Various

“ A man lies at the feet of a vitalised machine, a living doll—a talking marionette—whom he idealises as the crowned grace of womanhood, just as Titania before him idealised the ass’s head of her Gentle Joy. He sees nothing in its true light, but, pixy-led, hears only the sweet poem of his own love, knows only the magic beauty of his own creation. ”

“ Pixy-led by our senses we spend our strength like our substance in pleasure and flood our brains with drink that we may live in a fool’s paradise half our time and a real hades for the next half. Pixy-led by our ignorance we accept the appearance of things for their substance and knock our heads against the walls by which we are surrounded, determined not to learn their real properties. ”

“ And there are people who believe in secret poisonings and the presence in our midst of murderers in dress coats and white kid gloves—men who have done to death their wives and sisters and friends—it maybe even their mothers—when they will gain so much by the quiet removal of these poor creatures, apparently loved and tended while in reality murdered—but men whom neither society suspects nor the law can touch. What is all this but pixy-led belief?—a mere phantasy founded on nothing, without proof, foundation, or argument. ”

“ Pixy-led by superstitious fancies, now of things and now of persons, we are as often the slaves of seeming as the believers in truths. All the crazy beliefs which have turned the steady-going world of intellect upside down, and substituted for realities the merest nightmares—when they are not day-dreams—are of the nature of things pixy-led. There are people who believe in the secret police as a power defying the house-door key and penetrating into private dwellings from basement to garret. ”

“ The mother who adores her handsome, plausible, scampish son; who accepts his boastings as if they were so many announcements in the Gazette; and to whom the significant fact that the splendour of his self-reported career never consolidates into public recognition or tangible fortune, conveys nothing but a sense of the injustice of Fate and the crossness of circumstance—what is she but pixy-led, the magic herb that has blinded her being, her maternal love? She believes in her scamp as other folks believe in the Gospel ”

“ And still, as in olden time, poor dazed mortals are pixy-led;—fascinated, like the victims of the Sirens of old, by the songs which to others are but as the sighing of the wind among the reeds, but which to them are divinest music, full of lovely promises and of fairest visions. ”

“ For even when the inevitable crash comes, and all these rainbow hopes of glittering success pass away into the dark clouds of ruin and despair, even then she clings to her faith in her boy as a devotee clings to the image of her god ”

“ But we content ourselves with sighing at the hard necessities of Fate; and, wrapping ourselves up in a false cloak of religion, we say that the Father of Men and the God of Love has laid on us these terrible scourges that we may learn patience under suffering; while shutting our eyes to the fact that with every poison is an antidote and that every evil has its remedy. ”

“ The sun also assists in the transpiration and constant renewal of the moisture essential to the tissues of plants. Like the human being, when there is no evaporation, the plant becomes dropsical, and the leaves fall because the stem is too weak to bear their weight. This imperious need and love which they have for light shews that the solar rays are really the essence which gives colour. The corollas of those flowers which grow on mountains at a great elevation have a deeper hue than those which blow in lowlands. ”

“ The woman who sacrifices the gallant fellow whom she loves for the man whom she does not love, because the one has as many thousands as that other has hundreds, is she not pixy-led?—to be landed before long in the worst Slough of Despond to be found in the whole tract of human life! ”

“ On each side a towering cone rose to heaven, while in front the mountain slope swept down into the broad valley, and beyond, stern red mountains ranged away, ridge over ridge, to the eastern horizon, all bare and parched, with every peak and gully standing sharp out through the clear air, yet softened by distance into the most delicately rich and tender hues. ”

“ Would the finder, the pioneer, the displayer thereof—he the ragged robin notoriously impecunious and out at elbows—be such a philanthropist as to give away what he needs so greatly, for the mere pleasure of doing a kind thing to a comparative stranger? Pixy sings with its sweet seductive tenor for the one part, and common-sense puts in its controlling bass for the other; but the flattering imp too often wins the day, and reason retires shivering and sad, rebuked and rebuffed! ”

“ Stolidity is dignity and stupidity repose; a fatuous smile is the expression of her inherent sweetness; levity is light-heartedness; frivolity good-humour; the flirtations, which are patent to the world at large and food for all the circle to discuss, are the natural liking of a pretty woman for an innocent admiration which is as naturally her due ”

“ THE EFFECTS OF LIGHT ON PLANTS.
It is now an ascertained fact that as a rule, no organised being in the world subsists alone by the nourishment which it absorbs, either in the form of food or of atmospheric air; it has also need of heat and light. Light is the creator of the charming colours, the sweet perfumes, the exquisite flavours which we gain from the vegetable kingdom. ”

“ It was on a dull sultry afternoon in July 1869, that my friend Morrissy and I found ourselves comfortably located in the commercial room of one of the hotels in Westport, County Mayo, Ireland, after a long uninteresting car-ride from Sligo and Ballina. The excellent turnpike road ran through a flat boggy district; and as we had journeyed along through dense clouds of dust, it was with an infinite sense of relief that we disencumbered ourselves of our wraps and other travelling impedimenta, and prepared ourselves for the substantial dinner which was placed on the table for our refection. ”

“ Where others gauge the vulgar selfishness of a commonplace schemer who has weighed her chances and her advantages in the scales together, and has decided on accepting him and his title and his banker’s book as the best that she can do for herself, he declares to be unfathomable the sweet reticence of her modesty, the saintly devotion of her gentle heart, given to him so generously for love’s sake only. ”

“ The Aldershot Autumn Manœuvres were over, the troops dispersed, and the victory of Lord Moffat over Sir David Roberts—hard won, and much trumpeted by the newspapers, whose correspondents had accompanied the respective staffs of the belligerent generals—was already as much forgotten by the public as the shreds of cartridge-case that lay strewn among the Wessex stubble-fields. Lord Harrogate had time now to attend to the queer business broached by that respectable person, Mr Richard Hold. ”

“ How was he to blame if facts were too strong for him, and fortune was not to be wooed or won? So she argues, influenced by the ‘good people’ who delude her with their false shows and fair-spoken words; making use of one of the holiest feelings of human nature to bring about her sorrow, and using one of the sweetest attributes of womanhood to compass ruin. ”

“ When daylight came the travellers began to despair, but also to enjoy the wonderful effects of light. At 3 A.M. they had seen the morning-star spring up from behind the Median mountains, shedding a light that almost outshone the moon. An hour later, there came upon the topmost slope of the cold and ghostly snows of the cone, six thousand feet above, a flush of pink. ”

“ The old old times, when fairy Melusines were women by day and snakes by night—when demon lovers abounded, and men and maidens lost their souls for eyes too bright to be true—are still repeated in the circumstances of to-day; and to one under the spell of the pixies, old age is youth, ugliness is beauty, and sordid meanness is magnanimity and goodness. The subtle enchantment of glamour is thrown over every part of life ”

“ Indeed there are some peculiarities about aquatic plants which make them more valuable in clearing the atmosphere than others, for during the night they are inactive and disengage no carbonic acid, whilst they act as others do in the daytime. It is easy to shew the direct action of the sun on vegetable respiration by placing some leaves of the nayas in a vessel filled with water saturated with carbonic gas; as soon as this is exposed to the sun,{360} an infinite number of little bubbles of almost pure oxygen will be seen rising to the surface. ”

“ Blinded as he is, even when she neglects her children for her pleasure—for the idle play that she calls her work—and for the coarser personal ambition which she calls a cause—he reverences her as a leader, of society or otherwise, doing her duty to herself and to others; a creature too full of intellectual power and genius to be confined to the four narrow walls of home; and he thinks that a hired nurse and paid governess can do all for the little ones which is necessary, and at less expenditure of fine material. This is the lover and husband pixy-led ”

“ Four days afterwards, the masses of snow and ice that had been precipitated into the glen suddenly melted, and forming an irresistible torrent of water and mud, swept along the channel of the stream and down the outer slopes of the mountain, far away into the Aras Plain, bearing with them huge blocks, and covering the ground for miles with a deep bed of mud and gravel.... Since then, a few huts have again arisen, somewhat lower down the slope than the site of old Aghurri; here dwell a few Tatars, and pasture their cattle on the sides of the valley, which grass has again begun to clothe. ”

“ To pay for defeat is bad enough, but to win and yet lose by victory is certainly worse. A gentleman once spent two thousand pounds in establishing his claim to compensation for an infraction of his rights, and then was awarded one hundred and ten pounds by the assessor of the damages.—Nor, if his time was of any value to him, did a labourer, seeking to recover ten shillings from an innkeeper for refusing to supply him with refreshment, find himself the richer for invoking the aid of the law. ”

“ An Irish car-driver always appears to me to be a strikingly representative type of the Milesian race. He is impulsive and rash, credulous and wildly poetical, with a dash of superstition and romance in his character, and a constantly recurring lament for the ‘good old times’ that prevailed when Brian Borru was king. ”

“ There might be given many other very interesting effects of light on plants, not usually noticed. The truth is, the direct rays of the sun exert a potent influence on every living thing, whether plant or animal. Sunlight, fair and full upon you and upon your dwelling, might be called the greatest blessing in nature ”

“ Just as aquatic plants send out gaseous bubbles under white light, so do they to nearly the same extent under orange light, but twenty times less if placed under blue glass. These experiments would seem to prove that it is the luminous rays only, and principally the yellow and orange, that act upon plants. To this may be added, that green light produces much the same effect as darkness on vegetable respiration; thus explaining why there is such a slow lingering growth under the shade of large trees or forests, where the ground beneath is bathed in emerald light. ”

“ As some of my readers will be aware, Ireland was at this time suffering in the throes of the Fenian agitation. Not only was a deep patriotic feeling prevalent among honest Irishmen, but the national spirit was also being moved strongly and passionately by the Irish Americans, who were quietly invading the country, and making large and extravagant promises of American support to another rising against English rule. ”

“ The sleep of plants, which certainly has a connection with light, is another curiosity in nature. Flowers and leaves of some growths seem to fade at particular hours, the corolla being closed, which after a state of lethargy blows out afresh; in others, the flower falls and dies without having closed. ”

“ Pixy-led by our hopes and our fears, our passions and our affections, so are we by our tastes. The men who ruin themselves for horses and hounds, for pictures and bric-à-brac, for gardens and fancy fowls;—they have poor relations—nieces who are making their own living, young, tender, delicate ”

“ Among the many memories of his ascent of Mount Ararat, doubtless Mr Bryce will cherish that of the halt at the Governor’s Well with peculiar pleasure. The bivouac too in such a spot, and amid the astonishing silence of the mountains, where no torrents call to one another, no rills ripple, no boughs rustle, no stones slip and fall, must have been memorable too. At 1 A.M. the party started, thirteen in number, and made across grassy hollows for the ridges which trend up the great cone; the Kurds leading the way. The travellers’ hopes were high; the Kurds got on rapidly ”