Various

“ The revival in trade, and the production of new statistics which appeared to stultify Mr Chamberlain’s prophecies of progressive decline, enabled the free-trade champions to reassure their audiences as to the very foundation of his case, and to represent the whole tariff reform movement as no less unnecessary than risky. ”

“ Time was not on his side at his age, and if he had to be beaten at one election he was anxious to get rid of the other issues which would encumber the popular vote, and to press on to a second when he would be on the attacking side. But he would make no move which would embarrass Mr Balfour in parliament, and adhered to his promise of loyalty. The result was a long drawn out interval, while the government held on and its supporters became more embittered over their differences. Mr Chamberlain needed a rest, and was away in Italy and Egypt from March to May, and again in November. ”

“ There is also a little granite-quarrying, and seaweed-burning employs many.
None of the islands is mountainous, and the fine scenery for which they are famous is almost wholly coastal. In this respect each main island has certain distinctive characteristics. Bold cliffs are found on the south of Alderney; in Guernsey they alternate with lovely bays; Sark is specially noted for its magnificent sea-caves, while the coast scenery of Jersey is on the whole more gentle than the rest. ”

“ Pursuing a wiser policy than their predecessors, the Dutch lost no opportunity of improving that portion of the country which owned their supremacy, and of opening a trade with the interior. More tolerant and less disposed to stand upon their dignity than the Portuguese, they subordinated political to commercial ends, flattered the native rulers by a show of deference, and so far succeeded in their object as to render their trade between the island and Holland a source of great profit. Many new branches of industry were developed. ”

“ An influential protector was needed; and Champlain prevailed upon Charles de Bourbon, comte de Soissons, to interest himself to obtain from the king the appointment of lieutenant-general in New France. The comte de Soissons died almost immediately, and was succeeded in the office by Henri de Bourbon, prince de Condé, and he, like his predecessors and successors, retained Champlain as lieutenant-governor. “In Champlain alone was the life of New France. By instinct and temperament he was more impelled to the adventurous toils of exploration than to the duller task of building colonies. ”

“ The general character of the chansons de geste, especially of those of the 12th century, is hard, coarse, inflexible, like the march of rough men stiffened by coats of mail. There is no art and little grace, but a magnificent display of force. These poems enshrine the self-sufficiency of a young and powerful people ”

“ Though failing in health, he worked assiduously at Los Trabajos de Persiles y Sigismunda, which, as he had jocosely prophesied in the preface to the second part of Don Quixote, would be “either the worst or the best book ever written in our tongue.” It is the most carefully written of his prose works, and the least animated or attractive of them; signs of fatigue and of waning powers are unmistakably visible. Cervantes was not destined to see it in print. ”

“ Mr Chamberlain had a very difficult part to play, in a situation dominated by suspicion on both sides, and while he firmly insisted on the rights of Great Britain and of British subjects in the Transvaal, he was the continual object of Radical criticism at home. Never has a statesman’s personality been more bitterly associated by his political opponents with the developments they deplored. ”

“ Irrigation.—The native rulers covered the whole face of the country with a network of irrigation reservoirs, by which Ceylon was enabled in ancient times to be the great granary of southern Asia. Wars, and the want of a strong hand to guide the agriculture of the country, led to the decay of these ancient works, and large tracts of land, which were formerly highly productive, became swampy wastes or dense forests. The remains of some of the larger irrigation works are amongst the most interesting of the memorials of Ceylon’s former greatness. ”

“ However, it is not greatly to be regretted that the continuation was never published; though the Galatea is interesting as the first deliberate bid for fame on the part of a great genius, it is an exercise in the pseudo-classic literature introduced into Italy by Sannazaro, and transplanted to Spain by the Portuguese Montemõr; and, ingenious or eloquent as the Renaissance prose-pastoral may be, its innate artificiality stifles Cervantes’ rich and glowing realism. ”

“ Mr Balfour, while reluctantly admitting the necessity of Mr Chamberlain’s taking a freer hand, expressed his agreement in the desirability of a closer fiscal union with the colonies, but questioned the immediate practicability of any scheme; he was willing to adopt fiscal reform so far as it covered retaliatory duties, but thought that the exclusion of taxation of food from the party programme was in existing circumstances necessary, so long as public opinion was not ripe. ”

“ The earlier examples, which succeed the Roland, are unlike that great work in having no plan, no system of composition. They are improvisations which wander on at their own pace, whither accident may carry them. This mass of medieval literature is monotonous, primitive and superficial. As Léon Gautier has said, in the rudimentary psychology of the chansons de geste, man is either entirely good or entirely bad. There are no fine shades, no observation of character. The language in which these poems are composed is extremely simple, without elaboration, without ornament. ”

“ The 816 problems of empire engrossed him, and a new enthusiasm for imperial projects arose in the Unionist party under his inspiration. No English statesman probably has ever been, at different times in his career, so able an advocate of absolutely contradictory policies, and his opponents were not slow to taunt him with quotations from his earlier speeches. As the war drew to its end, new plans for imperial consolidation were maturing in his brain. ”

“ Modern French is the official language, used in the courts and states, and English is taught in the parochial schools, and is familiar practically to all. The several islands have each its own dialect, differing from that of the others in vocabulary and idiom; differences are also observable in different localities within the same island, as between the north and the south of Guernsey. None of the dialects has received much literary cultivation, though Jersey is proud of being the birthplace of one of the principal Norman poets, Wace, who flourished in the 12th century. ”

“ The west and south coasts, which are uniformly low, are fringed their entire length by coco-nut trees, which grow to the water’s edge in great luxuriance, and give the island a most picturesque appearance. Along these shores there are numerous inlets and backwaters of the sea, some of which are available as harbours for small native craft. The east coast from Point de Galle to Trincomalee is of an entirely opposite character, wanting the ample vegetation of the other, and being at the same time of a bold precipitous character. ”

“ In championing the cause of imperial fiscal union, by means involving the abandonment of a system of taxation which had become part of British orthodoxy, he followed the guidance of a profound conviction that the stability of the empire and the very existence of the hegemony of the United Kingdom depended upon the conversion of public opinion to a revision of the current economic doctrine. ”

“ During the spring and summer of 1905 Mr Chamberlain’s more active supporters were in favour of forcing a dissolution by leaving the government in a minority, but he himself preferred to leave matters to take their course, so long as the prime minister was content to be publicly identified with the policy of eventually fighting on tariff reform lines. Speaking at the Albert Hall in July Mr Chamberlain pushed somewhat further than before his “embrace” of Mr Balfour; and in the autumn, when foreign affairs no longer dominated the attention of the government, the crisis rapidly came to a head. ”

“ There are no inland lakes except the remains of magnificent artificial lakes in the north and east of the island, and the backwaters on the coast. The lakes which add to the beauty of Colombo, Kandy, Lake Gregory, Nuwara Eliya and Kurunegala are artificial or partly so. Giant’s Tank is said to have an area of 6380 acres, and Minneri and Kalawewa each exceed 4000 acres.
The magnificent basin of Trincomalee, situated on the east coast of Ceylon, is perhaps unsurpassed in extent, security and beauty by any haven in the world. ”

“ Government.—Ceylon is a crown colony, that is, a possession of the British crown acquired by conquest or cession, the affairs of which are administered by a governor, who receives his appointment from the crown, generally for a term of six years. He is assisted by an executive and a legislative council. The executive council acts as the cabinet of the governor, and consists of the attorney-general, the three principal officers of the colony (namely, the colonial secretary, the treasurer and the auditor-general) , and the general in command of the forces. ”

“ The body consists of a number of exactly similar or closely similar segments, which are never fused and metamorphosed, as in the Arthropoda, to form specialized regions of the body. It is, however, always possible to recognize a head, which consists at least of the peristomial segment with a forward projection of the same, the prostomium. A thorax also is sometimes to be distinguished from an abdomen. Where locomotive appendages (the parapodia of the Polychaeta) exist, they are never jointed, as always in the Arthropoda ”

“ In South Africa—as in any other British colony, since all of them were accustomed to tariffs of a protectionist nature, and the idea of a preference (already started by Canada) was fairly popular—Mr Chamberlain had found this view well established. The agitation in England against the tax had now blown over. The Unionist rank and file were committed to its support,—many even advocating its increase to two shillings at least. But Mr Ritchie, the chancellor of the exchequer, having a surplus in prospect and taxation to take off, carried the cabinet in favour of again remitting this tax on corn. ”

“ By the time of Lord Eldon equity had become fixed, and the judges, like their brethren in the common law courts, strictly followed the precedents. Henceforward chancery and common law courts have exhibited the anomaly of two co-ordinate sets of tribunals, empowered to deal with the same matters, and compelled to proceed in many cases on wholly different principles. The court of chancery could in most cases prevent a person from taking advantage of a common law right, not approved of by its own system. ”

“ The great geological feature of the island is the profusion of gneiss, overlaid in many places in the interior by extensive beds of dolomitic limestone. This formation appears to be of great thickness; and when, as is not often the case, the under-surface of the gneiss series is exposed, it is invariably found resting on granite. Veins of pure quartz and felspar of considerable extent have been frequently met with in the gneiss; while in the elevated lands of the interior in the Galle districts may be seen copious deposits of disintegrated felspar, or kaolin, commonly known as porcelain clay. ”

“ Twelve years later the viceroy of Goa ordered the erection of a fort at Colombo, for which permission was obtained from the king of Kotta; and from this time until the advent of the Dutch in the 17th century the Portuguese endeavoured, amid perpetual wars with the native kings, who were assisted by Arab and other traders jealous of European rivalry, to establish their control over the island. They ultimately succeeded so far as the coast was concerned, though their dominion scarcely penetrated inland. Materially their gain was but small, for the trade of Ceylon was quite insignificant ”

“ Several forms of cells float freely in the fluid of the coelom. In another sense also the coelom is not a closed cavity, for it communicates in several ways with the external medium. Thus, among the Oligochaeta there are often a series of dorsal pores, or a single head pore, present also among the Polychaeta (in Ammochares) . In these and other Chaetopods the coelom is also put into indirect relations with the outside world by the nephridia and by the gonad ducts. ”

“ Nothing like this campaign had been known in the political world since Mr Gladstone’s Midlothian days; and it produced a great public impression, stirring up both supporters and opponents. Free-trade unionists like Lord Goschen and Lord Hugh Cecil, and the Liberal leaders—for whom Mr Asquith became the principal spokesman, though Lord Rosebery’s criticisms also had considerable weight—found new matter in Mr Chamberlain’s speeches for their contention that any radical change in the traditional English fiscal policy, established now for sixty years, would only result in evil. ”

“ In diplomacy generally the chancellor of an embassy or legation is an official attached to the suite of an ambassador or minister. He performs the functions of a secretary, archivist, notary and the like, and is at the head of the chancery, or chancellery (Fr. chancellerie) , of the mission. The functions of this office are the transcribing and registering of official despatches and other documents, and generally the transaction of all the minor business, e.g. marriages, passports and the like, connected with the duties of a diplomatic agent towards his nationals in a foreign country. ”

“ In most of his tragedies the lofty and labouring spirit of Chapman may be said rather to shine fitfully through parts than steadily to pervade the whole; they show nobly altogether as they stand, but even better by help of excerpts and selections. ”