Various

“ The very mould which covers our cheese, our bread, our jam, or our ink, and disfigures our damp walls; is nothing but a collection of plants. The many-coloured fire which sparkles on the surface of a summer sea at night, as the vessel ploughs her way, or which drips from the oars in lines of jewelled light, is produced by millions of minute animals.
Nor does the vast procession end here. Our very mother-earth is formed of the débris of life. Plants and animals which have been, build up its solid fabric. ”

“ Come with me, and lovingly study Nature, as she breathes, palpitates, and works under myriad forms of Life—forms unseen, unsuspected, or unheeded by the mass of ordinary men. Our course may be through park and meadow, garden and lane, over the swelling hills and spacious heaths, beside the running and sequestered streams, along the tawny coast, out on the dark and dangerous reefs, or under dripping caves and slippery ledges. It matters little where we go: everywhere—in the air above, the earth beneath, and waters under the earth—we are surrounded with Life. ”

“ On the 14th the sun disappeared, and we were left in darkness; our skylights had long been covered over with snow, and by the light of our solitary dip we tried to pass the weary hours by reading, sleeping, and smoking. We were frozen in, in a fine harbour, surrounded by lofty granite hills, and on these were occasionally found a few ptarmigan, hares, and wild foxes; whenever the weather permitted, or we could at all see our way, we wandered over these dreary hills in search of a fresh mess. We varied our exercise with excursions on the ice in search of bears. ”

“ At night we retire to our beds, thankful that another day has passed; a deathlike stillness reigns around, broken only by the ravings of some sleep-talker, the tramp of the watch upon deck, a passing bear causing a general rousing of our dogs, or a simultaneous rush of these poor ravenous creatures at our cherished stores of seal-beef in the shrouds; and, as we listen to the distant groaning and sighing of the ice, we thank God that we have still a home in these terrible wastes. ”

“ The season was passing away, and without an early change to wind and a continuance of it from the northward, we were almost without a hope.
In the evening we visited the glacier, but the débris of shattered ice, and the innumerable bergs and floe pieces, prevented our getting close to its base. It was a beautifully calm night; not a sound to be heard, save the crashing of some enormous mass rent from the face of the glacier, or distant rumbling of the vast inland ice, as it moved slowly down towards the sea. ”

“ There is an abominable selfish old woman, certainly: an old highway robber; an old sponger on other people’s kindness; an old haunter of Bath and Cheltenham boarding-houses (about which how can I know anything, never having been in a boarding-house at Bath or Cheltenham in my life?) ; an old swindler of tradesmen, tyrant of servants, bully of the poor—who, to be sure, might do duty for a villain, but she considers herself as virtuous a woman as ever was born. ”

“ The air is crowded with birds—beautiful, tender, intelligent birds, to whom life is a song and a thrilling anxiety, the anxiety of love. The air is swarming with insects—those little animated miracles. The waters are peopled with innumerable forms, from the animalcule, so small that one hundred and fifty millions of them would not weigh a grain, to the whale, so large that it seems an island as it sleeps upon the waves. ”

“ If the emperor, accompanied by his court, should retreat into Manchuria—if Peking be deserted, as Canton was, by all that is respectable and opulent—the Allies may find themselves amidst vacant streets, abandoned houses, a wandering, a starving population, too poor to migrate with their betters. Winter will come—the cruel, bitter winter of northern China; the rivers will be frozen, communications cut off; and with no war-ship in the Gulf of Pecheli, supplies must be inaccessible. Peking may even prove another Moscow to its conquerors. ”

“ We must now, therefore, be content with an hour or two’s tramp alongside, or on our snow-covered deck under housing; and, during the remainder of the day, we sit below in our little cabin, which has now crystallized by the breath condensing and freezing on the bulkheads, and we endeavour to read and talk away the time. But our subjects of conversation are miserably worn out; our stories are old and oft-repeated; we start impossible theories, and we bet upon the results of our new observations as to our progress, as we unconsciously drift and drift before the gale. ”

“ A scene of wild confusion ensued; the floes were driving against each other in all directions, and the whole ocean of ice appeared in commotion, while a blinding snow-drift distorted and magnified every surrounding object. Our first care was to save our dogs; but as an Esquimaux dog always expects either a thrashing or to be put in harness when approached by a man, and the poor creatures were terror-stricken with the storm, they ran wildly about over the ice, and many of them were obliged to be abandoned to their fate, after sharing the perils of the winter with us. ”

“ Man himself is imperfectly known, because the laws of universal Life are imperfectly known. His Life forms but one grand illustration of Biology—the science of Life, [21] as he forms but the apex of the animal world.
Our studies here will be of Life, and chiefly of those minuter, or obscurer forms, which seldom attract attention. In the air we breathe, in the water we drink, in the earth we tread on, Life is everywhere. Nature lives: every pore is bursting with Life; every death is only a new birth, every grave a cradle. ”

“ If the tricks of craft like those of society belong to the passing day, literature has been, beyond all other human influences, enduring and continuous in the main current of its spirit; and each period has been the stronger if it has recognized so much of its possessions as was inherited from its predecessor, including the power to conquer more. A powerful sense of brotherhood clings to all the veritable members of the fraternity, whose highest diploma is posthumous; and we cannot see the lingering representatives of a past day depart, without feeling that one of the great family has gone. ”

“ Fortunately for us, the direction of the cilia is reversed, and they act as vigilant janitors, driving back all vagrant particles with a stern “No admittance—even on business!” In vain does the whirlwind dash a column of dust in our faces—in vain does the air, darkened with coal-dust, impetuously rush up the nostrils: the air is allowed to pass on, but the dust is inexorably driven back. Were it not so, how could miners, millers, iron-workers, and all the modern Tubal Cains contrive to live in their loaded atmospheres? In a week, their lungs would be choked up. ”

“ Life everywhere! on the earth, in the earth, crawling, creeping, burrowing, boring, leaping, running. If the sequestered coolness of the wood tempt us to saunter into its chequered shade, we are saluted by the murmurous din of insects, the twitter of birds, the scrambling of squirrels, the startled rush of unseen beasts, all telling how populous is this seeming solitude. If we pause before a tree, or shrub, or plant, our cursory and half-abstracted glance detects a colony of various inhabitants. We pluck a flower, and in its bosom we see many a charming insect busy at its appointed labour. ”

“ Gods and men are indignant, heaven and earth can no longer endure them, and well will it be for your people if you unite in particular, and with vigorous arm exterminate them altogether. Let soldiers and gentry exhibit their loyalty, and with the braves, known to be in every place, swear, as they exhibit a force and union like the driving tempest, that they will revenge the honour of their country. ”

“ There are fashions in books, as there are in the cut of clothes, or the building of houses; and if from the great library of our race we take down the representative volumes, we shall find that successive ages differ almost as much as the several countries of the world. The one half of the century scarcely knows what the other half has done, save through its lasting works, among which books alone possess the gift of speech. Yet the guild of literature properly knows no bounds of space or time. ”

“ We started with a strong western tide, and under both steam and canvas, and, after proceeding about three miles, we were delighted to find that a passage really existed; but we had not got half way through when, the tide changing, a furious current came from the westward, bringing down upon us such masses of ice that we were carried helplessly away, and were nearly dashed upon huge pieces of grounded ice and reefs of rocks, over which the floes were running, and would have immediately capsized the little Fox had she touched. ”

“ The Life that stirs within us, stirs within them. We are all “parts of one transcendent whole.” The scales fall from our eyes when we think of this; it is as if a new sense had been vouchsafed to us; and we learn to look at Nature with a more intimate and personal love. ”

“ Pottinger little knew with what a faithless element he had to deal, and little dreamed that delay would be taken advantage of, not to lessen, but increase the resistance; that it would be employed not to facilitate, but to thwart our object—not to soothe, but to exasperate the people. Pottinger deemed his treaty a bridge to aid—Keying meant it to be a barrier to resist—our entrance into China. ”

“ They all perished, and, in dying in the cause of their country, their dearest consolation must have been to feel that Englishmen would not rest until they had followed up their footsteps, and had given to the world what they could not then give—the grand result of their dreadful voyage—their Discovery of the North-West Passage. They had sailed down Peel and Victoria Straits, now appropriately named Franklin Straits, and the poor human skeletons lying upon the shores of the waters in which Dease and Simpson had sailed from the westward bore melancholy evidence of their success. ”

“ No, we are not monsters of crime, or angels walking the earth—at least I know one of us who isn’t, as can be shown any day at home if the knife won’t cut or the mutton comes up raw. But we are not altogether brutal and unkind, and a few folks like us. Our poetry is not as good as Alfred Tennyson’s, but we can turn a couplet for Miss Fanny’s album: our jokes are not always first-rate, but Mary and her mother smile very kindly when papa tells his story or makes his pun. We have many weaknesses, but we are not ruffians of crime. No more was my friend Lovel. ”

“ When we have thus ranged air, earth, and water, finding everywhere a prodigality of living forms, visible and invisible, it might seem as if the survey were complete. And yet it is not so. Life cradles within Life. ”

“ That phrase, generation within generation, was not a careless phrase; it is exact. Take the tiny insect (Aphis) which, with its companions, crowds your rose-tree; open it, in a solution of sugar-water, under your microscope, and you will find in it a young insect nearly formed; open that young insect with care, and you will find in it, also, another young one, less advanced in its development, but perfectly recognizable to the experienced eye; and beside this embryo you will find many eggs, which would in time become insects! ”

“ And yet we will call her Fanny Monsell, when we declare that she was one of the pleasantest companions that could be brought near to a man, as the future partner of his home, and owner of his heart. And if high principles without asperity, female gentleness without weakness, a love of laughter without malice, and a true loving heart, can qualify a woman to be a parson’s wife, then was Fanny Monsell qualified to fill that station. ”

“ It is quite a mistake to suppose that mere perfection in firing at a mark will make a good rifleman for the field. Volunteers, to be efficient in action, must form a component part of an army. Every part of an army in the field must be well in hand of the generals in command—light infantry and riflemen must be equal to all movements, in compact as well as dispersed order, and in the several combinations of the two. ”

“ Harold Smith was the very opposite of her lord. She was a clever, bright woman, good-looking for her time of life—and she was now over forty—with a keen sense of the value of all worldly things, and a keen relish for all the world’s pleasures. ”

“ The destruction of hundreds of thousands of Chinese, the ravaging of their great cities, may fail to accomplish the object we have in view. They have been but too much accustomed to such calamities, and their influences soon pass away from a nation so reckless of life. But it may be possible to exact penalties in a shape which will be more sensible to them, and more beneficial to us: for example, the administration of their custom-house revenues in Shanghae and Canton, and the payment out of these of all the expenses of the war. ”