Various

“ In drawing from life he had early found the way to unite precision with freedom and fire—the subtlest accuracy of expressive definition with vital movement and rhythm of line—as no draughtsman had been able to unite them before. He was the first painter to recognize the play of light and shade as among the most significant and attractive of the world’s appearances, the earlier schools having with one consent subordinated light and shade to colour and outline. ”

“ Leonardo, though no special student of the Greeks, has perfectly carried out the Greek principle of expressive variety in particulars subordinated to general symmetry. He has used all his acquired science of linear and aerial perspective to create an almost complete illusion to the eye, but an illusion that has in it nothing trivial, and in heightening our sense of the material reality of the scene only heightens its profound spiritual impressiveness and gravity. ”

“ Leopold of Tuscany was a well-meaning, not unkindly man, and fonder of his subjects than were the other Italian despots, but he was weak, and too closely bound by family ties and Habsburg traditions ever to become a real Liberal. Had he not joined the conclave of autocrats at Gaeta, and, above all, had he not summoned Austrian assistance while denying that he had done so, in 1849, he might yet have preserved his throne, and even changed the whole course of Italian history. ”

“ English law takes account solely of the fact that marriage precedes the birth of the child; at whatever period the birth happens after the marriage, the offspring is prima facie legitimate. The presumption of law is always in favour of the legitimacy of the child of a married woman, and at one time it was so strong that Sir Edward Coke held that “if the husband be within the four seas, i.e. within the jurisdiction of the king of England, and the wife hath issue, no proof shall be admitted to prove the child a bastard unless the husband hath an apparent impossibility of procreation.” ”

“ To splendid beauty and activity of person he joined a winning charm of temper and manners, a tact for all societies, and an aptitude for all accomplishments. An inexhaustible intellectual energy and curiosity lay beneath this amiable surface. Among the multifarious pursuits to which the young Leonardo set his hand, the favourites at first were music, drawing and modelling. His father showed some of his drawings to an acquaintance, Andrea del Verrocchio, who at once recognized the boy’s artistic vocation, and was selected by Ser Piero to be his master. ”

“ Vasari babbles of a death-bed conversion and repentance. But Leonardo had never been either a friend or an enemy of the Church. Sometimes, indeed, he denounces fiercely enough the arts and pretensions of priests; but no one has embodied with such profound spiritual insight some of the most vital moments of the Christian story. His insatiable researches into natural fact brought upon him among the vulgar some suspicion of practising those magic arts which of all things he scouted and despised. ”

“ He invented, as has been said, no new genre; he did not, as Marivaux and Prévost did, help on the novel as distinguished from the romance. In form his books are undistinguishable, not merely from the Spanish romances which are, as has been said, their direct originals, but from the medieval romans d’aventures and the Greek prose romances. But in individual excellence they have few rivals. Nor should it be forgotten, as it sometimes is, that Le Sage was a great master of French style, the greatest unquestionably between the classics of the 17th century and the classics of the 18th. ”

“ No imaginable strength of any single man would have sufficed to carry out a hundredth part of what Leonardo essayed. The mere attempt to conquer the kingdom of light and shade for the art of painting was destined to tax the skill of generations, and is perhaps not wholly and finally accomplished yet. Leonardo sought to achieve that conquest and at the same time to carry the old Florentine excellences of linear drawing and psychological expression to a perfection of which other men 453 had not dreamed. ”

“ Knowing and doing allured him equally, and in art, which consists in doing, his efforts were often paralysed by his strained desire to know. The thirst for knowledge had first been aroused in him by the desire of perfecting the images of beauty and power which it was his business to create. ”

“ We see him living on terms of constant affection with his father, and in disputes with his brothers not the aggressor but the sufferer from aggression. We see him full of tenderness to animals, a virtue not common in Italy in spite of the example of St Francis; open-handed in giving, not eager in getting—“poor,” he says, “is the man of many wants”; not prone to resentment—“the best shield against injustice is to double the cloak of long-suffering”; zealous in labour above all men—“as a day well spent gives joyful sleep, so does a life well spent give joyful death.” ”

“ He set duty above everything, had in the highest degree a reverence for honour, and placed his indomitable courage at the service of everything that was beneficial with an abnegation that nothing could tire. His marvellous physical and moral equilibrium gave him an evenness of temper which always rendered his society charming. Whatever his cares, his work or his troubles, I have never noticed in him aught but generous impulses and a love of humanity carried even to those heroic imprudences of which they alone are capable who devote themselves to the amelioration of humanity. ”

“ Espousing the cause of the rebels the sultan sent an enormous army into Austria early in 1683; this advanced almost unchecked to Vienna, which was besieged from July to September, while Leopold took refuge at Passau. Realizing the gravity of the situation somewhat tardily, some of the German princes, among them the electors of Saxony and Bavaria, led their contingents to the imperial army which was commanded by the emperor’s brother-in-law, Charles, duke of Lorraine, but the most redoubtable of Leopold’s allies was the king of Poland, John Sobieski, who was already dreaded by the Turks. ”

“ When we speak of “object-points,” it is always understood that the rays from the object traverse the first surface of the lens before meeting the second. In the same way, images may be either real or virtual. If the image be behind the second surface, it is real, and can be intercepted on a screen. If, however, it be in front of the lens, it is visible to an eye placed behind the lens, although the rays do not actually intersect, but only appear to do so, but the image cannot be intercepted on a screen behind the lens. ”

“ If Leopold’s reign as emperor, and king of Hungary and Bohemia, had been prolonged during years of peace, it is probable that he would have repeated his successes as a reforming ruler in Tuscany on a far larger scale. But he lived for barely two years, and during that period he was hard pressed by peril from west and east alike. The growing revolutionary disorders in France endangered the life of his sister Marie Antoinette, the queen of Louis XVI., and also threatened his own dominions with the spread of a subversive agitation. ”

“ LEGITIMACY, and LEGITIMATION, the status derived by individuals in consequence of being born in legal wedlock, and the means by which the same status is given to persons not so born. Under the Roman or civil law a child born before the marriage of the parents was made legitimate by their subsequent marriage. This method of legitimation was accepted by the canon law, by the legal systems of the continent of Europe, of Scotland and of some of the states of the United States. ”

“ Leopold was too purely a politician not to be secretly pleased at the destruction of the power of France and of her influence in Europe by her internal disorders. Within six weeks of his accession he displayed his contempt for her weakness by practically tearing up the treaty of alliance made by Maria Theresa in 1756 and opening negotiations with England to impose a check on Russia and Prussia. He was able to put pressure on England by threatening to cede his part of the Low Countries to France, and then, when secure of English support, he was in a position to baffle the intrigues of Prussia. ”

“ The University and Education.—The university of Leipzig, founded in 1409 by a secession of four hundred German students from Prague, is one of the most influential universities in the world. It was a few years since the most numerously attended of any university in Germany, but it has since been outstripped by those of Berlin and of Munich. Its large revenues, derived to a great extent from house property in Leipzig and estates in Saxony, enable it, in conjunction with a handsome state subvention, to provide rich endowments for the professorial chairs. ”

“ Political agitators, in order to sap the power of the Opportunist party, did not hesitate to drag in the mud one of the greatest citizens of France. But when the Panama “scandal” has been forgotten, for centuries to come the traveller in saluting the statue of Ferdinand de Lesseps at the entrance of the Suez Canal will pay homage to one of the most powerful embodiments of the creative genius of the 19th century. ”

“ It is not with Frenchmen that he is to be measured. He formed no school in France; he followed no French models. His work, admirable as it is from the mere point of view of style and form, is a parenthesis in the general development of the French novel. That product works its way from Madame de la Fayette through Marivaux and Prévost, not through Le Sage. His literary ancestors are Spaniards, his literary contemporaries and successors are Englishmen. The position is almost unique; it is certainly interesting and remarkable in the highest degree. ”

“ The first way represents the common (Locke’s) theory of mutual influence, the second the method of the occasionalists, the third that of pre-established harmony. Thus the body does not act on the soul in the production of cognition, nor the soul on the body in the production of motion. The body acts just as if it had no soul, the soul as if it had no body (p. 711) . Instead, therefore, of all knowledge coming to us directly or indirectly through the bodily senses, it is all developed by the soul’s own activity, and sensuous perception is itself but a confused kind of cognition. ”

“ It is now settled, however, that the presumption of legitimacy may be rebutted by evidence showing non-access on the part of the husband, or any other circumstance showing that the husband could not in the course of nature have been the father of his wife’s child. If the husband had access, or the access be not clearly negatived, even though others at the same time were carrying on an illicit intercourse with the wife, a child born under such circumstances is legitimate. ”

“ The importance of Le Sage in French and in European literature is not entirely the same, and he has the rare distinction of being more important in the latter than in the former. His literary work may be divided into three parts. The first contains his Théâtre de la Foire and his few miscellaneous writings, the second his two remarkable plays Crispin and Turcaret, the third his prose fictions. In the first two he swims within the general literary current in France; he can be and must be compared with others of his own nation. ”

“ But for the master’s graver researches and projects he cared little, and was far more interested in the dreams of astrologers and alchemists. When Leonardo, having received a commission for a picture, was found distilling for himself a new medium of oils and herbs before he had begun the design, the pope was convinced, not quite unreasonably, that nothing serious would come of it. The only paintings positively recorded as done by him at Rome are two small panels for an official of the papal court, one of a child, the other of a Madonna, both now lost or unrecognized. ”

“ Queen Christina of Sweden visited her, and Anne of Austria was powerless against her. After she had continued her career for a preposterous length of time, she settled down to the social leadership of Paris. Among her friends she counted Mme de la Sablière, Mme de la Fayette and Mme de Maintenon. It became the fashion for young men as well as old to throng round her, and the best of all introductions for a young man who wished to make a figure in society was an introduction to Mlle de Lenclos. Her long friendship with Saint Évremond must be briefly noticed. ”

“ The doctrine on which its argument is based is that no dogmatic creed can be regarded as final, but that every historical religion had its share in the development of the spiritual life of mankind. Lessing also maintains that history reveals a definite law of progress, and that occasional retrogression may be necessary for the advance of the world towards its ultimate goal. These ideas formed a striking contrast to the principles both of orthodox and of sceptical writers in Lessing’s day, and gave a wholly new direction to religious philosophy. ”