Various

“ Eccentric sleepers, who write Greek hexameters, and fasten on poetic thoughts while the rest of the world are in rational slumber, might object to the feebleness of this point of light; but eccentricities need provisions of their own, and comets have orbits to which the laws of the stars do not apply. For all ordinary people, this thick candle-end is a delicious substitute for the ghastly rush-light in its chequered cage, which threw strange figures on wall and curtain, and gave nervous women the megrims. ”

“ Walk in whatever direction you may, in the environs of any town—wherever there is shade, wherever there is a grove, or a clump of acacias, limes, or chestnuts, the favourite trees for such purposes, and consequently much cultivated—there you are sure to find rest and refreshment suited to the wants and purses of all classes—from the most simple brown bread, milk, and beer, to the most delicate sweetmeats and wines. ”

“ Numerous other and still more simple places of refreshment and enjoyment present themselves at every turn of those delicious mountain-paths, which lead through the little valleys and hollows of the vineyards overlooking the town. One of the most agreeable is on the summit of the hill, near the little chapel of St Mary, called Marien Kirche, under the Kalvarienberg, and from which the eye looks over the whole town and the plain which stretches towards Pesth, and through which the Danube winds like a vast silver serpent, till it is lost in the far woods and dim distance. ”

“ The rich and the poor, the prince and the artisan, sit down at the same kind of modest little green-painted tables, with rush-bottomed chairs, all kind, affable, and jovial—all respecting each other. The child of the citizen comes up without restraint, and plays with the sword-knot of the commander-in-chief; and the little princess will naïvely offer her bunch of grapes to the peasant who sits at the next table with his pipe and his tall glass of Bavarian beer. ”

“ It is a life so new to him, and so diametrically opposed to all his habits and notions, that, in general, it affords him anything but ease and enjoyment. To those, however, who know how to enjoy it, it affords both. There is in these popular reunions an ease and confidence, a bonhomie and freedom, of which a Briton, with all his boasted liberty, has no idea. What is strangest of all to him, no distinction of rank, wealth, or profession is acknowledged. There are no reserved places. ”

“ Many of the experiments upon him, shewing an extreme state of mental and physical prostration, are rather painful to witness, others are ludicrous; for instance, he is made to believe that he is out amid the snow in the depth of winter—he shivers with cold, buttons up his coat, beats the floor with his feet, brushes away the imagined fast-falling flakes from his clothes, and almost imparts to the spectators a sympathetic feeling of cold by his wintry pantomime: then he is jocosely recommended not to stand thus shivering, but to make snow-balls, and pelt the lecturer. ”

“ It has become so much the fashion among certain of us, renowned more for zeal than knowledge, to cry down all amusements for the people, as tending to the subversion and overthrow of morality, to shut them out from all but the church, the conventicle, and the gin-shop—that any recognition of this mistake in a more liberal arrangement, may be hailed as the inauguration of an era of common sense, and consequently of true morality. ”

“ Cowardly and cruel in equal proportion, the wolf has no defenders. 'In short,' says Goldsmith—probably translating Buffon, for we have not the latter at hand to ascertain—'every way offensive, a savage aspect, a frightful howl, an insupportable odour, a perverse disposition, fierce habits, he is hateful while living, and useless when dead.'
But what, then, is man, whom mere accidental association for a few years can strip of the faculties inherent in his race and convert into a wolf? The lower animals retain their instincts in all circumstances. ”

“ Not because you are a Mr Greatheart, accustomed to deal with giants, but because, in fact, the illusion does not keep possession of your mind even for a moment. Imagination merely suggests the false image; but memory and reason, with a rapidity of action which cannot be described, instantly correct the mistake, and tell you it is only the old elm-tree; so that here, and in a thousand similar instances, there is really no sufficient time allowed for any display of the power of imagination. ”

“ In America, we have before us a living model, blind, mute, deaf, and without the sense of smell; communicating with the external world by the sense of touch alone; yet endowed with a rare intelligence, which permits us to see, through the fourfold veil that shrouds her, the original germs of the human character. ”

“ There are better lights, though, than any of these, and a worse than mere physical night, be it the blackest with which romancer ever stained his innocent paper, when describing those dark deeds on desolate moors which all romancers delight in, and which send young ladies pale to bed. The night of the mind is worse than the night of time ”

“ The reason why the vulpine ravager is spared by these wretches is—that wolves devour children! Not, however, that the wanderers have any dislike to children, but they are tempted by the jewels with which they are adorned; and knowing the dens of the animals, they make this fearful gold-seeking a part of their business. The adornment of their persons with jewellery is a passion with the Hindoos which nothing can overcome. Vast numbers of women—even those of the most infamous class—are murdered for the sake of their ornaments, yet the lesson is lost upon the survivors. ”

“ Rational, agreeable, and healthy as it is, it requires a long time before a thorough Englishman can accustom himself to it, or feel at all comfortable in eating his meals in the open air, surrounded by two or three hundred persons employed in the same manner, or crossing and recrossing, and circling round his table. He is apt to fancy himself the sole object of curiosity; while, in reality, the eyes which seem to mark him out, have in them perhaps as little speculation as if they were turned on vacancy. ”

“ We especially wish the reader to understand how wide and important is the meaning of the terms 'control' and 'overrule' as we use them when we say: 'reason controls, or overrules, imagination!' When we say that, in nature, the laws which regulate one stage of existence overrule the laws of another and a lower stage, we do not intend to say that the latter are annulled, but that they are so controlled and modified in their course of action, that they can no longer produce the effects which would take place if they were left free from such control. A few examples will make our meaning plain. ”

“ If we required proof that the operation of reason demands a wakeful and active condition of the brain, we might find it in the fact, that all intellectual efforts which imply sound reasoning are prevented even by a partial sleepiness or dreaminess. A light novel may be read and enjoyed while the mind is in an indolent and dreamy state; music may be enjoyed, or even composed, in the same circumstances, because it is connected rather with the imaginative than with the logical faculty ”

“ To give a familiar instance of the control under which it is generally compelled to act: You are walking home in the night-time, and some withered and broken old tree assumes, for a moment, the appearance of a giant about to make an attack upon you with an enormous club. You walk forward to confront the monster with perfect coolness. ”

“ Amusements are absolutely necessary for mankind. The nation never existed on this earth which could dispense with them. Sects rise up every now and then which carry their abhorrence of all that is not fanaticism—after their own pattern—to the extreme, and which lay pleasure under the same curse with vice ”

“ For all ordinary purposes, this mode of speaking is correct enough; but let us ask, Why is imagination so weak?—why are its suggestions so evanescent? Simply because it is under the control of reason. But if the action of reason could be suspended, we should then see how great, and even formidable, is the imaginative power. ”

“ Again—vegetable life overrules chemistry: the leaves, twigs, and branches of a tree, if left without life, would, when exposed to the agencies of air, light, heat, and moisture, be partly reduced to dust and partly diffused as gas in the atmosphere. It is the vegetative life of the tree which controls both the mechanical and the chemical powers of wind, rain, heat, and gravitation; and it is not until the life is extinct that these inferior powers come into full play upon the tree. ”

“ Notwithstanding this passion, however, for everything that is foreign, few countries can be at all compared with Hungary as to its wines, many of which are scarcely known to any but to the peasants who grow them, and the local consumers of the same class. These wines, with which every peasant's house, especially on the skirts of the mountain-districts, and every little bothy-like public-house, are abundantly furnished, are both red and white, and at a price within the reach of the poorest peasant. ”

“ But who ever pretends to understand patents? The 'Belmont' every one knows; it is a mere ordinary wax-candle, which perhaps does not 'gutter' so much as others, and with wick more innocent of 'thieves' than most, but with nothing more wonderful in appearance than an ordinary candle. A Child's night-light, too, has nothing mysterious in its look. ”

“ He cannot pronounce his own name—does not know, or at least cannot tell, the name of the town in which he lives—cannot recognise one face in the room where scores of people, who know him very well, are now laughing at him. ”

“ All the instruction, discipline, and management were supplied by the boys themselves; and when a number of elder boys joined, a committee, appointed by themselves, regulated the affairs of the community. However, this did not last long. The hot young blood and immature young brain needed a stronger curb than self-appointed committees could supply; and by a general request, the school has since been worked by authority—this authority itself guided by a general vote in many matters of choice immediately concerning the scholars. ”

“ To conclude: we regard the exhibitions now so common under the name of electro-biology as delusions, so far as they are understood to have any connection with the facts of electricity; so far as they are real, we regard them as very remarkable instances of a mode of acting on the brain which is, we believe, likely to prove injurious. As we have no motive in writing but simply to elicit the truth, we will briefly notice two difficulties which seem to attend our theory. ”

“ The point upon which we would insist is that, in the normal condition of the mind and the body, the power of imagination is so governed, that a display of the effects it produces while under the control of reason, can give us but a feeble notion of what its power might be in other circumstances. To make this plain, we add a few suggestions respecting the nature and extent of the control exercised by reason over imagination ”

“ In the impressible and passive state of the brain left by any illness which produces nervous exhaustion, such imaginations often become very troublesome. Impressions made on the brain some time ago will now reappear. Jean Paul Richter cautions us not to tell frightful stories to children, for this reason—that, though the 'horrible fancies' may all be soon forgotten by the healthful child, yet afterwards, when some disease—a fever, for instance—has affected the brain and the nerves, all the dismissed goblins may too vividly reproduce themselves. ”

“ In the year of the Crystal Palace, the London magistrates had fewer petty criminals brought before them than at any other period of the same duration; and what Mr Wilson proves in his cricket-ground, what London shewed in the time of the World's Fair, generations and countries would always exhibit in larger characters, more widely read—that the mind and body of man require amusement—simple pleasure—purposeless, aimless, unintellectual, physical pleasure—as much as his digestive organs require food and his hands work ”

“ It is the most untiring of all our mental faculties, refusing to be put to rest even during sleep: it can alter the influence of all external agents—for example, can either assist or prevent the effects of medicine—can make the world a prison-house to one man, and a paradise to another—can turn dwarfs into giants, and make various other metamorphoses more wonderful than any described by Ovid; nay, these are all insufficient examples of its power when left without control; for it can produce either health, or disease, or death! ”