Various

“ The consideration to be kept continually in view is, what is a man by natural capacity destined to become?—what heights of intellectual and moral worth is he capable of attaining to?—and, on the whole, what courses of discipline and personal exertion are most suitable, as the means of raising him to that condition wherein he will most admirably fulfil the design of his creation? To instruct and educate him with respect to this design is the highest and ultimate purpose of all knowledge. It has thus a grander aim than the mere promotion of the conveniencies of our material life. ”

“ The long vacation is over—cholera has flown away, or gone into winter quarters—the raising of blinds and unclosing of shutters in stylish streets indicate the return of families whose absence has been prolonged by fears of contagion—business, long stagnant, is reviving—street-traffic is resuming its wonted density—the new Lord Mayor has 'showed' himself, as of old—the November fogs are entombing us in their fuliginous darkness—all of which, whether fact, figure, or fancy, is an intimation that we are in the advent of another London season. ”

“ The rational enlargement of the individual is indeed the one great end of life. Nothing has so high a claim on us as the cultivation of ourselves. 'It is most true,' as a vigorous and thoughtful modern writer has remarked—'it is most true, and most fitting to be said to many in our day, that a man has no business to cut himself off from communion with so rich and manifold a world as ours, or arbitrarily to harden and narrow his life on any of the sides on which it is open and sensitive. ”

“ In course of time Mr and Mrs Davenant grew cold-hearted, calculating, and selfish; and as their fortunes flourished, more and more did they exult in their own wisdom, and condemn as foolish and Quixotic everything charitable and disinterested. To the best of their power they brought up their children in the same principles, and they succeeded to admiration with their eldest daughter, who was as shrewd and prudent as they could wish. Mrs Davenant would often express her maternal delight in her Selina: there never was a girl possessing such strong good sense—such wisdom. ”

“ It was pitiable to see the little heavy-laden carts of the peasantry toiling up the steep ascents, each with its forked pike trailing behind it, on which to rest the vehicle, while the horse should stop a few minutes at a time to recover breath and strength. Many were conducted by women; and I could not but admire the hardy, independent air of these females, as they sat, whip in hand, urging their steeds along, though, as might be expected from such a rough out-of-door life, their figures exhibit little of the attractions of their sex. ”

“ The entire grounds of the common advocacy of education must be abandoned; we must ascend from the low places of expediency and selfish benefit to the nobler platform of that universal and inborn necessity in man, which demands a circular and simultaneous culture of his whole nature—that essential and inward law of being whose perfect and successful development shall be answerable to the destination contemplated in the origin and intention of the human constitution. ”

“ But in a country where trees are the objects of such veneration, and where those that are neither holy nor sagacious are admitted without scruple to the best arborical society, how comes it that the beautiful, the umbrageous, and the beneficent tamarind is looked upon as the outlaw of the plantation, the pariah of the forest? This is a very puzzling circumstance, and one that, in the present state of our knowledge, we can only set down to the caprice and ingratitude of man. ”

“ A man must esteem his personal culture as the noblest end of his existence, and accept his responsibility in regard to it as the most paramount of obligations. To this one pre-eminent aim all other aims and aspirings must be held as inconsiderable and subordinate. Let him know, and lay earnestly to heart, that all his efforts at cultivation are to be everlasting in their results—fruitful for ever in blessed consequences to himself and to the world, or otherwise miserably and perpetually abortive, according to the character and spirit of his activity. ”

“ Mr and Mrs Davenant especially prided themselves on their worldly wisdom and on their strong good sense—excellent qualities undoubtedly, but susceptible of being carried to an injurious excess. If it be true that in our faults lie the germ of virtues, no less true is it that almost every virtue is capable of being exaggerated into vice. ”

“ The sole condition needful to be observed by those who thus endeavour to promote the education and enlightenment of the people, is a clear and firm persuasion in themselves that such a method of interesting men in the pursuits of literature or science, can only be considered as initiatory, and preparatory to something higher, and that at last knowledge must stand recommended to the mind by its own intrinsic charms, and by its grand and native tendency to further a man's spiritual advancement. ”

“ If there is one right of man more essentially sacred than another, it is his right to as complete and perfect an education as his own capacity, and the attainments and adaptations of the age he lives in, are adequate to supply him with; and again, if there is one human duty more paramount and obligatory than the rest, it is that which enjoins upon a man the use of his best energies and efforts to advance himself in intellectual and moral vigour, and to turn every talent and capability most honestly to account ”

“ It is a system of universal suffrage, exclusive only of the humblest labouring-class. It may be said to be a government of what we call the middle-classes, and all but a pure democracy; but it is essential to observe that the bulk of the people of Norway are of the kind which we recognise as a middle-class, for of hereditary nobility they have none, and the non-electors are a body too humble in circumstances, and too well matched in numbers by the rest, to have any power for good or evil in the case. ”

“ Considered as the power whereby he may cultivate and enlarge his being, knowledge is invested with a lofty and perennial momentousness, which cannot, and may not, be disregarded without derogation to our highest interests as human and spiritual intelligences. It is indeed a revelation, in all its manifold departments, of that vital and sustaining element of things which is designated Truth, and whereon every effort that can reasonably be expected to be lastingly successful is most intimately dependent. ”

“ This is the great and inestimable excellency of knowledge, that it acquaints us with something of the reality and nature of the mysterious frame of things wherein we live, and are necessitated constantly to work, and unfolds for us the laws and reasons of that obedience which we are constrained to yield to the established economy wherewith our existence and essential welfare are connected. ”

“ The working of trains is too expensive to allow of any profit being derived from the traffic conveyed.'
The announcement of these truths brings us to the consideration of a new and cheaper kind of railway system. It will naturally occur to every one that there are towns and districts which might find a paying traffic for some species of thoroughfare superior to what is afforded by a common road. A road is a general pathway on which so many cart-loads of stones are laid down to be ground to mud annually, at great labour to horses, and no small pain and loss of time and money to passengers. ”

“ What we more especially understand by education is a progressive process whereby the intellectual and moral powers are expanded and developed to the extent of their capabilities, and directed towards objects of action and speculation which have a tendency to advance the effectual wellbeing of the individual—a wellbeing whose character is not to be determined arbitrarily by opinion, or considered as consisting in conditions accordant with mere conventional preconceptions of mortal happiness, but one which pre-exists as an ideal prefigurement in human nature. ”

“ It is easy to lose one's self, or, as the Scripture has it, one's own soul, in the midst of the many and glittering forms of good which the world offers, and which our life apprehends: but to know any of these as realities, it is necessary to begin by being real in our own human ground of will, conscience, personal energy. ”

“ But the primary cost of railways is only one element of calculation as respects the chances of profit: another large item is the expense of working. It is now discovered that a railway cannot be worked, to be at all efficient, under the present heavy locomotive system, at a less cost than L.700 per mile per annum. 'Several branch lines owned by wealthy companies,' says Herapath, 'do not receive more than L.500 per mile per annum, while the expense of working them cannot be less than L.700 per mile per annum. ”

“ But it is also no less necessary, and perhaps in this time more required to urge, that a man's first vocation is to be a man—a practical, personal being, with a reasonable and moral existence, which must be kept strong, and in working order, at all expense of pleasure, talent, brilliancy, and success. ”

“ As man liveth not by bread alone, but by every gracious word that proceedeth from the mouth of God, by every just and everlasting law which He has established for the guidance and edification of mankind, so assuredly is it of primary concern to men to be qualified to interpret those sublime utterances, and to apprehend their import and significancy, in relation to the aims and hopes of life. ”

“ The generality were not, and could not be enriched, nor very sensibly elevated in the estimation of the world; they did not usually attain to what they had been taught to aim after, which was, in most cases, antecedence of their fellow-men, distinction and exalted notice in the eyes of accredited respectability. The conditions of society to which they were subjected limited most of them to their old employments and pursuits, and it only occasionally happened that a man's personal fortunes were very materially promoted by the intelligence he had gained through studious exertion. ”

“ Let knowledge, then, be recognised as a primary indispensability for the mind, the natural and appropriate inheritance of every human soul; and let us esteem it as a sufficient and authentic plea for its universal dissemination, that it is ever needful for the soul's health and welfare ”

“ Thus, while it is perfectly true that a liberal and complete education—using the word in its largest and strictly philosophical significance—is the sole and certain means of human elevation, it is not to be denied that very considerable acquisitions of information, and much intellectual ability and shrewdness, may subsist together with a manifest unscrupulousness or depravity of disposition. ”

“ That baneful divorce between intelligence and holiness which a sceptical and frivolous age has so disastrously effected, will need to be set aside as altogether founded{355} on a serious mistake; and indeed men are already beginning to apprehend that no pure faith can be sustained, no sound or abiding virtue inculcated and established, which is not deeply grounded in that mental certainty and assurance which clear, indisputable knowledge alone can furnish. ”

“ All learning and experience have an intimate and natural respect to the progressive perfection of the human soul. The original idea of a man—what he individually ought to be and do—that is the basis whereon he is to found and build up his entire being. ”

“ The business of a man prone to speculate in matters he is unused to deal with rarely flourishes.'
Mr Davenant inwardly acknowledged the truth of these remarks. It was by speculation that he was brought to his present embarrassments; but he said nothing.
'Take my advice, Sam,' continued Mr Atkinson, placing his hand impressively on his nephew's arm, 'and have nothing to do with these railways. Whether you gain or lose by them, they distract your attention, you see, from your business, and so you lose one way at all events. ”

“ Improvements are every day being made in the locomotive; and it is highly probable that in course of time we shall have light locomotives fit for the working of branch lines, where there is but a meagre supply of traffic, and where the expense of the giant locomotive now in use cannot be borne.'
The only matters remaining to be discussed are the mode and cost of construction. It may be as well to say at once, that unless the landowners and general inhabitants of a district cordially concur in establishing such lines, they cannot be made, and the whole project falls to the ground. ”

“ They have not our sense of quietness being the perfection of refined life. At Minde a gentleman over my head made an amount of noise with his luggage and his personal movements which astonished me, for it created the idea of a vast exertion being undergone in order to produce it, as if it had been thought that there was some important object to be served by noise, and the more noise the better.
I had intended to proceed next morning by the steamer along the lake, but I had been misinformed as to the days of sailing, and found it necessary to spend my reserve day at Minde. ”