Various

“ He reminds his hearers that what science itself has to teach us consists not so much in facts, as in those lessons and deductions which can be drawn from facts, and which can be justly apprehended only by a knowledge of such facts. ‘Those,’ he aptly says, ‘whose knowledge of science has furnished them with only an encyclopædia of facts, are like men who try to warm themselves before coals which have not yet been lighted. ”

“ There will be nothing then to hinder you from marrying that woman whom I saw in your arms. Oh! I am not in the least jealous, although I love you so dearly, and although’—here she glanced at herself in the chimney-glass—‘that woman is not half so good-looking as I am. No one in this house but she knows that I am your wife. You have only to swear to her that I am an impostor, and she will believe you—we women are such easy fools where we love!—and will marry you. ”

“ But what one magazine rejects another may be in need of; so that a really good article is almost certain of finding its billet somewhere.
In these circumstances, while there is nothing that need eventually discourage a capable or promising writer, there is much to make parents and guardians take warning before they set a young man or woman adrift on the sea of life with only his or her pen as a rudder. Literature, like painting, affords to persons of inferior or only mediocre powers a very precarious means of livelihood. ”

“ Even in the case of what may be called successful minor contributors to periodical literature, it can hardly be possible, we should think, for them to rely wholly upon the results for a livelihood. Nor is it necessary to do so. The kind of literary work to which we allude can, in general, be carried on side by side with the work of an ordinary occupation or profession, as it is rarely that the articles of a writer of this class are in such constant demand as to make it necessary to give his or her whole time to their production. ”

“ Captain Bowood had spoken truly. Lady Dimsdale and Mr Boyd were sauntering slowly in the direction of the house, deep in conversation, and quite unaware that they were being watched from a little distance by the woman in black whom Mrs Bowood had taken to be an applicant for the post of French governess.
Oscar Boyd was a tall, well-built man, verging towards his fortieth year. His complexion was deeply imbrowned by years of tropical sunshine. ”

“ Those who are furnished only with the deductions of science are like men who may have a lighted match, but have not the material to construct a fire. That match soon burns away uselessly.’ We cannot conceive of any one reading this book, even with only an average degree of attention and only a trifling modicum of scientific knowledge, and not gleaning from it a clearer apprehension of the facts of science and the inductions to be made from these facts.
⁂
A beautiful volume comes to us from the pen of an occasional contributor to this Journal, Dr Gordon Stables. ”

“ We do not use the latter word in any disparaging sense; but simply as the only one which fully embraces the great and constantly increasing class of persons, who, as writers of matter good, bad, and indifferent, are now weekly and daily knocking for admission at the doors of Literature. We have always been favourable to giving encouragement to young writers of ability, and never a year passes but we are able to introduce a few fresh contributors to the world of periodical literature. ”

“ Some favoured citizens and ‘country cousins,’ by the privilege of what is called technically a ‘tasting order,’ may, however, traverse miles of cellars, filled with the choicest vintages, and in the wine-vaults may behold the most curious fungoid forms, white as snow, pendent from the vaulted roofs. They may survey, as at the London Docks, thirty thousand casks of brandy in a single vault ”

“ Scarcely a week passes but we receive letters requesting us, from the specimens of work inclosed, to say whether the contributor might hope to become a successful writer for magazines, as he or she is presently a clerk or a governess, and would wish to attain a better position, which position, ‘kind friends’—often in this same matter, if they knew it, very unkind—think, might be reached through the channel of literature. ”

“ The marvellous sunsets which have lately been common all over the world have led to a mass of correspondence and conjectures upon the part of scientific men. Perhaps the fullest and most interesting contribution to the literature of the subject is the long article contributed to the Times by Mr Norman Lockyer, who, with many others, is disposed to attribute the phenomena to the presence in the upper regions of the atmosphere of a vast quantity of volcanic dust, the outcome of the terrible eruption—one of the most terrible ever recorded—which took place at Krakatoa in August last. ”

“ The lands of Frendraught, towards the beginning of the seventeenth century, were in the possession of James Crichton, a laird or minor baron of the period, sufficiently proud of that designation to slight and reject the title of viscount which his son accepted in his father’s lifetime. His wife was Lady Elizabeth Gordon, a woman of a proud and resolute character, daughter of the Earl of Sutherland, and a ‘near cousin,’ as Spalding expresses it, of the Marquis of Huntly, a connection which should be remembered in the course of the narrative. ”

“ She sat for a little while tapping impatiently with one foot on the carpet, and glancing furtively at the impassive face bent over its books and maps, which seemed for the time to have forgotten that there was any such person as she in existence. ”

“ The lecturer spoke of the importance of speedy aid to those who are hurt, and to those who are taken suddenly ill in our streets. At present, in such cases, he said, such persons came under the care of kindly bystanders or the police, none of whom have received any instruction whatever in what is now commonly known as ‘first aid to the sick or wounded.’ The personi was placed either in a cab or on a police-stretcher, and the lecturer could imagine nothing worse adapted for the conveyance of a patient with a fractured limb than a cab. ”

“ In the Customs service—and the same thing will doubtless apply to the Excise—there are gaugers who stand head and shoulders above their fellows, and who appear to have the power by merely glancing at a cask, as if by intuition, to tell its ‘content,’ as its holding capacity is officially styled. ”

“ Her clear youthful complexion owed probably as much to art as it did to nature; but it was art so skilfully applied as sometimes to excite the envy of those of her own sex to whom such secrets were secrets no longer. In any case, most men conceded that she was still a very handsome woman, and it was not likely that she was unaware of the fact. ”

“ As we have said on former occasions, writers must not start, as is too often done, on the assumption that their possession of genius is to be taken for granted; genius only comes once in a while—once or twice in a generation perhaps. It is always safer to begin upon the supposition that your faculties are of the kind which, like granite, will only shine by polishing; and if genius should be evoked in the process, the polishing will not harm it. ”

“ Mr Cunningham, the secretary of the Glasgow Association, had the cause at heart; and he was sure Mr Miller, one of the surgeons in the Edinburgh Infirmary, and Dr P. A. Young, both of whom had already given ambulance lectures to Volunteers, would give their hearty help. Many of the junior practitioners and senior students would, he was sure, assist as lecturers; and they would soon have in Edinburgh a ready band of certificated assistants, who would give efficient first aid to any one who was injured, and would assist the police in removing them to the hospital or their own homes. ”

“ The lairds of Frendraught and of Rothiemay were thus neighbours, at a period when neighbourhood as surely engendered strife as friction develops heat. It chanced that Gordon of Rothiemay sold a portion of his lands adjoining the Deveron to the laird of Frendraught.
At the present day, there is perhaps no river in Scotland which at certain seasons of the year furnishes better sport to the angler for salmon than the Deveron, and its excellence in this respect must equally have characterised it two centuries ago ”

“ It is more definite in its results than Philosophy, and it widens the intellectual horizon more than does the pursuit of particular branches of Science, while it has less tendency than either of these to congeal into dogma. The methods of historians, also, have undergone a signal change within the last fifty years. The historical writers of last century, such as Robertson and Hume, were content to collate the productions of previous authors, to give a new reading here and a fresh deduction there, looking more to literary form than to the production of new facts. ”

“ The firm of B—— is well known throughout the commercial world of London, and is believed to be upwards of a century old. The original founder, who sprang from a very humble stock, died worth, it is said, two million pounds sterling, amassed by the skilful and honourable conduct of a bonding business, which had grown from very modest conditions indeed, to rival the huge proportions of the docks themselves. In fact, the tendency of the last few years has been decidedly to withdraw the bonding trade from these formerly gigantic establishments, and to concentrate it in the Uptown Warehouses. ”

“ It must not be forgot that the desire to write does not necessarily comprehend the power to write well; or that, even with those who succeed in demonstrating their literary capabilities, such success is obtained without hard work and long practice. ”

“ The dynamo is placed just behind the funnel, and is easily connected with the moving parts of the machinery by suitable gearing.
The new patent law which came into operation on the first of January will without doubt give a great impetus to invention in this country, for many a man too poor to think of employing a patent agent, and paying down nearly ten pounds for a few months’ protection, as he had to do under the old conditions, can easily afford the one pound which is now the sum fixed for the initial fee. ”

“ Many cases of accident were conveyed directly to their own homes; many cases of sudden illness were conveyed either to the hospital or their own homes, and he did not think he was over-estimating it when he said that fifteen hundred cases occurred every year in Edinburgh which would benefit from a speedy and comfortable means of conveyance from the place of accident to the place of treatment. In the formation and working of such a society, he would give all the help he could. ”

“ The jury seem to have thought some victim should be offered for the public satisfaction, and that no injustice would be done to John Meldrum in assigning him as a sacrifice, seeing that he had done quite enough to deserve hanging, even if he had no hand in the burning of Frendraught Castle. With the execution of Meldrum, all further proceedings in the case ceased; but suspicion and animosity rankled long in the House of Huntly against Frendraught. The origin of the fire still remains a mystery. ”

“ An interesting account of his wanderings formed the subject of a paper read by him at a recent meeting of the Royal Geographical Society. The country is inhabited by three main tribes—Ramgals, Vaigals, and Bashgals, answering to the three chief valleys, and each having a distinctive dialect. The men are warlike and brave, but, like many other semi-barbarous peoples, leave the heavy work of agriculture to the women. The Mohammedans hem them in on all sides; but as the tribes are at peace among themselves, they are able to hold their own. Slavery exists to some extent. ”

“ History is not dominated by logic, but by events; and although we may see in these events, from our distant and external standpoint, a distinct chain of development and progress, the actors saw no more of the future of them than we do to-day of the events presently transpiring. ”

“ The strong agitation which this disease gave rise to against the employment of phosphorus, naturally directed the attention of experimenters to other means of striking a light; and although phosphorus in its harmless amorphous form still holds its own, it is probable that its presence in lucifer-matches will some day be dispensed with. We need hardly remind our readers that the universal adoption of the electric light would greatly curtail the use of matches, for that form of illumination does not require an initial spark to set it aglow. ”

“ Time and distance, in these days of excessive speed, are prime factors, and must in the end assert themselves. Besides, it is evident to all thinking men that we have reached a crisis in the transport of merchandise, and that the railway is becoming daily more omnipotent.
Though we have hitherto referred only to the casks of vinous liquors, technically known as ‘wet goods,’ stored in the vaults, it must not be inferred that they constitute the sole description of merchandise contained within the walls of these warehouses. ”

“ In B——’s premises, where the stock is comparatively small, the annual yield of duty to the revenue is nearly two hundred thousand pounds. It is, however, far otherwise with the duty paid on ‘wet goods,’ wine, perhaps, excepted, the rates of which, governed by strength, are, for wines containing less than twenty-six degrees of alcoholic strength—being mainly of French production—at one shilling per gallon; and for those of a greater degree of strength, but below the limit of forty-two degrees—which is the usual standard of Portuguese and Spanish wines—at two shillings and sixpence per gallon. ”

“ Although there is every reason to believe that cruelty to animals is far less common than it was, still there are many men who are not so merciful to their beasts as they might be. Many of these offend from ignorance, and will leave poor creatures exposed to inclement weather under the belief that they will not suffer. Professor Shelton, of the Kansas State Agricultural College, has lately shown, by careful experiment, that it pays to be merciful in the matter of providing shelter for pigs ”

“ We would not wish to dim the roseate hues which the future has for those who are young; but neither would we wish to be responsible for encouraging within them hopes that are not likely to be realised, or only realised under special powers of application, or by the operation of special natural faculties. ”

“ One curious provision has put certain manufacturers in a quandary, for it rules that no article must bear the word ‘patent’ unless it is really the subject of a patent specification.
A powerful antiseptic and deodoriser can be made by mixing together carbolic acid and chloride of lime, which, when combined, contains sufficiently active properties to correct fermentation. A weak solution is used as a dressing in some gangrenous affections, as it does not cause irritation. ”