Various

“ Again he says, “Why should it not be borne in mind that there are higher objects for human exertion, whether for individuals or communities, than the greatest possible aggregate of wealth? And although the realization of those objects in our time may be but the visionary dream of the philanthropist, let no one say that good will not arise from keeping them steadily in view.” ”

“ Manual labour is a school in which men are placed to get energy of purpose and character—a vastly more important endowment than all the learning of all other schools. They are placed indeed under hard masters, physical sufferings and wants, the power of fearful elements, and the vicissitudes of all human things; but these stern teachers do a work which no compassionate indulgent friend could do for us, and true wisdom will bless Providence for their sharp ministry. I have great faith in hard work. The material world does much for the mind by its beauty and order ”

“ Nature is not to be won by such superannuated suitors. She is not intelligible to them; and the language of fields and woods, of murmuring brooks, mountain tops, and tumbling torrents, cannot be understood by men familiar only with the noise of crowded streets, loaded vans, bustling taverns, and postmen’s knocks. ”

“ Such is exactly the case as regards the earth: during the day it receives a supply of heat from the sun’s rays, and as it is an excellent radiator of caloric, as soon as the shades of evening begin to fall, the earth imparts a portion of its caloric to the air, and the atmosphere having no means of imparting its caloric in turn, except by contact with the earth’s surface, the stratum nearest the earth becomes cooled, and consequently loses the property of holding so much moisture in the state of vapour, which becomes deposited in small globular drops. ”

“ But these are in truth quite sufficient for picturesqueness, and it may be easily conceived that two sheets of water so enriched, and encircled by shores finely undulating, to a great extent richly wooded, and backed on most points by mountains of considerable elevation, must possess the elements of beauty to a remarkable degree; and the fact appears to be, that though the Killarney and other mountain lakes in Ireland possess more grandeur and sublimity of character, Lough Erne is not surpassed, or perhaps equalled, by any for exquisite pastoral beauty. ”

“ What a hubbub the arrival of “an America letter” causes in Ireland over the whole district blessed by its visit! It is quite a public concern—a joint property—being in fact always regarded as a general communication from all the neighbours abroad to all the neighbours at home, and its perusal a matter of intense and agonising interest to all who have a relative even in the degree of thirty-first cousin among the emigrants. ”

“ So numerous have been the evils which have arisen from unwise interference, that an opinion very widely prevails that a government can do nothing but mischief; and the almost universal prayer of the people is to be left alone. ”

“ Dinny M’Daniel was the widow’s one son, born even in her widowhood, for his father had been killed by the fall of a tree before he had been six months married, and poor Sibby had nothing to lavish her fondness upon but her curly-headed gossoon, who very naturally grew up to be the greatest scapegrace in the parish. ”

“ The people have yet to learn to place confidence in their own servants, and to support when needed in their persons their own authority, instead of seeking to overturn it as that of tyrants or masters. ”

“ He would have the most beautiful and tender forms of Christian charity exhibited in all their actions and habits, and mere preaching, rules, sermons, lectures, or legislation, can never change poor human nature if the people are not permitted to see what they are taught they should practise, and to hold intercourse with those whose manners are superior to their own. ”

“ The introductory article in the Review contains some admirable strictures upon the radical defect of governments failing to perceive that the elevation of the people, in a moral and physical point of view, is not only one, but the fundamental duty of legislators. The writer points out that in all countries and ages to the present time, those who have been placed at the head of public affairs have had little or no leisure, if they possessed the inclination, to study schemes of human improvement ”

“ They have passed away like their forefathers, and are no more seen! From these considerations the mind naturally turns to the period when we, who now enjoy our little span of existence in this chequered scene, shall have gone down into the dust, and shall furnish the same moral to our children that our fathers do to us! ”

“ As the eye runs down its diminutive and old-fashioned columns, and peruses its quaint advertisements and bygone paragraphs, the question forces itself on the mind—where are now the busy multitudes whose names appear on these pages?—where is the puffing auctioneer, the pushing tradesman, the bustling merchant, the calculating lawyer, who each occupies a space in this chronicle of departed time? ”

“ I would not, if I could, so temper the elements that they should infuse into us only grateful sensations, that they should make vegetation so exuberant as to anticipate every want, and the minerals so ductile as to offer no resistance to our strength or skill. Such a world would make a contemptible race. ”

“ His object is to show them this, to show his own people and others that there is nothing in the nature of their employment, or in the condition of their humble lot, that condemns them to be rough, vulgar, ignorant, miserable, or poor—that there is nothing in either that forbids them to be well bred, well informed, well mannered, and surrounded by every comfort and enjoyment that can make life happy ”

“ Even if we do not work with the hands, we must undergo equivalent toil in some other direction.... You will here see that to me labour has great dignity. Alas for the man who has not learned to work! He is a poor creature; he does not know himself.”
That the labouring classes can be greatly, immeasurably elevated in the social scale, without relieving them from the least portion of that labour entailed upon the race of Adam, is beautifully exemplified in the mill-owner’s letters which follow the article from which the foregoing has been extracted. ”

“ COMPARATIVE VALUE OF BLACK BOYS IN AMERICA AND IRELAND.
It has not unfrequently occurred to us as a thing somewhat remarkable, that there is a vast difference in the comparative value of the black boys of America and those of Ireland; and this was very forcibly proved to us on a recent occasion. The American little blacks are, as we have been credibly informed, to be bought for forty dollars and upwards, according to their health, strength, and beauty; the Irish blackies for about a twentieth of that sum ”

“ Man owes his growth, his energy, chiefly to that striving of the will, that conflict with difficulty, which we call effort. Easy, pleasant work does not make robust minds, does not give men a consciousness of their powers, does not train them to endurance, to perseverance, to steady force of will, that force without which all other acquisitions will avail nothing. ”

“ From the above remarks it will appear evident that dew is formed most abundantly in hot climates, and during summer in our own, which tends to renovate the vegetable kingdom by producing all the salubrious effects of rain without any of its injurious consequences, when all nature seems to languish under the scorching influence of a meridian sun. ”

“ According to this view, the temperature of a body falls whenever it radiates more caloric than it absorbs, and rises whenever it receives more than it radiates; which law serves to produce an equality of temperature. ”

“ The account which they give of the social condition of the operatives employed in the writer’s factory, more resembles the details of a Utopian scheme than of one actually carried into effect by a single philanthropic individual. ”

“ Being naturally of a most humane and benevolent character, as all our readers are—for none others would support our pennyworth—we have often lamented the abject condition and sufferings of our black urchins, and have come to the resolution never to assist in encouraging their degradation, but on the contrary to do everything in our power to oppose it. ”

“ In the name of our common humanity we thank him for the experiment which has so satisfactorily proved the truth of his propositions; and whilst wishing him God speed, we shall do what in our power lies to promote the benevolent object, by directing the attention of philanthropists to the good that may be effected by the unassisted efforts of a practical individual. ”

“ He points out the necessity of supplying innocent, pleasing, and profitable modes of filling up the leisure hours of the working-classes as the best mode of weaning them from drinking, and the vulgar amusements alone within their reach. He also points out that merely intellectual pursuits are not suited to uncultivated minds, and that resources should be provided of sufficient variety to supply the different tastes and capacities which are to be dealt with. ”

“ During summer, when the weather is sultry, and the sky assumes that beautiful blue tinge so entirely its own, dew is formed in the greatest abundance, owing to the phenomena which are requisite for its deposition being then most favourably combined. ”

“ The American black boys are supposed to be the descendants of Cham—true woolly-headed chaps, with the colouring matter of their complexion deposited beneath their outer skin, and not washoffable by means of soap and water. The Irish black boys generally are believed to be of the true Caucasian breed—the descendants of Japhet; and their blackness is on the outer surface of the skin, and may, though we believe with difficulty, be removed. ”

“ So wishing the best of good luck to all the neighbours, and to yourself and to Nelly, I remain, &c. &c. &c.”
“Glory to you, Dinny!” was ejaculated on every side, while they all rushed tumultuously forward to congratulate the unwedded bride. In their uproarious hands we leave her, drawing this moral from the whole thing, that it’s very hard to spoil an Irishman entirely, if there be any good at all in him originally. ”

“ Happily their race is mostly short; death kindly comes to terminate their weariness, and, like plants too late transplanted, they perish from the sudden change in long-established habits, air, and diet.
An Old Newspaper.—There is nothing more beneficial to the reflecting mind than the perusal of an old newspaper. Though a silent preacher, it is one which conveys a moral more palpable and forcible than the most elaborate discourse. ”

“ Groping then, as I do, in the dark, I would with great diffidence submit, that certain individuals, being encumbered with PRIDE, WEALTH, and FAT, are hence, somehow, under both a mental and physical necessity of blowing: why all individuals thus encumbered do not adopt the practice, is matter for consideration. ”

“ With the exception of the Lady Hume, and the individuals immediately belonging to her family, the whole of the persons who had so surrendered, amounting to fifteen men, and, as it is said, sixty women and children, were on the following day stripped and deprived of their goods, and inhumanly massacred, when also the castle was pillaged, burnt, and left in ruins. Let us pray that Ireland may never again witness such frightful scenes! ”

“ We shall not, any more than our old author, “aver for the reality” of this legend, which by the way is related of many other Irish lakes; but we may remark, in passing, that the story would have more appearance of “reality” if it had been told of Lough Gawna—or the Lake of the Calf—in the county of Longford, which is the true source of the river Erne, of which Lough Erne is but an expansion. ”

“ Thus Dinny was cast on the world again, and found employment as difficult to be got as ever. His little hoard was soon spent, and at last he had to turn his steps westward, where labour was more plentiful and hands fewer. After many journies and vicissitudes he at length [Pg 181] met a friend in the person of one of the partners in the grocery establishment which had first given him employment, and who, like himself, had sought a home in the wilderness. ”

“ He established the order of the silver cross amongst the girls above the age of 17. It immediately became an object of great ambition, and a powerful means of forwarding the great object of refining the minds, tastes, and manners of the maidens, and through their influence, of softening and humanising the sterner part of the population. He says that he does not want to establish amongst the humbler classes the mere conventional forms of politeness as practised in the upper, but he would refine them considerably. ”

“ Amongst the English and Scottish settlers in Fermanagh, the most largely endowed with lands was Sir John Humes, or Hume, the founder of Tully Castle, the subject of our prefixed wood-cut, and who was the second son of Patrick, the fifth Baron of Polwarth, in Scotland. ”

“ With this praiseworthy intention we recently sent for a gentleman who professes the art of increasing our domestic comforts by the aid of modern science as developed in our improved machinery—or in other words, we sent for him to clean the chimney of our study, not with a little boy, but with a proper modern machine constructed for the purpose. ”

“ Retirement has been postponed until all the faculties of enjoyment have become effete or paralysed. “Sans eyes, sans teeth, sans taste, sans everything,” scarcely any inlet or pulsation remains for old, much less new pleasures and associations. ”

“ Blowing men form a small, a very small, part of the community. During some forty years’ experience of the Dublin flags, I have met with only four specimens of this genus. Yet limited as is the number of my specimens, I am constrained to distribute them into two classes—one consisting of three individuals, the other, of the remaining one. ”