicating the approach either of a tempest or a calm. Temporary clamour or occasional obstruction will not lead him to forsake clear principles of action, or to recommend a grand constitutional remedy in the case of a trifling local disease. ”

“ The masterpieces of civil engineering—the steam-engine, the locomotive-engine, and the tubular bridge—are only experiments on the powers of nature on a gigantic scale, and are not to be compassed without inductive skill, as remarkable and as truly philosophic as any effort which the man of science exerts, save only the origination of great theories, of which one or two in a hundred years may be considered as a liberal allowance. ”

“ The astronomer, accordingly, must be content to be the chronicler of a spectacle, in which, except as an on-looker, he takes no part. Like the sailor at the mast-head in his solitary night-watch, he must see, as he sails through space in his small earthly bark, that nothing escapes his view within the vast visible firmament. But he stands, as it were, with folded arms, occupied solely in wistfully gazing over the illimitable ocean, where the nearest vessel, like his own, is far beyond summons or signal, and the greatest appears but as a speck on the distant horizon. ”

“ And is he not the greatest hero who is able to despise public honour for the sake of private usefulness, he who has learnt to subdue his own inclinations, to deny himself those gratifications which are inconsistent with virtue and piety, who has conquered his passions and brought them low even as a child that is weaned: is not such a man greater than he that taketh a city, sheddeth blood as it were water, or calls for the thundering applause of assembled multitudes? ”

“ The slightest change in the purity of the atmosphere, though it may be too slight for recognition by chemical analysis in the laboratory, is sure to be detected by its effects upon the nicer chemistry of the human system; for it is known to be productive of disease and death. No chemical tests are sensitive enough to tell us what those changes are; but experience has taught us the necessity of ventilation in our buildings, of circulation through our groves. The cry, in cities, for fresh air from the mountains or the sea, reminds us continually of the life-giving virtues of circulation. ”

“ On the surface of the globe there is nowhere to be found so inhospitable a desert as the “wide blue sea.” At any distance from land there is nothing in it for man to eat, nothing in it that he can drink. His tiny foot no sooner rests upon it, than he sinks into his grave: it grows neither flowers nor fruits; it offers monotony to the mind, restless motion to the body ”

“ He feels no ennobling principle in his own heart who wishes to level all the artificial institutions which have been adopted for giving a body to opinion and permanence to fugitive esteem. It is a sour, malignant, and envious disposition, without taste for the reality, or for any image or representation of virtue, that sees with joy the unmerited fall of what had long flourished in splendour and in honour. ”

“ They have beaten all the world, and are supposed to be invincible. They have besides, it seems, a new system, which has out-manœuvred and overwhelmed all the armies of Europe. But no matter, my die is cast. They may overwhelm, but I do not think they will out-manœuvre me. In the first place, I am not afraid of them, as everybody else seems to be; and secondly, if what I hear of their system of manœuvres be true, I think it a false one against troops steady enough—as I hope mine are—to receive them with the bayonet. ”

“ In the basement story revolves an immense steam-engine, unresting and unhasting as a star, in its stately, orderly movements. It stretches its strong iron arms in every direction throughout the building; and into whatever chamber you enter, as you climb stair after stair, you find its million hands in motion, and its fingers, which are as skilful as they are nimble, busy at work. They pick cotton and cleanse it, card it, rove it, twist it, spin it, dye it, and weave it. They will work any pattern you select, and in as many colours as you choose ”

“ George Washington, without the genius of Julius Cæsar or Napoleon Bonaparte, has a far purer fame, as his ambition was of a higher and a holier nature. Instead of seeking to raise his own name, or seize supreme power, he devoted his whole talents, military and civil, to the establishment of the independence and the perpetuity of the liberties of his own country. In modern history no man has done such great things without the soil of selfishness or the stain of a grovelling ambition. ”

“ Consider again, what an affliction the loss of sight must be, and that when we talk of the golden sun, the bright stars, the beautiful flowers, the blush of spring, the glow of summer, and the ripening fruit of autumn, we are talking of things of which we do not convey to the minds of these poor creatures who are born blind anything like an adequate conception. There was once a great man, as we all know, in this country, a poet—and nearly the greatest poet that England has ever had to boast of—who was blind ”

“ Next to the mischief of making an unfair Will is that of making none at all. Had Lord Northwick ordered by Will the sale of his pictures, however disappointed the world might have been, it would have been felt that he had a right to do as he liked. But dying intestate, the sale follows as a matter of course, and the results of a long life and large fortune devoted to works of art are just nowhere. A gallery of pictures left to a family or to the public is an offering at the shrine of art; but, sold by auction, and dispersed among innumerable private purchasers, is sheer vanity and labour lost. ”

“ Sir William Armstrong maintains, as a half-truth, that Invention is the fruit of the circumstances that call for it almost more than of the mind from which it springs. In a sense it is true, as Sir William Armstrong says, that “the seeds of invention exist, as it were, in the air, ready to germinate whenever suitable conditions arise;” but it depends not the less on the genius of individual inventors to determine whether the germination shall happen in one century or the next. ”

“ On English commons prizes are run for, by steeds which are truly coursers of the sun, for his force is swelling in their muscles and throbbing in their veins, and horse-power is but another name for sun-power. Nor is it otherwise with their riders; for they too have been fed upon light, and made strong with fruits and flesh which have been nourished by the sun. His heat warms their blood, his light shines in their eyes ”

“ Not for a single instant does the work stop: it is coal—coal everywhere beneath and around; the very atmosphere is made gloomy with its fine particles; and all this, seen amid clanking of chains, roaring of steam, and the rapid activity and whirl of hurried business, make it one of the most curious and interesting scenes imaginable. ”

“ One always begins by being security for a friend. The discredit of the thing is familiarized to one’s mind by the false show of generous confidence in another. Then, what you have done for a friend, a friend should do for you—a hundred or two would be useful now—you are sure to repay it in three months. To youth the future seems safe as the Bank of England, and distant as the peaks of Himalaya. You pledge your honour that in three months you will release your friend. ”

“ The knowledge that a criminal had been put to death would no doubt be less terrible to the criminal and dangerous population if they were prevented from seeing the execution. If the plan of private executions be rejected, what can be done to give a character to public executions more wholesome than that justly condemned by the committee?
The cold, business-like formality of a public execution is then referred to: beyond a glimpse of the chaplain’s surplice there is nothing to remind the spectators of the awful and sacred character with which the Christian religion invests death. ”

“ But the fact is, that the doctrine of innate ideas, as taught by Plato, never was touched either by Locke or Bacon; and never can be touched in substantials by any thinker who believes that he has thoughts, and that these thoughts have their roots in a simple sovereign and plastic principle which he calls his soul. No doubt there are some pleasant imaginations floating with irridescent colours round the borderland of this Platonic philosophy, which may be blown to the wind by the puff of any cheek, without special inflation from Locke or Bacon. ”

“ The thoughtless vulgar are ever prone to magnify the brilliant exploits of arms, which dazzle ordinary understandings, and prevent any account being taken of the cost and the crime that are so often hid in the guise of success. All merit of that shining kind is sure of passing current for more than it is really worth; and the eye is turned indifferently upon, or even scornfully from, the unpretending virtue of the true friend to his species, the minister who devotes all his cares to stay the worst of crimes that can be committed, the last of calamities that can be endured by man. ”

“ But though the situation of a vessel in a heavy gale of wind appears indescribably terrific, yet, practically speaking, its security is so great, that it is truly said that ships seldom or never founder in deep water, except from accident or inattention. How ships manage to get across that still region, that ideal line, which separates the opposite trade-winds from each hemisphere; how a small box of men manages, unlabelled, to be buffeted for months up one side of a wave and down another; how they ever get out of the abysses into which they sink ”