Robert Southey

“ But whatever may be the solidity of this objection, the following seems unanswerable:
⁠If every particle thro' the whole solidity of a heavy body receive its impulse from the particles of this fluid, it should seem that the fluid itself must be as dense as the very densest heavy body, gold for instance; there being as many impinging particles in the one, as there are gravitating particles in the other which receive their gravitation by being impinged upon: so that, throwing gold or any heavy body upward, against the impulse of this fluid, would be like throwing gold thro' gold ”

“ For if matter by any powers or properties given to it, can produce the order of the visible world, and even generate thought; why may it not have possessed such properties by inherent right? and where is the necessity of a God? matter is, according to the mechanic philosophy capable of acting most wisely and most beneficently without Wisdom or Benevolence; and what more does the Atheist assert? if matter possess those properties, why might it not have possessed them from all eternity? Sir Isaac Newton's Deity seems to be alternately operose and indolent ”

“ David Hartley from whom this account of æther is chiefly borrowed, makes it the instrument of propagating those vibrations or configurative motions which are ideas. It appears to me, no hypothesis ever involved so many contradictions; for how can the same fluid be both dense and rare in the same body at one time? yet in the Earth as gravitating to the Moon, it must be very rare; and in the Earth as gravitating to the Sun, it must be very dense. ”

“ For, as Andrew Baxter well observes, it doth not appear sufficient to account how this fluid may act with a force proportional to the body to which another is impelled, to assert that it is rarer in great bodies than in small ones: it must be farther asserted that this fluid is rarer or denser in the same body, whether small or great, according as the body to which that is impelled is itself small or great. ”

“ My wife—my children—thro' the gates they pass'd—
Then the gates clos'd Would I were in my grave
That I might lose remembrance.
⁠"What is man
That he can hear the groan of wretchedness
And feel no fleshly pang! Why did the All-Good⁠665
Create these warrior scourges of mankind,
These who delight in slaughter? ”

“ Had made a league with Famine. How my heart [17] ⁠625
Sunk in me when at night I carried home
The scanty pittance of to-morrow's meal!
You know not, strangers! what it is to see
The asking eye of hunger!
⁠"Still we strove
Expecting aid, till sickening Expectation⁠630
Felt never hope, and yet most keen the pang
Of disappointment. Tho' with christian zeal
Ursino would have pour'd the balm of peace [18]
Into our wounds, ambitious ear best pleas'd
With the War's clamor and the groan of Death,⁠635
Was deaf to prayer. Day after day fled on ”

“ He supposes likewise, that it is rarer in the pores of bodies than in open spaces, and even rarer in small pores and dense bodies, than in large pores and rare bodies; and also that its density increases in receding from gross matter; so for instance as to be greater at the 1/100 of an inch from the surface of any body, than at its surface ”

“ We are restless, because invisible things are not the objects of vision—and philosophical systems, for the most part, are received not for their Truth, but in proportion as they attribute to Causes a susceptibility of being seen, whenever our visual organs shall have become sufficiently powerful. ”

“ Wherefore he stopped all the passages, both by water and land, that no vittels could be conveied to the citie. He cast trenches round about the walls, and set them full of stakes, and defended them with archers, so that there was left neither waie for them within to issue out, nor for anie that were abroad to enter in without his license.—The King's coosine germane and alie (the King of Portugale) sent a great navie of well-appointed ships unto the mouth of the river of Seine, to stop that no French vessel should enter the river and passe up the same, to the aid of them within Rouen. ”

“ Leemius de Lapponibus. ↑ Line 96 Jaibme Aibmo. ↑ Lin 112 They call the Good Spirit, Torngarsuck the other great but malignant spirit is a nameless female; she dwells under the sea in a great house where she can detain in captivity all the animals of the ocean by her magic power. When a dearth befalls the Greenlanders, an Angekok or magician must undertake a journey thither: he passes thro' the kingdom of souls, over an horrible abyss into the palace of this phantom, and by his enchantments causes the captive creatures to asceed directly to the surface of the ocean. ”

“ And they betook them to their homely rest.⁠725
↑ Line 34 Sir Isaac Newton at the end of the last edition of his Optics, supposes that a very subtile and elastic fluid, which he calls æther, is diffused thro' the pores of gross bodies, as well as thro' the open spaces that are void of gross matter; he supposes it to pierce all bodies, and to touch their least particles, acting on them with a force proportional to their number or to the matter of the body on which it acts. ”

“ He states the number of the French at 60,000, of whom 10,000 were slain and 1500 of the higher order taken prisoners. Some historians make the disproportion in numbers still greater. Goodwin says, that among the slain there were one Archbishop, three Dukes, six Earls, ninety Barons, fifteen hundred Knights, and seven thousand Esquires or Gentlemen. ”

“ Hist. of England, by Hugh Clarendon. ↑ Line 646 Henry, not satisfied with the reduction of Caen, put several of the inhabitants to death, who had signalized their valour in defence of their liberty and property.
H. Clarendon. ↑ Line 659 After the capture of the city "Luca Italico, the Vicar Generall of the archbishop- rike of Rouen for denouncing the King accursed was delivered to him and deteined in prison till he died.Holinshed. ”