Various

“ Did you ever see anybody prettier?’
‘Oh, her,’ Edward answered, looking across at the lady in pink carelessly. ‘Yes, yes; I see now. Pretty enough, as you say, Harry.’
‘Pretty enough! Is that all you’ve got to say about her! You block of ice! you lump of marble! Why, my dear fellow, she’s absolute perfection. That’s the worst, now, of a man’s being engaged. He loses his eye entirely for female beauty.’
‘What did you say her name was?’
‘Miss Dupuy. I’ll introduce you in a minute.’
‘But, my dear Harry, where are you going? We don’t even know the people.’
‘Nothing easier, then. ”

“ Absolutely impossible. A man can’t marry on seven hundred a year, you see, can he?’
Edward laughed. ‘I could,’ he answered, ‘very easily. No doubt, you couldn’t. But then you haven’t got anybody in your eye; while I, you know, am anxious as soon as I can to marry Marian.’
‘Not got anybody in my eye!’ Harry Noel cried, leaning back in his chair and opening his two hands symbolically in front of him with an expansive gesture. ”

“ If we see her, I mean to push boldly for an introduction to the somebody unnamed who owns the lawn. Leave the dogcart at some inn or other down, at Putney, stroll along the river casually till you see a beautiful vision of sweet nineteen or thereabout, walk in quietly as if the place belonged to you, and there you are.’
They drove on to Putney through the crowded roads, and put the dogcart up at the Coach and Horses. Then Harry and Edward took to the still more crowded bank, and began to push their way among the densely packed masses of nondescript humanity in the direction of Barnes Bridge. ”

“ Harry Noel’s was, in short, the kind of face that women are most likely to admire: Edward Hawthorn’s was the kind that an artist would rather rejoice to paint, or that a sculptor would still more eagerly wish to model. ”

“ And if it be true that these meteors have had their origin in solar eruptions, we are brought to the strange reflection, that the matter which in the yesterday of ages was hurled with awful energy from the sun’s surface, is being partly returned to it in the present age, as the energy and matter of to-day will be partly returned to feed its fires in the ages of to-morrow. Should these speculations be correct, then our meteor-systems do indeed play an important part in the economy of nature. ”

“ A continuance of this process gradually diminishes their bulk, the smaller ones being entirely consumed high above the earth, and constituting the shooting-stars whose passage is as evanescent as a gleam of light. ”

“ All forms of force on earth, the energies of man himself, have their physical source in the centre of our system; and if it be that the energy of that source is being ever renewed by the physical impact of meteoric masses, they have an equal title with the sun to be regarded as the source of energy, although it must not be forgotten that the rain of meteors on the sun’s surface is itself due to the attractive force inherent in the sun itself. ”

“ Having traced back the history of the desert dust-particles until they have been found to be intimately bound up, if indeed not themselves forming bodies whose motions have laws ‘as fixed as planets have,’ it now remains to take yet another step back into the history of things, and endeavour to form some idea as to their first origin, and the part they have played, or play, in the economy of nature. ”

“ Will the continual gathering in by the sun, the earth, and other planets, gradually lead up to the time when these meteoric swarms shall have ceased to be, and the sun grow cold and dull? Who shall say? There are many causes to delay this end. As the sun, together with the solar system, sweeps through space, it will pass through regions now rich, now poor, in meteoric aggregations, and the total amount of matter which it will gather in will, therefore, vary from century to century, from epoch to epoch. ”

“ In the light of this and other enterprises of a like kind, a few notes from Governor Broome’s address may be instructive and interesting at this time. Founded in 1829, and therefore fifty-six years old, the colony of Western Australia had, until lately, made but slow progress. At this day, only thirty-two thousand settlers are thinly scattered over the occupied portion of her vast expanse. The most pressing want of the colony, the one great need, is more people, of the right sort of course; not only more hands to labour, but more capitalists to employ them. ”

“ On the inner edge, the reef drops sheer to the usual depth of the lagoon. In some of{13} the narrow channels between the atolls you get four or five fathoms on one side of the vessel, when you can see the smallest object on the white bottom; and on the other side the line goes down to a hundred fathoms. All through the lagoons there are numerous islands dotted about, forming beautiful objects in the placid blue waters, with their pure white strip of sandy beach; then a margin of scrubby jungle, the centre being filled up with a dense thicket of cocoa-nut trees. ”

“ Impossible to travel on the line this morning without getting one’s self jammed and elbowed by all the tinkers and tailors, soldiers and sailors, butchers and bakers and candlestick makers in the whole of London. ”

“ If you will consider what it is to have such a meagre sum standing between you and starvation, you may realise the position of this woman. To be alone, unfriended, penniless, in a city of four million souls, is indeed a low depth of human misery. ”

“ It is, however, probable that none of these theories of an eruptive origin, whether from satellite, planet, or sun, is the true one—it being more likely that meteors are the residue of nebulous matter not gathered into planets when the different members of the solar system began to exist independently, but which each hour, day, and year is being slowly gathered in by the earth and the other planets as these bodies come within the sphere of their gravitative influences. Thus much as to the origin of these meteoric swarms. ”

“ The configuration of the Maldive group is singular, the northern and southern portions lying in a single line of atolls, whilst in the centre there is a double row. Nearly all are of an oval shape, with the longest axis north and south. They all consist of an annular ring of coral reef, a quarter to half a mile broad, with a lagoon in the centre, of the almost uniform depth of twenty-three to twenty-five fathoms. There are many openings from the open sea to the interior, through which the currents rush with great violence. ”

“ These small masses are constantly falling towards the earth, some reaching its actual surface. So it must be with the moon, and with the other planets and satellites which compose the solar system; and this continual impact of meteors, however inappreciable its influence on the earth, cannot be without its heat-producing effects on the larger bodies of our system. If this be so, how much greater must be the result produced by the enormous number of these bodies which, from a variety of causes, would be incessantly precipitated upon the sun’s surface ”

“ But although the life-history of the cosmic dust-particles of the Sahara has thus been traced back until they are found to be component parts of meteor-swarms, whose movements are controlled and dominated by definite laws, there yet remains the question of their origin, the explanation of the annual periodicity, and why this secular cycle should exist. ”

“ It is the dust formed as they are consumed, which, slowly settling to earth, constitutes the cosmic particles to which reference has been made.
But whilst on almost any clear night some few meteors may be seen to flash across the sky, observation has revealed the fact, that in certain months of the year, and on certain dates in those months, shooting-stars are much more numerous than in other months and on ordinary nights. ”

“ Many and strange are the hypotheses which have from time to time been put forth. Some have held meteors to be the scattered remnants of an exploded planet, ‘battered by the shocks of doom.’ Other speculators have thought that this dust of space originated in ejections from volcanic vents when the volcanoes which stud the surface of our satellite were in energy. ”

“ The town of Mali is fairly well laid out, with good broad streets; and as the soil is pure sand, and only trodden by naked feet, cleanliness is the rule. In the houses, everything looks neat and in good order; but I must admit that I only saw those of the better class. The houses are mostly of wattle and daub, with thatched roofs overhanging the eaves; and the compounds were inclosed by a fence of cocoa-nut leaves, prettily plaited at the top.
The people live mostly on fish and rice. All the atolls swarm with various kinds of fishes, amongst which the bonito predominates ”

“ The people are very timid, and averse from intercourse with Europeans. The only sign of dependence on Ceylon is the yearly Embassy, conveying the usual letter from the sultan to the governor of Ceylon, with the nominal tribute, consisting principally of Maldive mats and sweetmeats. ”

“ Nor is this all; for, knowing as we do that meteors occasionally reach the earth in the form of substantial masses, the suggestion has been ventured that they fall in sufficient numbers to affect its bulk in the course of ages; and assuming, as we are entitled to assume, that these masses, to which we are unable to assign definitely a meteoric origin, are indeed meteorites, the link connecting them with cosmic (non-terrestrial) dust has then been found. ”

“ The April meteors perform their journey in space along the orbit of the comet of 1861, while many other meteor-streams have been discovered to be similarly related to other comets. With the knowledge of the connection between comets and meteor-swarms, and our knowledge of the constitution of meteorites themselves, the vexed question as to the constitution of comets would seem to be rendered more easy of solution; but the subject is beset with many difficulties, and comets well situated for observation do not too often visit our skies. ”

“ First, seat yourself firmly on the top the same as they do; then, proceed to knock off the other intruders, as if you belonged to the party by invitation; finally, slip over quietly inside, and mix with the lot exactly as if you really knew them. There is such a precious crowd of people inside, that nobody’ll ever find out you weren’t invited. I’ve long observed that nobody ever does know who’s who at a garden-party. ”

“ No doubt, most of the trees have been imported, though the ocean currents must also have conveyed seeds from other countries.
Of animals, there are no indigenous species. The sultan has a few imported cows of the Brahminee kind; and a horse, a present from the Ceylon government some years ago. Goats are plentiful. I saw neither dog nor cat; but a kind of rat is said to commit great havoc among the cocoa-nut trees, which they climb, and destroy the nuts. ”

“ No part of the world could boast finer or more easily grown grapes. The south-west corner of the colony is rich in timber. A very good opening exists for immigrants at Albany. The Peninsular and Oriental Company’s steamers touch at Albany once a week on their way to or from Ceylon, this being their first and last port of call in Australia. ”

“ About one o’clock in the morning, by a flickering fire of half-dead embers, young men of twenty-five are very apt to grow confidential. Now, it was one o’clock gone, by the marble timepiece on Edward Hawthorn’s big mantel-shelf in King’s Bench Walk, Temple; and Edward Hawthorn and Harry Noel were each of them just twenty-five ”

“ Lizards swarm in immense numbers; and when going along with a crowd, one could hardly step without putting one’s foot on a fat long-tailed specimen. Of birds there were a great many of the aquatic kind, gulls, gannets, noddies, herons, &c., and among land-birds, of course the ubiquitous crow soon makes its appearance. The kite also is seen sailing about and picking up any garbage that comes in its way. Plovers, sandpipers, &c., are also said to frequent the group; but I saw none of them. Of fishes, sharks are plentiful; and the bonito literally swarms in the lagoons. ”

“ Yet another class of theorists hold that the sun itself is the source of these wandering streams, they being continually sent far into space by those mighty eruptions with which we know that orb to be continually convulsed. ”

“ If I get this district judgeship, I shall be able to write and tell them positively I’m coming, and they won’t have any excuse of any sort for putting a stopper on it any longer.’
‘In other words, in order to go and spy out the hidden wealth of the old governor, you’re going to throw up the finest opening at the English bar, and bind yourself down to a life of exile in a remote corner of the Caribbean Sea. ”

“ Sometimes the meteor will traverse a large portion of the heavens, travelling perhaps the entire vault, and then disappearing, while still bright, below the horizon. Occasionally, they may be seen to fall to earth ”

“ The presentation of the letter to the governor is rather curious and interesting. The Embassy lands at the custom-house at Colombo, when a procession is formed, headed by a native Ceylon force called Lascareens of the guard, venerable as a remnant of the old days of the Kandy kings, but only formidable now from the excruciating nature of their music. ”

“ The development of valuable industries lying ready to hand is hampered at every turn by this want of population. In round figures, the extent of Western Australia is a million square miles, the chief centres of settlement being in the south-west corner. ”