Various

“ It is a work which we would recommend to the attention of all who feel any interest in our early history, as calculated to afford them a great gratification. One is surprised to find in how great a degree the Northmen affected Britain; what an infusion of Scandinavian blood there is in our population; how many traces of their predominancy survive in names of places and in more tangible monuments. ”

“ The maxim, that men may safely be left to seek their own interest, and are sure to find it, appears to require some slight qualification, for nothing can be more certain, than that men are often the better of things which have been forced upon them. Those who advocate the idea in its rigour, forget that there are such things as ignorance and prejudice in the world, and that most men only become or continue actively industrious under the pressure of necessity. The vast advantages derived from railway communication afford a ready instance of people being benefited against their will. ”

“ This is unjust enough in England, but in Australia it is ridiculous. A capitalist goes out, provided with a sum so small as to be altogether useless at home as a means of permanent support, but which, in the colony, he expects, with proper management, to place him for the rest of his life in a position of almost fabulous prosperity. These cheering views, however, he confines to his own class. The measure of his happiness will not be full unless he can find cheap labour, as well as magnificent returns. ”

“ We never can look upon a great factory chimney pouring forth its thick column of smoke, without a twin grief—for the disgust it creates, and the good that is lost by it. Properly, that volatile fuel should be doing duty in the furnace, and effecting a saving to the manufacturer, instead of rendering him and his concerns a nuisance to all within five miles. ”

“ If it were true, there should be no class in our own country willing to sit down with the dubious benefits of monopoly, instead of pushing on for the certain results of enlightened competition. It could only be true at the expense of the old proverb, that necessity is the mother of invention; for do we not every day see men submitting idly and languidly to evils which can just be borne? ”

“ The operation of the commercial principle which tempts all superiority to try its fortune in the greatest accessible market, is perhaps irresistible; but anything is surely to be lamented which annihilates local intellect, and degrades the provincial spheres which intellect and its consequences can alone adorn. According to the modern rate of travelling, the capitals of Scotland and of England were then about 2400 miles asunder. Edinburgh was still more distant in its style and habits. ”

“ For more than thirty years—for the average period that suffices to change the generation of man upon earth—had this preposterous adventure, and everything connected with it, lain dormant in some sealed-up cavity of my brain, when the bare sight of the little bundle of small-sized German foolscap, with its ragged edges and blotted official pages, has set the whole paltry drama, with all its dignified performers, in motion before the retina of my mind's eye with all the reality of the actual occurrence. ”

“ Karl Gurtler was the centre of an admiring circle, who soon enveloped him in the incense of their meerschaums. He held a large levée in the common room of the inn, where a succession of very terrific battle-songs kept us up to a late hour, as it was of no use to think of slumber during their explosion. The next morning, at the appointed hour, the proceedings recommenced, and the remainder of the witnesses were examined at full length. It was in vain that I offered to plead guilty, and pay the penalty, whatever it might be, so that we might be allowed to proceed on our journey. ”

“ We are never sorry to hear of the high price of labour in countries where the employers live in ease and independence; and we join heartily in the counsel to the higher class of working-men in this country given by Mr Burton in his Emigrants Manual—'never to confound a large labour-market with good sources of employment.' It does not appear to us to be one of the least of the benefits that will accrue after convalescence from the gold-fever in Australia, the higher value the employed will set upon their labour. ”

“ The intense pain occasioned by the bite, or rather bruise, of a horse's mouth, can only be properly judged of by those who have felt it. I was the madder of the two now; and of all animals, an enraged man is the most dangerous and the most fearless. I gave him a blow between the ears with the end of the whip; and he went down at once, stunned and senseless, with his legs doubled up under him, and his nose buried in the ground. I drew his fore-legs from under him, that he might rise the more readily, and then lashed him into life. ”

“ It is in your family that my taste for domestic society and domestic enjoyments has been nurtured and preserved. Such a child as Tuckey I shall never see again in this world. Heaven bless her, and she will be a blessing both to her mother and to you.' After touching upon a volume of poems which Mr Morehead had published—'If I were you, however, I would live more with Tuckey, and be satisfied with my gardening and pruning—with my preaching—a good deal of walking and comfortable talking. What more has life? ”

“ And this interest is deepened when we observe the benefits which Barbarism usually derives from its own defeats. The factory-owner, for instance, will find that, in applying an apparatus by which smoke may be prevented, he will not merely be sparing his neighbours a great annoyance, but economising fuel to an extent which must more than repay the outlay. By repressing nuisance, he will be in the same measure repressing waste. ”

“ Throwing him the money, minus the attempted imposition, I told him to consider himself fortunate that he had got that, which was more than such a rogue-schurke was the word I used—deserved.
'Do you call me a rogue?' said he.
'Certainly; a rogue is your right name,' I replied, and sprang into the carriage.
'Ho! ho!' said he; 'that is against the law. Hans Felder,' he bawled to the postilion, 'I charge you not to move; the horses may be led back to the stable: the gracious gentleman has called me a rogue. Stiefel, run for the police: the gracious gentleman says I am a rogue. ”

“ Tradition speaks loudly all over Scotland of the ancient doings of the Danes. So much, indeed, is this the case, that every antiquity which cannot be ascribed to the Romans, is popularly thought to be Danish, an idea which has been implicitly adopted by a great number of the Scotch clergy in the Statistical Account of their respective parishes. In the Highlands, Mr Worsaae found the people retaining a very fresh recollection of the terrors of the Northmen, and ready to believe that their incursions might yet be renewed. ”

“ When he passes by a railway over the tops of the houses in some mean suburb, and looks down with horror and disgust on the pools and heaps of filth which are allowed to encumber the yards, courts, and narrow streets of these localities, to the destruction of the health of the inhabitants, he has a second consideration before him, that all these matters ought to be in the care of some easy-acting system, by which, removed to the fields, they should be helping to create the means of life, instead of death. ”

“ A singular example happens to call our attention. There is a distillery in the west of Scotland, where it has been found convenient to establish a dairy upon a large scale, for the purpose of consuming the refuse of the grain. Seven hundred cows are kept there; and a profitable market is found for their milk in the city of Glasgow. That the refuse of the cow-houses might be applied to a profitable purpose, a large farm was added to the concern, though of such land as an amateur agriculturist would never have selected for his experiments. ”

“ The people are not very tall in stature, but usually more compact and strongly built than their countrymen towards the south. The Englishman himself seems to acknowledge that a difference is to be found in the appearance of the inhabitants of the northern and southern counties; at least, one constantly hears in England, when red-haired, compact-built men with broad faces are spoken of: "They must certainly be from Yorkshire;" a sort of admission that light hair, and the broad peculiar form of the face, belong mostly to the north of England people.... ”

“ Hans, who had heard every syllable that passed, was not, however, so manageable a subject as the plaintiff expected to find him. Whether, like Toby Allspice in the play, he 'made it a rule never to disoblige a customer;' or whether, which was not unlikely, he owed Karl Gurtler a grudge, either for stopping him on his route, or for some previous disagreement with that conscientious public functionary; or whether, which was likeliest of all, he feared to compromise his claim for trinkgeld from the highborn, gracious gentlemen he had the honour of driving, I cannot pretend to determine. ”

“ The lawless adventurers who rushed to the gold-fields from all parts of the world subsided gradually into order from mere motives of self-preservation; and as the precious metal disappeared from the surface, multitudes were driven by necessity or policy into employments more remunerative than digging. The large mining population—the producers of gold—became the consumers of goods; markets of all kinds were opened for their supply; emporia of trade rose along the coast ”

“ The value of this work rests, in our opinion, on the illustration which it presents of the possibility of a man of sound though unpopular opinions passing through life, not merely without suffering greatly from the wrath of society, but in the enjoyment of some of its highest honours. After reading this book, one could almost suppose it to be a delusion that the world judges hardly of any man's speculative opinions, while his life remains pure, and his heart manifestly is alive to all the social charities. ”

“ We were comrades once, and I promised to keep the secret, for he thought it extremely probable that he might meet a wealthy English lady here, who might fall in love with him—your countrywomen are so eccentric. He has found a Russian princess, which is better. I suppose we must now call him Monseigneur?'
Although, like the rest of my species, disposed to laugh at the misfortunes of my fellow-creatures, I confess that I pitied Madame de Mourairef; for I felt persuaded that M. Jerome had passed himself off as a very distinguished personage. ”

“ Finally, as is well known, we had a brief succession of Danish kings in England, including the magnanimous Canute. When we look at the quiet people now inhabiting Denmark and Norway, we are at a loss to understand whence came or where resided that spirit of reckless daring which inspired such a system of conquest, or how it came so completely to die out; but the explanation is, that the Northmen of those days were heathens, animated by a religion which made them utterly indifferent to danger. ”

“ That kind of gold-seeking, however, which unsettles the habits of a population, and represses the other pursuits of industry, is not likely to endure very long in any country. It must give way in time to scientific mining, which is as legitimate a business as any other, and which, by the wealth it circulates, will tempt men into new avenues of industry, and recruit, to any extent that may be desirable, the supply of labour. ”

“ Had I met the same persons in Denmark or Norway, it would never have entered my mind that they were foreigners. Now and then I also met with some whose taller growth and sharper features reminded me of the inhabitants of South Jutland, or Sleswick, and particularly of Angeln; districts of Denmark which first sent colonists to England. It is not easy to describe peculiarities which can be appreciated in all their details only by the eye; nor dare I implicitly conclude that in the above-named cases I have really [pg 287] met with persons descended in a direct line from the old Northmen. ”

“ We cannot reason from the English standard, which has not been deliberately fixed, but forced upon us by competition, excessive population, public burdens, and the necessities of social position. In a new country, however, where all these circumstances are absent, and whither [pg 284] employers and employed resort alike for the purpose of bettering their condition, we should like to see traditions cast aside, and the fabric of society erected on a new basis. ”

“ When the Londoner groans at the smokiness of his streets, and the particles of soot he finds spread over his shirt, his toilet-table, and every nice article of furniture he possesses, he has the additional vexation of knowing, that the smoke and soot should have been serving a useful purpose as fuel. ”

“ Then, the unequalled gentleness of her disposition, the unaffected worth of her affections, and miraculous simplicity of character and manners, which made her always appear as pure and innocent as an infant, took so firm, though gentle a hold on the heart of every one who approached her, that even those who have been comparatively strangers to her worth, have been greatly affected by her loss.... ”