Various

“ What then were Betty's feelings, late one unlucky autumn evening on her return from the byre, where she had gone to milk her solitary cow, to find the two friends in the midst of a hot argument, loud-mouthed both, and looking at each other across the table, on which stood the almost empty measure and glasses, with expressions on their honest gnarled faces that could hardly by any interpretation be termed mild? ”

“ The steep roads, the green hill-slopes, the peaceful mossy boulders, the picturesque nooks, in which nestle quaint little homesteads, and the broad calm lake stretching out like a great embossed silver shield at your feet, with the deep shadows of the hills shading into purple gloom in its shining ripples—who that has once seen such a picture, particularly in sunshine, can ever forget it? ”

“ Thus one by one the sweet smiling lakes pass by, the bright summer days fade away, and the pleasant holiday season comes to an end. The long shadows lengthen lovingly over Lakeland; the giant hills, like sleepy Titans, nod a last adieu; the darkling copsewood grows shadowy and indistinct; the sweet sunny mere in the hollow glimmers in the distance; the purple haze creeps up the well-known glens, golden with happy memories; and the lofty mountains we have or have not climbed, gloom with deeper shadows. ”

“ The saddest sight in Russia to a traveller is the manner in which civil prisoners are treated. It is a common spectacle to see three or four hundred poor wretches on their way to Siberia under a military escort; for most of them are chained together in couples, while the women and children who have elected to share their bread-winners' lot have also to submit to be treated as criminals. ”

“ RUSSIA AND HER PEOPLE.
THE DUKE'S PIPER.
RAILWAY ACCIDENTS.
DROLLERIES OF THE AMERICAN BENCH.
THE FAIRIES.
A HOLIDAY IN THE LAKE-COUNTRY.
Let those who have not as yet made up their minds how or where to spend their summer holiday, turn their steps towards Lakeland. There, beauty ever changing and ever charming in all her multiform varieties, lies in wait for them at every turn. Life too among the hills has a free hearty zest, born of the invigorating mountain breezes, which you search for in vain elsewhere. ”

“ Prone as he might be to discursiveness, we fancy the Louisiana judge would have laid down the law a little more lucidly than the worthy to whom a Minnesota juryman appealed for aid, when his ideas as to what constituted murder had been confused by the arguments of counsel.
'Gentlemen of the jury,' said this legal luminary, 'murder is where a man is murderously killed. The killer in such a case is a murderer. Now murder by poison is just as much murder as murder with a gun, pistol, or knife. It is the simple act of murdering that constitutes murder in the eye of the law. ”

“ The door was open, and the afternoon light fell upon no more pleasant sight than the bright shapely Highland lassie, whose sleeves were tucked up to the elbow, her dress pinned behind, while her hands were deftly shaping butter with the aid of a pair of wooden 'clatters' into tempting rounded pats, each pat being dropped, by a quick graceful turn of her skilful hands, into a dish of clear spring-water beside her. ”

“ If every passenger by the Flying Scotchman from Edinburgh to London is to have a right to an action against the railway companies, in the event of that train being, say five minutes late upon its long journey of four hundred miles, the prospect of litigation thereby opened is sufficient to appal the hearts of shareholders in the North British, North-Eastern, and Great Northern Railways, and to make glad those of lawyers. ”

“ It is lucky for an offender when his judge puts himself in his place; justice is sure then to be tempered with mercy, as in the case of the snatcher of spoons brought before a Georgian court many years ago. Bela Brown, who then went the circuit as judge, was an able man, in equal repute as a lawyer and as a boon-companion. The night before the court was to open at Dayton, his Honour went to a tavern kept by Sterrit, and had such a good time of it with his legal friends that by midnight he was not quite so sober as a judge should be. ”

“ Maggie hummed in a sweet low treble as she worked, an old Gaelic air that had a touch of melancholy in it, her sole audience the piper's monstrous bull-dog, that lay all her length in the sunshine asleep on the threshold. Presently the formidable-looking animal raised her head, pricked her ears and growled ”

“ This is a system which must surely fade away beneath that public opinion which is fast becoming too strong for even autocratic monarchs to despise; for we are told that the emancipation of the Russian serfs has made a vast legal, social, and material improvement in the lower orders of the people; and it is to the people that the world will look for that much-needed reform, which will enable Russia, perhaps at no distant day, to take an honourable place amongst civilised nations. ”

“ As the peasant family of the old type is a kind of primitive association in which the members have their goods in common, so the village may be described as a primitive association on a larger scale. It has an administrator at its head, whose power is limited by the will of the heads of households themselves, forming a kind of village parliament, which is directly responsible to the state for the due and timely payment of all tithes and taxes. ”

“ If some simple method could be devised whereby a passenger could instantaneously communicate with the servants of the train, an important benefit would be secured; but so long as the railway companies continue to call a small cord hidden away somewhere or other outside of the carriages, 'a means of communication between passengers and the servants of the company,' we confess that we do not attach much practical importance to this last recommendation of the Royal Commissioners. ”

“ The wind, as it sweeps along the hill-side, recalls, as it fans the weary brow, the quick glad feeling of existence, the exuberance of gay animal spirits, which were natural and unprized in careless boyhood, but which are too often extinguished by the cares assumed with advancing years. ”

“ But if the traveller wishes to gain an intimate acquaintance with Russia, and to see what is the real life of the people apart from towns and highways, he must be prepared to take many a long and tedious journey in a kind of lumbering cradle on wheels, or peasant's springless cart ”

“ Don't let the ideas of murder and manslaughter confound you. Murder is one thing, manslaughter is quite another. Consequently, if there has been a murder, and it is not manslaughter, then it must be murder. ”

“ For example, though a robber will kill a peasant on the highway, such are his religious scruples, that he will not eat a piece of cooked meat which he may find in his victim's cart, because perhaps it is a fast-day; and an artisan when about to break into the house of an Austrian attaché in St Petersburg, first entered a church and commended his undertaking to the protection of the saints, then killed the attaché in question. It is a species of grim fanaticism which binds the masses in Russia. ”

“ He was in a moderate way a prosperous man, and after the manner of men conscious of a bigger balance than their neighbours at the local bank, he thought he had a right to dogmatise on occasions. Folks who knew the piper knew that whoever ultimately was lucky enough to win the hand of his only daughter Maggie, would not take her dowerless; and that the dower would be something by no means to be sneezed at, was evident when the Inversnow intellect began to reckon on its finger-ends the various sources of the piper's income. ”

“ There are a number of pretty{370} houses in the vicinity of Windermere, and land for building purposes is in great demand, and very difficult to be had; for a dalesman, although seldom caring a straw about the beauty of the scenery, is passionately attached to the little bit of land he has inherited from his father, and tenaciously determined, as he will tell you, 'to hand it forat,' that his son may be no worse off than he was himself. ”

“ The effect of an accident upon the market value of railway shares, even when it is one of exceptional severity, Mr Galt shews is only temporarily and never permanently to lower the value of the shares in the particular railway company upon whose system it occurred. The first cost, moreover, of introducing improvements upon their lines, Mr Galt points out, is felt very severely by railway companies; whereas the compensation which they pay for personal injuries does not at present amount to one per cent. ”

“ Not very high above the working classes of the towns in the matter of intellectual culture, come the traders. Many of them are very rich, but exceedingly ignorant, and do not bear a high character for honesty; but like every other class in Russia, this one also is being affected by the great changes which are taking place, and by which the old spirit of caste is dying out ”

“ Level crossings are each year a very fertile cause of accidents, and to them no fewer than fifty-nine of the deaths of 1876 must be apportioned. We come now, however, to that which is undoubtedly a fact of the utmost gravity, namely, that thirty-eight passengers were killed and 1279 injured from causes over which they had no control, upon the railways of Great Britain.
In 1874, a Royal Commission was issued at the request of parliament to inquire into the causes and cure of railway accidents in Great Britain. For two years and a half the Commissioners pursued their labours ”

“ Why, a trembling of the legs, excessive pain in the knee-joints, determination of blood to the head, singing in the ears, inordinate perspiration, and a desperate desire for liquids.' Let all holiday wanderers, not being members of the Alpine Club, take note of this. Leaving climbing to those adventurous spirits who love it, there is no lack of beautiful walks for more humble-minded pedestrians, only they must beware not of the dog, but of the bull. ”

“ As regards the important subject of the compensation which the railway companies are at present obliged to make whenever a passenger is—through no fault of his own—killed or injured whilst travelling upon their lines, the Royal Commissioners have not thought it necessary to make any special recommendations. They appear indeed to think that the principle of self-interest will be sufficient to make the companies introduce all reasonable improvements and take all possible means to secure the safety of their passengers. ”

“ Here, invigorated by the mountain breezes, or absorbed in his books and the beautiful scenery, the far-famed Opium-eater made a sudden descent from three hundred and twenty grains (eight thousand drops) per diem of his favourite drug to forty grains, and found himself, Mr Payn says, in the novel position of a man with opium to give away. ”

“ The shrines in the public places are crowded with worshippers, who cover with their kisses the gilded pictures, while showers of small coins or copper money rattle into the boxes, which the priests hold in their hands. ”

“ The card-playing administrator of justice must have felt as small as his brother-judge when he priced the cow. Being at Little Rock, Arkansas, on business, that judge strolled into the market, and seeing a farmer with a cow, stepped up to him and asked what he wanted for her. 'Thirty dollars,' said the farmer. ”

“ As the result of these Newark trials, the Royal Commissioners recommend that it should be made obligatory upon railway companies to provide every train with sufficient brake-power to bring it, at the highest speed at which it may be travelling and upon any gradients, to an absolute stop within five hundred yards. They also advise that a large proportion of the brake-power should be in the hands of the engine-driver. He is usually the man who first espies danger ”

“ Mr Galt indeed asserts that the saving which the companies would effect by the use of every available means for the prevention of accidents would 'scarcely amount to a shilling in the hundred pounds.' Hence he arrives at the very disagreeable conclusion, that so far as the pecuniary principle—apart from all higher considerations—is concerned, the railway companies' interests and those of the general public are diametrically opposed to each other! ”

“ Hawes-water, a lonely secluded lake, with no good inn accommodation near it, is visited by but few tourists, which is rather a pity, as it is one of the grandest of the sisterhood of meres, although inferior in picturesque beauty to Ullswater, of which Mr Payn says, contrasting it with Windermere, 'that Windermere is very homelike, and makes one wish to live for ever (or even die) in one of its many pleasant dwellings ”

“ He was not; but he might as well have been, as far as De Quincey was concerned; for no shade returning from the ghostly shores of Avernus to haunt a living foe ever exacted a more terrible vengeance for unintentional wrong than did the Grasmere Malay. For months he haunted with persistent animus the opium dreams of De Quincey, and was not exorcised until he had run the gantlet of every unimaginable horror, far transcending any atrocity of which a Malay in the flesh could have been capable.
As a matter of course, in Lakeland there is, for those who like it, climbing enough and to spare ”

“ Poorly clad, and apparently half starved, the wonder is that any of the party should ever survive the dreadful journey. A Russian criminal condemned to exile is sent away with very little ceremony; but when an officer of the army or other person of note has been sentenced to banishment for life, he is dressed in full uniform, and led to a scaffold in some public place. ”

“ There are more than a hundred thousand landed proprietors in Russia, but it must not be inferred from this that they are equal in point of wealth to our landed gentry at home. Such is very far from being the case, for many of them are in a state of poverty, the wealthy ones not exceeding four thousand in number. ”