Various

“ The philosopher who would have let the theory of gravitation die in silence rather than encounter the opposition which a discovery almost always creates, would not have allowed his name to be connected with the annuity which was the price of his niece's honour, or which carried all the appearance of it, even supposing him base enough to have connived at the purchase. ”

“ Those who have written on the life of Newton have touched with the utmost reserve upon the connexion which existed between his half-niece Catherine Barton, and his friend Charles Montague, who died Earl of Halifax. They seem as if they were afraid that, by going fairly into the matter, they should find something they would rather not tell. ”

“ It is impossible that Newton could have been ignorant that his niece was living in Montague's house, enjoyed an annuity bought in his own name, and was regarded by the world as the mistress of his friend and political patron. The language of the codicil shows that, be the nature of the connexion what it might, Halifax meant to tell the world that it might be proclaimed in all its relation to the name of Newton. ”

“ It amounts only to this, that Lord Shaftsbury, having a certain lady in his heart and in his eye, was afraid he had a rival, and described the person talked of in terms which make it pretty certain that Halifax was intended. But it by no means follows that because a certain person is "talked of" for a lady, and a lover put in fear by the rumour, the person is really a rival: and not even a biographer would have shown himself so unfit for a novelist as to have drawn such a conclusion, unless he had been biassed by the wish to show that Halifax was attached to another than Mrs. Barton. ”

“ To antiquaries the services of photography have a unique value, for, by perpetuating in the form of negatives those monuments of nature and art which, though exempt from common accident, are still subject to gradual decay from time, it places in the hands of us all microscopically exact antitypes of objects which, from change or distance, are otherwise inaccessible. To the artist they afford the means of facilitating the otherwise laborious, and often mechanical, task of drawing in detail from nature and from the human figure. ”

“ Gentlemen!—The noble cup of your mellifluous tongue so often brimmed with immortality, here filled with odd but pure and fiery draught, do not refuse to taste if you relish its spirit to be homefelt, though not home-born. ”

“ As the world is constituted, no rules of inference can be laid down in reference to the irregular relations of the sexes.
With reference to the insinuation that Newton owed his official position rather to his niece than to his ability, it can be completely shown that, on the worst possible supposition, the office in the Mint could have had nothing to do with Mrs. C. Barton. Newton was appointed to the lower office (the Wardenship) in March, 1695-96, when the young lady was not sixteen years old, and before she could have been a resident under her uncle's roof. ”

“ There seems to me, about the codicil as it stands, a declaration that the connexion with Newton's niece was such as, if people knew all, Newton might have sanctioned. And the supposition of a private marriage, generally understood among the friends of the parties, seems to me to make all the circumstances take an air of likelihood which no other hypothesis will give them: and this is all my conclusion. ”

“ Cruikston is now the property of Sir John Maywell of Nether Pollock. Of the trunk of the once—
" . . . . . green yew,
The first that met the royal Mary's view;
When bright in charms the youthful princess led
The graceful Darnly to her throne and bed."—
Lady Maywell ordered to be made by an ingenious individual, at Pollockshaws, an exact model of the castle, and some table and other utensils, which are still in preservation at Pollock. ”

“ Looking at the morals of the day, we are by no means justified in throwing off at once, with disgust, the bare idea of the possibility of a distinguished philosopher consenting to an illicit intercourse between his friend and his niece: we are bound, {432}in discussing probabilities, to distinguish 1850 from 1700. But, even putting out of view the purity of Newton's private life, and of the lives of his most intimate friends, there is that in the weaker part of his character which is of itself almost conclusive. ”

“ Though visiting Cruikston Castle in early life, I never heard of there being any feeling of "superstition" connected with such little objects as the crosses, &c. which were long made from the wood of the yew-tree. They are all, I think, to be viewed simply as curiosities associated with the historical interest of the place, and similar examples are to be found among our people in the numerous quaichs (drinking-cups) and other articles which have been formed from the "Torwood Oak" that protected the illustrious Sir William Wallace from his enemies ”

“ And in such a case, Halifax would have taken care to respect the secrecy which he would have known to have been essential to Newton's comfort: he would not have published to the world that his mistress was Newton's niece, and that Newton was a party to a settlement upon her. ”

“ Lord Bacon and Shakspeare.—Can any of those correspondents of "N. & Q." who have devoted attention to the lives of two of England's greatest worthies, Francis Bacon and William Shakspeare, account for the extraordinary fact that, although these two highly gifted men were cotemporaries, no mention of or allusion to the other is to be found in the writings of either? Bacon was born in 1561, and died in 1626; Shakspeare, who was born in 1563, and died ten years before the great chancellor, not only loved
"To suck the sweets of sweet philosophy," ”

“ Right or wrong, Newton never faced opinion. As soon as he found that publication involved opposition, from that time forward he published only with the utmost reluctance, and under the strongest persuasions; except when, as in the case of some of his theological writings, he confided the manuscript to a friend, to be anonymously published abroad. The Principia was extorted from him by the Royal Society; the first publication on fluxions was under the name of Wallis ”

“ The language of Blake is everywhere advocating this "new way of charity." "If it be new," says he to an objector, "the more's the pity;" and, with reference to the possibility of failure, he would thus shame them into liberality. Speaking of his "fine, handsome, and well cloathed boys; not too fine, because they are the ladies'!" our enthusiast adds to this soft sawdur:
"But now, if a year or two hence they should be grown, which God forbid! ”

“ What P. P. is pleased to term the "routine" reason is after all but one among many, and is not better substantiated than some of the others quoted by me; for though the lozenge has a "supposed" resemblance to the distaff or fusil, heraldically it is but a supposed one, and by most writers the difference is very distinctly indicated. ”

“ C. Barton was privately married to Lord Halifax, probably before his elevation to the peerage, and that the marriage was no very great secret among their friends. As yet I can but say that the hypothesis of a private marriage is, to me, the most probable of those among which a choice must be made: farther information may be obtained by publication of the case in "N. & Q.," the most appropriate place of deposit for the provisional result of unfinished inquiries. ”

“ This really invaluable remedy is employed with the most satisfactory result, not only in bronchial and pulmonary complaints, where irritation and pain are to be removed, but also in pulmonary and bronchial consumption, in which it counteracts effectually the troublesome cough; and I am enabled with perfect truth to express the conviction that Du Barry's Revalenta Arabica is adapted to the cure of incipient hectic complaints and consumption. ”

“ F. S. A. Photography is perfectly applicable to the copying of MSS. or printed leaves, either smaller, of the same size, or larger than the original, the only requisite beyond a good lens being a camera of sufficient length for a long focus. A plain surface exposed in front of a lens requires a range behind it of the same distance to produce an equal size copy; a magnified image being produced by a nearer approach to the lens, and a smaller the farther the object is distant. Prints are often copied by mere contact, without the use of any lens whatever. ”

“ For anything to the contrary in the mere word, the lodgings might have been in the house of Lord Halifax, or of Newton himself. But, on the other hand, the future Dean, much as he writes to Stella of every kind of small talk, never mentions Halifax and Mrs. Barton together, never makes the slightest allusion to either in connexion with the other, though in one and the same letter he minutes his having dined with Halifax on the 28th, and with Mrs. Barton on the 30th. There must have been intentional suppression in this. All the world knew that there was some liaison between the two ”

“ The Seven Whisperers.—I have been informed by an old and trustworthy servant that about twenty years ago, as he was walking one clear starlight night with two other persons, they heard, for the space of several minutes, high up in the air, beautiful sounds like music, which gradually died away towards the north. ”

“ It is always a subject of gratification to us when we see cheap yet handsome reprints of our standard authors; for no better proof can be given of the increase among us not only of a reading public, but of a public who are disposed to read well. It is therefore with no small pleasure that we have received from Mr. Routledge copies of his five shilling edition of The Canterbury Tales, by Geoffrey Chaucer, from the Text, and with the Notes and Glossary of Thomas Tyrwhitt, condensed and arranged under the Text. ”