Various

“ The Thames, in its three bends from Senly Hall, the Benny Havens of Eton, down to Datchet Mead, where Falstaff overflowed the buck-basket, belongs to the boys. In this space it is split into an archipelago of aits. In and out of the gleaming paths and avenues of silvery water that wind between them glide the little boats. The young Britons take to the element like young ducks. Many a "tall admiral" has commenced his "march over the mountain wave" among these water-lilies and hedges of osier.
Shall we leave the boys at play, and, renewing our youth, go ourselves to school? ”

“ The Germany of 1775 could count barely twenty millions, its soil was poorly tilled, its mineral wealth undeveloped, manufactures in an embryonic state, trade fettered in a thousand ways, the peasantry brutally ignorant and servile, the national character—to all appearance—ruined by cruel religious wars, the sense of national unity blunted by the recollections of a hundred petty feuds reaching back to the gloom of the Middle Ages, the national taste dominated by poor French models to an extent that now seems incredible, learning either dry pedantry or shallow cox-combry. ”

“ The contribution of the American Union to such results would earn it honor at the hands of history were it to sink into nothing to-morrow. Had no such tangible fruits hitherto ripened, some portion of such honor would still accrue to it for having shown that a people may grow from a handful to an empire without hereditary rulers, without a privileged class, without a state Church, without a standing army, without tumult in the largest cities and without stagnant savagery in the remotest wilds. ”

“ Its hue is whitening with the fleece of five millions of cotton bales. The cloud has a silver lining—a golden one in fact—for ours is pecuniarily a serviceable phantom to the extent of adding to our annual income a sum equal to eight or ten times the entire yearly export of the colonies. Should he lead us, like the Land—und—Wild—Graf, into the pit of ruin, he will have first bottomed it with an ample and soft cushion of lint whereon to fall.
Extremes meet, and modern culture, like ancient anarchy, drives its people into cities. ”

“ We are first at the meet, and the old woods ring with the mellow, winding notes of our horns—no twanging brass reeds in the mouth-pieces, but honest cow-horn bugles, which none but a true hunter can blow. The hounds grow wild at the cheering sound, and howl through every note of the canine gamut; the echoes catch the strain and fling it from brake to bay; the dying cadence strengthens into an answering blast, and the party is soon increased to half a dozen bold riders and twenty eager dogs. ”

“ The long, hungry cry with which he follows the deer and the sharp, angry yelp which he utters when chasing the fox tell plainly that the motives which prompt him thus to use his delicate nose and unwearying powers of endurance are precisely those which carry the Indian to the hunt or on the war-path. He hunts for any master who will cheer him on, has no tactics but to stick to the trail and give tongue as long as the scent will lie, and must be whipped off the game when caught to prevent his devouring it on the spot. ”

“ If to this normal wear and tear and these every-day annoyances we add the participation in what is pleasingly styled enforcement of discipline—that is, protracted faculty-meetings, interviews with anxious or irate parents, exhortations to the vicious to mend their ways—we shall probably come to the conclusion that the professor's burden is anything but light. We all have heavy burdens. But while admitting the universality of the adage, we are nevertheless at liberty to ascertain if we cannot make the burden of a particular man or class easier to bear by fitting it to the back. ”

“ A couple of chattering magpies ran before us, an invisible cuckoo was heard between snatches of Italian melody warbled by the tenor sotto voce and the little company overflowed with gayety.
The house we arrived at looked as if it might be a castle in the air materialized—pointed windows hidden in ivy, through which you saw the chintz-covered walls of the interior; turrets on the roof and a stair-tower; odd nooks for pigeons and cattle; the color a weather-toned red, met by gray roofs, green trees and blue sky. ”

“ But when these are left beneath, the perpendicular Walls of granite, rising sheer and straight up to the bold sky-line, and the rugged, massive strength of the buttress-like cliffs, begin to gain something of their true value to the stranger's eye. The most beautiful part of the road, however, to my taste, is the descent, when the shining expanse of Camp's Bay lies shimmering in the warm afternoon haze with a thousand lights and shadows from cloud and cliff touching and passing over the crisp water-surface. ”

“ He attacks the prairie with a plough unimagined by his predecessor; cuts his wheat with a cradle—or, given a neighbor or two, a reaper—instead of a sickle; sends into the boundless pasture the nucleus of a merino flock, and returns at evening to a home rugged enough, in unison with its surroundings, but brightened by traits of culture and intelligence which must adhere to any ménage of to-day and were out of reach of any of the olden time. The civilization that travels West now is a different thing from that which went West a hundred years ago. ”

“ For half an hour we ride in silence save the words of encouragement to the hounds, which are snuffing about unsuccessfully and whipping the hoar-frost with their tails from the dry yellow stems of the grass. Now and then some eager young dog opens on the trail of a rabbit which has started from its form, but the crack of a whip restrains him, and the other hounds pay no attention to him. Suddenly a sharp, quick yelp comes from the farthest corner of the field, and the older dogs stop instantly and raise their heads to listen. Hark to old Blucher! ”

“ We are indeed a young country, but we are young in hope; Germany was old, but it was old in weakness, in poverty, in despondency. Whoever doubts our ability to do as much as Germany did one hundred years ago, fails to profit by the teachings of history—overlooks the fact that Germany in 1840 was only where she had been in 1618. That we should take Germany for our standard of comparison, rather than England or France, is a postulate which has one circumstance unmistakably in its favor. ”

“ The trail grows warmer as they follow the line of fence, and just as we settle ourselves in the saddle for a run it all stops and the dogs are at fault. But Blucher is hard to puzzle and knows every trick of his cunning game. Running a few panels down the fence, he rears up on it and snuffs the top rail, and then, with a yell of triumph, dashes over it into the woods, with the whole pack in full cry at his heels. A ringing cheer announces that the fox has "jumped," and the field scatters in pursuit. ”

“ It matters little whether the curriculum be good or bad, whether it take in a wide or a narrow range of subjects, whether it be behind or up to the times: so long as it is a real curriculum it tends to prevent the full assertion of his individual excellence. He may study for himself, but he cannot teach more than the regulations permit. However advanced he may be in his specialty, however sincere and earnest his wish to impart the choicest fruits of his research, he must admit to himself that there is a point beyond which he is unable to carry his students. They are borne off to something else ”

“ On the contrary, she wished to impress it on Edgar that she accepted his praises because they were her due. She knew that the world takes us if not quite at our own valuation, yet as being the character we assume to be. It all depends on our choice of a mask and to what ideal self we dress. If we are clever and dress in keeping, without showing chinks or discrepancies, no one will find out that it is only a mask; and those of us are most successful in gaining the good-will of our fellows who understand this principle the most clearly and act on it the most consistently. ”

“ It is said that the sky has no color of its own—that the deep blue we think so beautiful is only owing to the atmosphere through which we view it. To Sarah this very slight expression of her lover's care for her bore more weight than the most passionate protestations of affection could have done to a colder nature, for it was colored by the glowing tints of her own warm love ”

“ Everything that makes a nation, we are told, and the nation itself, is the product of the soil. But the less immediate, finer and most delicate fruits cannot usually be garnered until the soil is thoroughly subdued. The mass of matter keeps the intellectual in abeyance. Were Europe enlarged one-half, and her population reduced to one-eighth what it actually is, the spectacle of culture she now presents would be an impossibility. It is our merit that, thus brought to American conditions, she would in no way compare with American achievement. ”

“ Editors, essayists, college presidents and reformers assure us that we are on the verge of a change, and perhaps a great change, in our system of higher education. They dilate upon the indisputable fact that most of our older colleges have made rapid strides within the past ten years, augmenting their endowments, erecting handsome buildings, establishing new departments of study and increasing the number of students. Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth, Amherst, Princeton, Columbia, the University of Pennsylvania, were never so well off, in point of money and men, as they are at this day. ”

“ By many a steep zigzag we round the Lion's Head, and drop once more on a level road running parallel to the sea-shore, and so home in the balmy and yet bracing twilight. The midday sun is hot and scorching even at this time of year, but it is always cool in the shade, and no sooner do the afternoon shadows grow to any length than the air freshens into sharpness, and by sundown one is glad of a good warm shawl. ”

“ He had been thinking a great deal of Adelaide for the last four or five days, since she had dined at the Hill, and making up his mind to take the final plunge before long. He was not in love with her, but she suited, as has been said; and that was as good as love to Edgar, who had now to take up his squiredom and country gentleman's respectability, after having had his share of a young man's "fling" in rather larger proportion than falls to the lot of most. All the same, he wished that her face had more expression and that her eyes were perfectly straight; and he wanted to see Leam Dundas. ”

“ At the present day the curriculum embraces a much wider range of subjects—we need only recall to our minds the introduction of general history, chemistry, physiology and the modern languages—but the time has not been lengthened by a single year. The student's time is more broken up than before: the direct influence exerted by the professor is less. Our recognition of these and kindred facts, however, should be something more than a vain regret for the good old past. All these changes are concessions made to the spirit of the age. ”

“ We approach it through a double avenue of tall Italian pines, and after a little while go out once more for a ramble up some quaint old brick steps, and so through a beautiful glen all fringed and feathered with fresh young fronds of maiden-hair ferns, and masses of hydrangea bushes, which must be beautiful as a poet's dream when they are covered with their great bunches of pale blue blossom. ”

“ The English and the American giants can sympathize with each other. Both have drained the bitter cup that is tendered by a strong majority to a weak minority. Neither the American nor the British constitution, with their whole admirable array of checks and balances, has shielded them from this evil. In the battle of the gauges both have gone to the wall, and will stay there until they can muster strength enough to reel over into the ranks of their enemies. ”

“ But there is nothing to detain us longer to-day: the "Bob Whites" are waiting for us among the pea-vines, and the snipe among the tussocky grass of the old rice-field. Di and Sancho have caught sight of the guns, and are capering about in the wildest excitement, for it is a long time since they have seen anything more "gamey" than a city pigeon. Birding over good dogs is the very poetry of field-sports. ”

“ That our people and their labors have done it all it would be absurd to say; but the Old World's progress in the period under review can be but very partially accounted for by any internal force of its own. None of its rulers or peoples adventure a reform of any kind without a preliminary, if often only a half-conscious, glance of inquiry westward. Collectively as members of a European republic of nations, and internally each within itself, they have in this way learned, after many recalcitrant struggles, to recognize and respect local independence. ”

“ A long and happy day commenced with a stroll through the botanic gardens, parallel with which runs, on one side, a splendid oak avenue just now in all the vivid freshness of its young spring leaves. The gardens are beautifully kept, and are valuable as affording a sort of experimental nursery in which new plants and trees can be brought up on trial and their adaptability to the soil and climate ascertained. ”

“ As we approach the hawk stretches out his neck, jerks his wings two or three times and oscillates his ungainly body, and then, with a loud scream of angry disappointment, he is off. The tree stands in a little piece of sedge, not far from a dense growth of pine-saplings, and we know that the moment the hawk left his perch the birds started for the cover, and our only chance for shooting is to head them off and turn them. The dogs have struck the running trail, and their action is totally different from what it was with the first covey. ”

“ But in our praisworthy desire for progress we have not considered sufficiently whether the colleges were in truth the proper places for innovation; whether we were bringing in our innovations in the right way and at the right time; whether we were in a fair way of making our colleges what we seek to make them—namely, centres of learning. To discuss all these points would be equivalent to discussing the question of education in all its phases, from the primary school to the university. ”

“ A culture without them would be the bleakest and most repulsive materialism.
The practical recognition of the difference between teacher and professor would be a decided step. By the side of it those which we have already taken would appear insignificant. The addition of chemistry, geology, or physiology to the previous curriculum does not change its character, so long as the professors of those branches instruct after the fashion of the professors of Latin and Greek. The advantage that the men of natural science have over their colleagues is one which the nature of the subject brings with it. ”

“ It is evident that the agencies and mode of reform with us must differ from those that have been employed in Prussia and in the rest of Germany. But it does not follow that the reform itself is impossible. What has elsewhere sprung from the autocratic will of a single man and his cabinet may be effected here through that other force, equally great and perhaps more pervasive, to which we give the vague name of "popular opinion." We know that popular opinion in our country is irresistible. It makes everything bend to it. ”