Various

“ It is true, unfortunately, that the only produce of our once industrious Liberty is now the grass which is growing in the seats of former bustle; but we have not even the satisfaction of knowing that that flourishes. It is pale, sickly, and stunted; for the air of the city is vitiated by causes different from that which alone has hitherto occupied us, and these causes are as injurious to plants as to man. ”

“ In deep dry wells which have been neglected, carbonic acid accumulates, and workmen who go down to clean the pit are sometimes suffocated. In such cases a candle should first be let down, and if it burns, the air is fit to breathe. If the candle be extinguished, it is unsafe for an individual to descend.
In the Island of Java, however, perhaps the most remarkable collection of carbonic acid is to be found. On the summit of the highest mountain there is a circular valley of considerable depth, and presenting to the eye a spectacle combining the utmost beauty and horror. ”

“ What sayest thou of these?”
“Simply,” returned the Jew, “that none of them are proofs of the truth of Islamism. Nay, be not wroth with me, your highness, for what I say of your religion I say equally of all others. There is one true religion, as there was one true ring in my parable; but you must have perceived that all men are not alike capable of discovering the truth by their own unassisted efforts, and that a certain degree of trust in the good faith of others as teachers is therefore essential to the reception of religious belief at all. ”

“ How important, then, is education, which gives the turn and moulding to the mind while it is flexible, fixes the habits, and forms the character! The discipline of the mind, with respect to its natural bias, is either misdirected or misunderstood in nine cases out of ten, and latent talents or tendencies, which by proper culture might be rendered sources of enjoyment to the possessor, and useful to the community, are restrained, if not too powerful for suppression, from their proper developement, by absurd and artificial treatment. ”

“ Children who have watched over a brood of chickens from the moment of their first disengagement from the shell, and witnessed the instinct with which the Creator causes them to come at the call of their mother, and contemplate the love with which “the hen gathers her chickens under her wings,” will take no pleasure in destroying that life of which they had anxiously traced the progress from the hour in which the first sign of developed animation appeared. ”

“ Even in a town, the total quantity of air is so great, that if it all come into play, it can be but slightly injured. But such is often not the case. How often, when there is a fine healthful breeze outside the town, do we find, on entering a narrow street, the mass of air perfectly motionless, and all the mischievous vapours which are produced, collecting until they become almost irrespirable. This is a great source of disease in towns; and to prevent or remedy it, requires but frequent change of the air which a room or a street contains: it requires but ventilation. ”

“ Such is the force of perseverance. It gives power to weakness, and opens to poverty the world’s wealth. It spreads fertility over the barren landscape, and bids the choicest fruits and flowers spring up and flourish in the desert abode of thorns and briars. ”

“ Poultry, pigeons, and rabbits, may be reared by young people, both for amusement and profit. The child who understands much of the natural history of domestic animals from practical observation, and perceives the force of those influences which unite the parent and the offspring, will so far sympathize with, and apprehend the nature of, those influences, as to feel pain at the thought of wantonly dissociating that connection, and would be far less likely “to rob the poor birds of their young,” than the child who had not been familiarized with the nature and habits of the feathered race. ”

“ I have met with many young persons of exceeding dullness in book learning, of decided distaste to the pursuits of literature, who have manifested a quick apprehension of mechanical contrivances, practically exhibited a love of natural history, of gardening, of agriculture, of something, in short, of a utilitarian character. ”

“ But natural history, to a reasonable extent, is surely a useful and improving study for both rich and poor; it leads them to look from the creature to the Creator; to contemplate His works, His glories, and His beneficent designs, both in the material and the spiritual world. In short, I would supply the mind and body with those occupations which best harmonise together, and most powerfully tend to overcome the degrading and demoralising effects of ignorance, which is confessedly the greatest enemy to religion, to peace, good order, and social happiness. ”

“ My own countrymen are naturally as shrewd and intellectual as the Scotch, but their minds are too generally ill disciplined, and school education, for all classes, is too generally defective every where. Several hours of the day are passed in wearisome restraint within the walls of a schoolroom, in learning words without ideas, sounds without sense; the mind being seldom engaged in the tasks with either pleasure or profit. ”

“ Perseverance in the steady pursuit of a laudable and lawful object, is almost a sure path to eminence. It is a thing which seems to be inherent in some, but it may be cultivated in all. Even those children who seem to be either indolent like the sloth, or changeful as the butterfly, by the skilful training of a watchful parent, may be endowed with the habit of perseverance. ”

“ The youth is therefore forced forward in spite of his natural repugnance to books; and if afterwards smuggled through the university into a profession which may give him place or emolument, without ability or exertion on his part, he disgraces his station by general ignorance and unfitness; and if he be admitted into a profession which yields honour or emolument only in proportion to talents and industry, he totally fails of the object, and it is discovered too late that the selection of his avocation was in some way unlucky. ”

“ The carbon of our fuel produces, in burning, carbonic acid, but carbon is not the only substance in ordinary fuel. Most coals contain sulphur, and in burning, this body produces sulphurous acid, also a gas, which is highly irritating and poisonous, particularly to plants, and which, mixing with the air, renders the city as injurious to the organization of a plant as the carbonic acid to the respiration of an animal. ”

“ Among the latter I would place gardening and botany foremost among the out-of-door occupations, and these pursuits apply to both sexes, and to the humblest of the peasantry, as well as to the nobles of the land, for with the idea of a garden is connected every association that is pure and heaven-born. ”

“ The even balance which, as was explained, is struck between the two sorts of breathing, that of the animal which gives out carbonic acid, and that of the vegetable which takes it in, is capable of maintaining the air upon the large scale always in the proper state. But in order that the people may be benefited by this wise arrangement, it is necessary that they should be living abroad in the open air and in the fields; that a man, in proportion as he destroys the oxygen of the air, should have around him plants to give out an equal quantity in its place ”

“ If the air of a city be injured by the large quantity of carbonic acid which is formed, a city should be the best place possible for the health of vegetables. If the air which is bad for man be good for plants, the vegetation in a confined street should surpass, in brilliancy and verdure, that of the most open and best attended gardens. ”

“ The sides of the valley are clothed with the richest perennial verdure of the tropics; all the plants which grow on that fine island are there found of surpassing magnitude and beauty, but intermixed with the skeletons of tigers, wolves, and men. There is no living animal. The greatest developement of vegetable life goes hand in hand with absolute destruction to all animal existence. The natives call this place the Valley of Death. It is the crater of an extinct volcano. From its bottom issue perpetually watery vapour and carbonic acid, the elements which clothe its sides with vegetable riches ”

“ If the carbonic acid were not taken away, all animals would be poisoned, even if the proper quantity of oxygen remained, for carbonic acid is a positive poison, which kills by acting on the brain like opium. A person can live, breathing with only one lung; in the disease of consumption, an individual may live for months with only one lung, or even only part of a lung, remaining fit for use; but if perfectly good air be breathed with one lung, and carbonic acid with the other, the person will be poisoned after a very short time ”

“ In many countries, particularly where there are burning mountains, carbonic acid is given off from the ground, and it collects in every hollow or cave, in consequence of being much heavier than the air. There is a cave in Italy, called the Dog’s Grotto, because a dog on entering it is instantly suffocated, though a man may walk in without injury. The cause is, that the cave is filled up by carbonic acid to about four feet deep; a dog, or any animal that holds its head lower than that height, breathes carbonic acid and is choked, but a man breathes the pure air which is above it, and escapes. ”

“ Carbonic acid is indeed produced in a great variety of ways, besides by animals in breathing, and fuel in burning. It is remarkable that it is only the green parts of plants which breathe as has been described; the leaves and stems giving out oxygen, and absorbing carbonic acid. The flowers and the ripe fruits of plants act on the air in the same way as animals, and hence deteriorate it; and the rooms where stores of fruit are kept, are known to be very unwholesome, and persons have been suffocated by sleeping in a room where there was a very great quantity of flowers. ”

“ But in countries like ours, where vast numbers of families are collected in cities, with narrow streets and lanes; where an open place like Stephen’s Green or Merrion Square is anxiously sought after, and disproportionate rents paid for the houses which are around it, this immediate restoration of the injury done to the air by breathing, and the burning of lights and fuel, cannot occur. The air is vitiated permanently, and those resident in towns require for their health’s sake to understand how the evil may be rendered as small as possible. ”

“ Talking of the caution necessary to be used in conversation amongst a mixed company, Macklin observed, “Sir, I have experienced to my cost that a man in any situation of life should never be off his guard. It is the fault of the Irish that they are too ready to ‘commit’ themselves. Now, this never happens with the Scotch:—a Scotchman is always on the look-out; he never lives a moment extempore, and that is one great reason why he is so successful in life as we see.” ”

“ The unfortunate youth who has no talent for the acquisition of languages, and cannot comprehend the simplest proposition in geometry, is condemned to pursue a prescribed routine, and to pass many of the most precious years of his life in the unavailing effort to learn, through the drudgery of a classical school, what is repugnant to his taste, and beyond his powers of comprehension ”

“ And besides the impediments which obstruct the progress of useful occupation, arising from the blindness of parents, the unfitness of teachers, and the incapacity of pupils, there are to be encountered in all schools the natural preference of idleness to any kind of systematic occupation, the love of mischief and freaks, which prevail among combinations of boys, and the difficulty of analysing character and dispositions in crowded seminaries. ”

“ Strange that the vicious and inhuman curiosity of man can delight to arouse and stimulate the principles of enmity and cruelty in these apparently peaceful and sociable birds!
The barbarities of which the human character is capable from habitual indulgence in such brutal sports are almost inconceivable. ”

“ Disregard to this precaution has been the means of increasing to a frightful extent the mortality of large cities, and instances have been given, where an infectious disease, which had ravaged a number of low and confined streets in a large English town, stopped suddenly, and avoided a street otherwise no better than the rest, but which had been kept clean, and the rooms ventilated, by the exertions of some well-informed persons. For the preservation of the health of the poorer classes in large towns, medicine is of far less importance than cleanliness and ventilation. ”

“ In the upper classes, a parent, perhaps, incapable of estimating the capacity of his son, determines with himself that the profession, suppose of divinity, of law, or of medicine, is the most lucrative, gentlemanlike, or otherwise eligible, and that the boy shall be educated accordingly. ”

“ It is the feature that gives poetic interest to the most beautiful portion of Lough Corrib—its upper extremity—where a portion of the lake, about three miles in length, is apparently surrounded and shut in by the rocky and precipitous mountains of Connemara and the Joyce country, which it reflects upon its surface, without any object to break their shadows, or excite a feeling of human interest, but the one little lonely Island-Castle of the Hen. ”