Various

“ In sorrow it has come like an angel to gladden his lonely hours; and though adversity crush his spirit, he still clings like a lover to the dream of the soul. At length the object of his life is accomplished; and the edifice, awful in its vastness, yet enchanting in its beauty, stands in the light of day complete. To behold beauty in mental vision is a joy—but to place it before the eyes of men, and see them bow in admiration and love, and to know that it will live in their memories and hearts, elevating and gladdening, and begetting fair shapes kindred to its own—this is joy and triumph. ”

“ RUINS.
Everything is mutable, everything is perishable around us. The forms of nature and the works of art alike crumble away; and amid the gigantic forms that surround it, the soul of man is alone immortal. Knowledge itself ebbs and flows like the changing sea, and art has become extinct in regions where it earliest flourished. Kingdoms that once gave law to the nations, figure no more in the world's history, leaving nothing but a name, and Ruins.
Most of the ruins of the ancient world are remarkable as monuments of a political element now happily extinct. ”

“ We do not apprehend that, by any process of cheapening, the newspaper press of Great Britain would ever sink to that pitch of foulness that seems to prevail in America. The tastes and habits of the people are against it; the law, strongly administered, is against it. The only change we would expect by the removal of the stamp-duty, and the substitution of, say, a penny postage, would be the rise of news-sheets in every town in the kingdom. And why not? Why, in these days of electric telegraph, should not every place have its own paper, unburthened with a stamp? ”

“ A top window-sash, lowered a little, instead of serving, as many people believe it does, like such an opening into the chimney flue, becomes generally, in obedience to the chimney draught, merely an inlet of cold air, which first falls as a cascade to the floor, and then glides towards the chimney, and gradually passes away by this, leaving the hotter impure air of the room nearly untouched. ”

“ The structure which was to exhibit the glory and resources of a monarch lies shattered and crumbling in fragments; and the lotos-leaf, which everywhere appears on the ruins, is an emblem of the oblivion that shrouds the name of the founder.
But many a ruin that still 'enchants the world' awakens other reflections than on the fall of power. ”

“ Genius and power have long departed from the descendants of that lordly race; but mankind still flock to the Hellenic strand to gaze on the divine relics of the past. The sun of Greece has long set—but the land is still radiant with her ruins. ”

“ From the exquisite beauty of much of the architecture, poetry, and sculpture that have come down to us from antiquity, the singular fact is apparent, that the fine arts reached perfection at a time when those conducive to the material comforts were still in infancy. In those days the race of man was yet young; and youth in the species, as in the individual, is the season of the Beautiful. ”

“ Ruins are the voice of past ages chiding the present for its degeneracy. They are like sea-ware on the shore at low water, marking how high the tide of civilisation once rose.
When we consider the remote period at which such edifices were constructed, we are at first surprised by two qualities which they exhibit, sometimes united, sometimes apart—magnitude and beauty. Magnitude always exerts a great influence on the senses ”

“ It was a lively love and susceptibility to the charms of nature that peopled the woods and waters, the sunny skies and the sparkling sea, with deities in sympathy with man—that saw in the rainbow a messenger from heaven to earth, and in the thunder of the tempest the wrath of the Most High. The vague ever excites interest ”

“ Egypt, Greece, Persia, the Assyrian realm, are great names, once filling earth with their glory, now all but obliterated from the roll of nations. We enter the regions where once sat those old Queens of the East, and look for some reflection of former greatness still lingering on the brows of the inhabitants. ”

“ We were met at the door by Owen Lloyd himself—a man in whose countenance guilelessness, even to simplicity, seemed stamped by nature's own true hand. So much, thought I, for the reliance to be placed on physiognomy! 'I have brought you a customer,' said Mr Jones; 'but he is as deaf as a stone.' I was courteously invited in by signs; and with much hallooing and shouting, it was finally settled that, after dinner, I should look over Mr Lloyd's stock of wood. Dinner had just been placed on the table by Mrs Lloyd and her daughter. ”

“ This susceptibility to beauty in nature was the parent of the beautiful in art. In stone, in bronze, on the canvas, they strove to reproduce the perfection of form that they beheld in select nature—to attain the same harmony of parts—and thus to awaken in the beholder corresponding emotions of pleasure. ”

“ There is a peculiar grandeur and impressiveness in the ruins which date from the era of the old universal monarchies. So many centuries have rolled away since then, conquest and desolation have so often swept over their territories, and tyranny so decimated their inhabitants, that among them Decay assumes a grander form than elsewhere in the world. It is not single edifices dilapidated that meet our view, but whole cities desolate—whole cities so crumbled into dust, that the very sites of some of the greatest of ancient capitals have slipped from the world's memory. ”

“ Thus art, in different countries, varied with the aspects of nature. The monotonous vastness and horizontal lines of the scenery of Egypt, find a counterpart in the heavy and monotonous grandeur of its temples; and the unhandsome features of its inhabitants, in the half-Negro faces of its gods. In Greece, on the other hand, the variety in its architecture corresponds with the varied aspects of the country; and its exquisite sculpture is but a reflection of the noble lineaments of the people. ”

“ Buried Herculaneum, once more given back to the sunbeams, reveals to us the domestic life of ancient Rome; the hieroglyphics of Egypt, the paintings and sculptures of Nineveh, tell us stories of their kings, and show us symbols of their splendour. What geology is to us in relation to the early earth, such are ruins in regard to its human habitants: they are their history in stone. ”

“ Hence the stupendous temples of Luxor and Carnac, with their huge ornamented propylæ, and far-stretching avenues of pillars and sphinxes—and the countless other sacred structures of Egypt, whose very ruins have all but perished: hence, too, the rock-temples of Ellora and Elephanta, where the labour of the worshippers has hollowed out of the mountain rock a mansion for their deity, and has sculptured its sides with groups from Hindoo mythology. ”

“ It is the loftiest of delights to say to the beautiful—'I am thy Maker!' and when kneeling before the matchless statues of their gods, the Greeks rather gloried in them as divine creations of their genius, than humbled themselves before them as emblems of their deities. ”

“ During the night, on the contrary, the surface of the earth, no longer receiving the sun's rays, soon radiates away its heat, so that a thermometer lying on the ground is found to be several degrees colder than one hanging in the air a few feet above. The poison formed near the ground, therefore, at night, instead of being heated and lifted, and quickly dissipated, as during the day, is rendered cold, and comparatively dense, and lies on the earth a concentrated mass, which it may be death to inspire. ”

“ Even in the New World traces of a similar spirit are to be found; and doubtless the vast ruins recently discovered in Yucatan were designed to magnify the worship of the great sun-god of the ancient Indians.
The noblest source from which architecture can proceed was pre-eminently exhibited in the republics of Greece. The exalted race that peopled that favoured land had passed the stage of intellectual development in which magnitude is the chief object of admiration; and among them the great object of desire was beauty, and their chief characteristic was the love of the beautiful. ”

“ When they die, these symbols of their glory are removed to a clean, well-kept crypt beneath one of the angles of the palace, where the whole series for the last two centuries may be seen. This is at once a curious historical study and a touching lecture on the transitoriness of all human grandeur.
Over the chapel, and therefore occupying the same area, is the Banqueting-Hall, certainly a most magnificent apartment, being no less than 150 feet long, and of proportionate breadth, though generally thought to be a little deficient in height. ”

“ Simple and unostentatious in their private dwellings, they lavished genius and splendour in the construction of their public buildings; for the state was but a concentration of themselves, and in its glory they felt they were all partakers. Nevertheless they desired beauty more for itself than for its concomitant splendour; and even in religion they were less worshippers of heaven than adorers of the beautiful. ”

“ English strangers are taken hither to see 'Hamlet's Garden'—the very scene of that foul murder which the mad-seeming prince studied to avenge; also to muse over a cicerone-made Hamlet's grave. I took a ramble here, to enjoy the physical beauties of the place, which are considerable, and to obtain a view of some celebrity from a platform above the house, where we command a long reach of the Sound and of the opposite coast of Sweden. A less hackneyed subject of curiosity is the geological character of the bank behind Marienlyst. ”

“ But I could not see how a middle-aged person, who had never driven a carriage in his life, was to get along with any comfort over the rough roads and through the vast spaces of this northern land, exposed to all weathers, and destitute of all knowledge of the language of the people by whose aid alone could he stir even a step. ”

“ The deer is the most acute animal we possess, and adopts the most sagacious plans for the preservation of its life. When it lies, satisfied that the wind will convey to it an intimation of the approach of its pursuer, it gazes in another direction. ”

“ I arrived at Southampton by the night-coach—the railway was but just begun, I remember—and was informed that the best mode of reaching Beaulieu—Bewley, they pronounced it—was by crossing the Southampton river to the village of Hythe, which was but a few miles distance from Beaulieu. As soon as I had breakfasted, I hastened to the quay, and was soon speeding across the tranquil waters in one of the sharp-stemmed wherries which plied constantly between the shores. ”

“ The first family of man in Europe—the Pelasgi—mute and inglorious in everything else, have left samples of an enormous architecture, whose ruins to this day exist under the title of Cyclopean. This peculiarity is not confined to the shores of the Mediterranean. In the remote East, and in the long undiscovered regions of the West, in Ceylon and in Mexico, the aboriginal races have left their sole memorials in similar masses of masonry. With them size seems to have been everything; it was magnitude which then fascinated the imagination. ”

“ On looking into the cottage in the forenoon, I was surprised to see, in broad daylight, four candles burning within, and all the shutters closed. The air of the house was hot and stifling from the number of breaths. Around the apartment sat the mourners, muffled up in blue-cloth cloaks; and nothing was heard but one monotonous chant, again and again repeated—'Sure he is not dead; for if I thought he was dead, I would go distracted now!' By this time Larry was in his coffin ”

“ But on the public the great burthen of the agitation must necessarily fall. Never would the legislature have abolished the taxes on bread from the mere complaints of the corn importers; nor will the taxes on knowledge be removed till the tax-payers show something like earnestness in pressing their demands. The modern practice of statesmanship is, to have no mind of its own: it has substituted agitation for intelligence, and only responds to clamour. The public surely can have no difficulty in making a noise! ”

“ A chimney is a pump—first, by reason of the suction or approach to a vacuum made at the open top of any tube across which the wind blows directly; and, secondly, because the flue is usually occupied, even when there is no fire, by air somewhat warmer than the external air, and has therefore, even in a calm day, what is called a chimney-draught proportioned to the difference. ”

“ An association, as we learn, has sprung up in London with the view of procuring the abolition of all taxes on knowledge—meaning by that phrase the Excise duty on paper, the tax on foreign books, the duty on advertisements, and the penny stamp on newspapers ”

“ This large room is beautifully paved with diced marble, and is covered all over with gilt and painted ornaments, particularly in the ceiling, while each space of wall between two windows contains a portrait of some monarch which had been presented to the Danish sovereigns. The ceiling alone, which is said to have been the work of twenty-six carvers for seven years, might detain a curious visitor for a day, since there is scarcely a familiar animal, or a trade, or art, which is not represented in it. ”