Various

“ Without atmospheric dust not only would we not have the glorious cloud scenery we at present enjoy, but we should have no haze in the atmosphere, none of the atmospheric effects that delight the artist. The white haze, the blue haze, the tender sunset glows of red, orange and yellow, would all be absent, and the moment the sun dipped below the horizon the earth would be in darkness ”

“ He was deeply tinged with a spirit of classical learning that was much more genuine and nearer to the true antique than any that had previously been known in Holland. His own disciples called him the Dutch Martial, but he was at best little more than an amateur in poetry, although an amateur whose function it was to perceive and encourage the genius of professional writers. Roemer Visscher stands at the threshold of the new Renaissance literature, himself practising the faded arts of the rhetoricians, but pointing by his counsel and his conversation to the naturalism of the great period. ”

“ From the spring of 1507 until the summer of 1520, Dürer was again a settled resident in his native town. Except the brilliant existences of Raphael at Rome and of Rubens at Antwerp and Madrid, the annals of art present the spectacle of few more honoured or more fortunate careers. His reputation had spread all over Europe. From Flanders to Rome his distinction was acknowledged, and artists of less invention, among them some of the foremost on both sides of the Alps, were not ashamed to borrow from his work this or that striking combination or expressive type. ”

“ The burgher life of even Nuremberg, the noblest German city, seems narrow, quaint and harsh beside the grace and opulence and poetical surroundings of Italian life in the same and the preceding generation. The great cities of Flanders also, with their world-wide commerce and long-established eminence in the arts, presented aspects of more splendid civic pomp and luxury. But among its native surroundings the career of Dürer stands out with an aspect of ideal elevation and decorum which is its own. ”

“ There is a geological society with a museum, for the neighbourhood of Dudley is full of geological interest, the Silurian limestone abounding in fossils. To the north of the town are extensive remains of an ancient castle, surrounded by beautiful grounds. The hill on which it stands is of limestone, which by quarrying has been hollowed out in extensive chambers and galleries. The view from the castle is remarkable. The whole district is seen to be set with chimneys, pit-buildings and factories; and at night the glare of furnaces reveals the tireless activity of the Black Country. ”

“ Parliamentary reform was in the forefront of the new government’s policy, and with this question no statesman except Lord Grey himself was more closely indentified than Durham. To ardent reformers in the country the presence in the cabinet of “Radical Jack,” the name by which Lambton had been popularly known in the north of England, was a pledge that thorough-going reform would not be shirked by the Whigs, now in office for the first time for twenty years. And it was to his son-in-law that Lord Grey confided the task of preparing a scheme to serve as the basis of the proposed legislation. ”

“ Thus the new art became a mirror of almost all the life and thoughts of the age. The genius of Albrecht Dürer cannot be rightly estimated without taking into account the position which the arts of engraving on metal and on wood thus held in the culture of this time. He was indeed professionally and in the first place a painter; but throughout his career a great, and on the whole the most successful, part of his industry was devoted to drawing on the block for the woodcutter or engraving with his own hand on copper. ”

“ In this he was curiously aided by the school of ripe and enthusiastic scholars who began to flourish at Leiden, such as Drusius, Vossius and Hugo Grotius, who themselves wrote little in Dutch, but who chastened the style of the rising generation by insisting on a pure and liberal Latinity. Out of that generation arose the greatest names in the literature of Holland—Vondel, Hooft, Cats, Huygens—in whose hands the language, so long left barbarous and neglected, took at once its highest finish and melody. ”

“ Of the free imperial cities of central Germany, none had a greater historic fame or a more settled and patriotic government. None was more the favourite of the emperors, nor the seat of a more active and flourishing commerce. Nuremberg was the chief mart for the merchandise that came to central Europe from the east through Venice and over the passes of Tirol. She held not only a close commercial intercourse, but also a close intellectual intercourse, with Italy. ”

“ The intellect of the whole Low Countries was concentrated in Holland and Zealand, while the six great universities, Leiden, Groningen, Utrecht, Amsterdam, Harderwijk and Franeker, were enriched by a flock of learned exiles from Flanders and Brabant. It had occurred, however, to Roemer Visscher only that the path of literary honour lay, not along the utilitarian road cut out by Maerlant and Boendale, but in the study of beauty and antiquity. ”

“ In 1788 Dumont visited Paris with Romilly. During a stay of two months in that city he had almost daily intercourse with Mirabeau, and a certain affinity of talents and pursuits led to an intimacy between two persons diametrically opposed to each other in habits and in character. On his return from Paris Dumont made the acquaintance of Jeremy Bentham. Filled with admiration for the genius of Bentham, Dumont made it one of the chief objects of his life to recast and edit the writings of the great English jurist in a form suitable for the ordinary reading public. ”

“ The language resisted the pressure of German from the outside, and from within broke through its long stagnation and enriched itself, as a medium for literary expression, with a multitude of fresh and colloquial forms. At the same time, no very great genius arose in Holland in any branch of literature. The vast labours of Jakobus van Lennep (1802-1868) consist of innumerable translations, historical novels and national romances, which have gained for him the title of the leader of the Dutch romantic school. ”

“ Huygens had little of the sweetness of Hooft or of the sublimity of Vondel, but his genius was eminently bright and vivacious, and he was a consummate 725 artist in metrical form. The Dutch language has never proved so light and supple in any hands as in his, and he attempted no class of writing, whether in prose or verse, that he did not adorn by his delicate taste and sound judgment. A blind admiration for John Donne, whose poems he translated, was the greatest fault of Huygens, who, in spite of his conceits, remains one of the most pleasing of Dutch writers. ”

“ For our present purpose it is sufficient to observe the development of the idea of personal honour from which the modern duel directly sprang. In the ancient laws of the Swedes we find that if any man shall say to another, “You are not a man equal to other men,” or “You have not the heart of a man,” and the other shall reply, “I am a man as good as you,” they shall meet on the highway, and then follow the regulations for the combat. ”

“ If cotton or wool is boiled in water containing finely powdered charcoal, or other insoluble coloured powder, the material is not dyed, but merely soiled or stained. This staining is entirely due to the entanglement of the coloured powder by the rough surface of the fibre, and a vigorous washing and rubbing suffices to remove all but mere traces of the colour. True dyeing can only result when the colouring matter is presented to the fibre in a soluble condition, and is then, by some means or other, rendered insoluble while it is absorbed by, or is in direct contact with, the fibre. ”

“ We start with the Anas boschas of Linnaeus, the common wild duck, which from every point of view is by far the most important species, as it is the most plentiful, the most widely distributed, and the best known—being indeed the origin of all the British domestic breeds. It inhabits the greater part of the northern hemisphere, reaching in winter so far as the Isthmus of Panama in the New World, and in the Old being abundant at the same season in Egypt and north-western India, while in summer it ranges throughout the Fur-Countries, Greenland, Iceland, Lapland and Siberia. ”

“ The head of the college, the abbé Antoine Faure, who was from the same part of the country as himself, befriended the lad, and continued to do so for many years after he had finished his course, finding him pupils and ultimately obtaining for him the post of tutor to the young duke of Chartres, afterwards the regent duke of Orleans. Astute, ambitious and unrestrained by conscience, Dubois ingratiated himself with his pupil, and, while he gave him formal school lessons, at the same time pandered to his evil passions and encouraged him in their indulgence. ”

“ From a few existing fragments—two incantations from the 8th century, a version of the Psalms from the 9th century, and several charters—a supposed Old Dutch language has been recognized; but Dutch literature actually commences in the 13th century, as Middle Dutch, the creation of the first national movement in Brabant, Flanders, Holland and Zealand.
From the wreck of Frankish anarchy no genuine folk-tales of Dutch antiquity have come down to us, and scarcely any echoes of German myth. ”

“ Suggestions have from time to time been made for the establishment of courts of honour, but the need of such tribunals is doubtful, while the objections to them are obvious. The present tendency of political philosophy is to contract rather than extend the province of law, and any interference with social life is justly resented. Real offences against reputation are sufficiently punished, and the rule of the lawyers, that mere scurrility or opprobrious words, which neither of themselves import nor are attended with any hurtful effects, are not punishable, seems on the whole a wise one. ”

“ In his poetry, especially in the lyrical and pastoral verse of his youth, he is full of Italian reminiscences both of style and matter; in his noble prose work he has set himself to be a disciple of Tacitus. Motley has spoken of Hooft as one of the greatest historians, not merely of Holland, but of Europe. His influence in purifying the language of his country, and in enlarging its sphere of experience, can hardly be overrated.
Very different from the long and prosperous career of Hooft was the brief, painful life of the greatest comic dramatist that Holland has produced. ”

“ The first colouring matter of this class was the so-called Congo red, discovered in 1884, and since that time a very great number have been introduced which yield almost every variety of colour. The method of dyeing cotton consists in merely boiling the material in a solution of the dyestuff, when the cotton absorbs and retains the colouring matter by reason of a special natural affinity. The concentration of the dyebath is of the greatest importance, since the amount of colour taken up by the fibre is in an inverse ratio to the amount of dye liquor present in the bath. ”

“ That duelling flourished so long in England the law is, perhaps, as much to blame as society. It was doubtless from the fact that duels were at first a form of legal procedure that English law has refused to take cognizance of private duels. A duel in the eye of the law differs nothing from an ordinary murder. The greatest English legal authorities, from the time of Elizabeth downwards, such as Coke, Bacon and Hale, have all distinctly affirmed this interpretation of the law. ”