Various

“ It spreads out upon the man. When his spirit is in the flush of its strength, and his moral rivals his intellectual nature in compass and power, then it is that the despised portion of his being rises up and avenges itself for this contempt. The studious man feels, as he walks down life, a thousand minute retaliations for the prodigal waste of his youthful vigour. The body bows down beneath the burden of the mind ”

“ The presence of these newly acquired treasures of ancient art, which consisted of one hundred and fifteen subjects selected by Canova, and cast under his direction, kindled a flame in Mr Hogan’s mind never to be extinguished but with life, and he immediately applied himself to their study with his whole heart and soul. ”

“ If you succeed in getting the ear of the most vicious horse between your teeth, and bite it with all your force, you will find the rage of the animal suddenly subside, his spirit will appear to have forsaken him, and a word or a look from you will cause him to start and tremble with excess of terror. Once the ferocity of an animal is removed, it is an easy matter to conciliate his affections. ”

“ Here, as he said, “was a young man of genius in obscurity, and wholly unknown to his lordship, rescued from adversity in the unpromising morning of life—a self-taught artist built up to fame and fortune by his munificence—a torch lighted, which I hope will burn bright for ages, to the honour of the empire. Hogan may receive thousands of pounds from future patrons, but it is to Lord de Tabley’s timely encouragement that he will be indebted for every thing.” ”

“ The growth of such a system will be a sturdy race of machines—delvers and soldiers, but not men: so much brute physical energy swinging loosely through society at the discretion of those more spiritual natures to whom their education, neglected or perverted in another way, gives wickedness with power, and teaches the secrets of mind only as instruments to crush or bend men for their own selfish purposes. Others educate the intellectual and moral being only; the physical, once the building is raised, like an idle scaffolding, is cast by. ”

“ In fact, I should say that mere fierceness is but a very slight obstacle to domestication—timidity is much harder to be overcome. The timid races of animals require a mode of treatment directly opposed to the above. They require to have their dread of man diminished, and their boldness encouraged. If you wish to tame a very timid animal, instead of supplying it with food you must let it fast, in order to render it so bold with hunger that it will eat in your presence and from your hand. ”

“ In the male figure which stands beside her in an attitude of the most unaffected grace and dignity, we see a personification of the sublime in the Episcopal character. He stands erect, his enthusiastic and deeply intellectual countenance directed upwards imploringly, while with one hand he touches with delicate affection his earthly mistress, and with the other, stretched forth with passionate devotion, he appeals to heaven for her protection. ”

“ The period, however, had now arrived when the eagle wing of Hogan was to try its strength; and most fortunately for him, an accident at this time brought to Cork a man more than ordinarily gifted with the power to assist him in its flight. The person we allude to was the late William Paulett Carey, an Irishman no less distinguished for his abilities as a critical writer on works of art, than for his ardent zeal in aiding the struggles of genius, by making their merit known to the world. ”

“ To be happy at home is the ultimate result of all ambition, the end to which every enterprise and labour tends, and of which every desire prompts the prosecution. It is indeed at home that every man must be known by those who would make a just estimate of his virtue or felicity; for smiles and embroidery are alike occasional, and the mind is often dressed for show in painted honour and fictitious benevolence.—Johnson. ”

“ When capable, then, of overcoming the most powerful of instincts, maternal affection, and that too in the teeth of reason, how can we wonder at its overcoming an inferior instinct, and that in a brute animal where there existed nothing to be overcome beyond that instinct? ”

“ We have no doubt that a process similar to this takes place on the large scale in nature, which is capable of uprooting trees, rending rocks, producing earthquakes; for if we suppose that some collections of water on the surface of a hill have found their way down through crevices into a cavity in the body of the mountain which has no external opening, as long as this cavity remains unfilled no evil arises, but when it and the crevices also are completely filled, the pressure exercised here is so immense, that even the sides of the hill cannot withstand it. ”

“ Does the traveller encounter a lion or a tiger? The animal is prompted by nature to give place to him, and usually slinks off, growling with the thirst for blood, but still fearing to attack MAN. The shouts of women and children suffice to scare the fierce and rapacious wolves, as they descend in troops from the mountains to appease their hunger with victims from the flocks of the shepherds. ”

“ ON ANIMAL TAMING. FIRST ARTICLE.
That all animals, however fierce and ungovernable may be their natural dispositions, have nevertheless implanted by a wise Providence within their breasts a certain awe, a vague, indefinable dread of man, which, although meeting with him for the first time, will induce them to fly his presence, or at all events shun encounter, is, we think, a fact which no observer of nature will deny. This instinct of submission to human beings exists among all creatures, and the greater the intelligence they possess, the more powerful is its operation. ”

“ The lion and the tiger are prompted by natural instinct to shun the haunts and the presence of man—they choose for their lairs dark and impenetrable forests—they select for their habitation a situation whither man has not as yet approached—and according as the work of settlement and cultivation advances, they retreat before it into their dark and gloomy fastnesses. ”

“ There was as yet in that city no Academy of Arts or other institution like those in Dublin, provided, for the use of students, with those objects which are so essential to the formation of a correct taste in the higher departments of the Fine Arts, namely, a selection of casts from the antique statues: and until such subjects for study were acquired, the efforts of genius, however ardent, in the pursuit of beauty and excellence, were necessarily blind and fortuitous. ”

“ When we meet with instances of a nature calculated to overturn this theory—such as wild animals attacking and destroying travellers, or preying upon the shepherd as he guards his flock, with others of a similar description—instead of hastily presuming upon the falsity of the above position, we should rather seek for some explanation of the reasons which in these cases checked for the time the workings of the animal’s natural instinct. ”

“ He is not taught reading; he is not taught religion; above all, he is not taught thinking. He never looks into his other self; he soon forgets its existence; the man becomes all body; his intellectual and moral being lies fallow. ”

“ In the East Indies, where water-power is used, bales of cotton are compressed into one-half the size of those from the West Indies. By its means power may be multiplied, or rather concentrated, a thousand-fold. As commonly made, a man working it may, by using the same force that would raise half a cwt., apply a force amounting to twenty tons to the work in hand; and by varying the proportions of the machine, pressure might be brought to bear upon any body which would be perfectly irresistible. ”

“ The petty sovereign of an insignificant tribe of North America every morning stalks out of his hovel, bids the sun good morrow, and points out to him with his finger the course he is to take for the day. ”

“ In the deepest parts of the ocean the pressure must be exceedingly great, so much so that it is probable they are uninhabitable, the pressure being too great for the existence of fishes. This pressure, together with the total absence of light at great depths, renders the existence of vegetable life also a doubtful matter. There is a certain depth beyond which divers cannot go, owing to the pressure of water on the surface of their chests being greater than the resistance of air inside, respiration being thereby impeded. ”

“ No idea can be more erroneous. Under most circumstances, it is not so much the quantity of the fluid as the manner in which its particles are disposed, that determines its weight; and what may appear still more extraordinary, a small quantity of fluid may be made to balance, that is, to be of the same apparent weight as, a very large quantity. ”

“ There is another description of animal taming, which I must not omit to mention, viz, by charms or drugs. There were, and are indeed still to be met with, although more rarely than formerly, persons who profess to be able, by some secret spell or charm, to tame the fiercest horse, or calm the fury of the most ferocious watch-dog. There are also persons who follow the trade of rat-catching, and pretend that by means of certain drugs they can entice away all the rats from the premises to which they are called in to exercise their skill. ”

“ It will be seen by a retrospective glance at the details which we have given of Mr Hogan’s labours during the past seventeen years in which he has been toiling as a professional artist, that those labours have been any thing but commensurately rewarded; they have indeed been barely sufficient to enable him to sustain existence. But brighter prospects are opening upon him for the future. His character as a sculptor is now established beyond the possibility of controversy. ”

“ During the first year of his residence at Rome, Mr Hogan happening to be present at an evening meeting of artists of eminence, the conversation turned on the difficulty of producing any thing in sculpture perfectly original; and to Mr Hogan’s astonishment, the celebrated British sculptor Gibson stated as his opinion that it was impossible now to imagine an attitude or expression in the human figure which had not been already appropriated by the great sculptors of antiquity. ”

“ I might write a vast deal upon this subject; but my object is merely to show, at starting, that an instinctive awe of man, and a disposition to yield to his authority, is inherent in the lower animals. This, then, being the case, it will readily be perceived that the domestication of any animal by man only requires that he should carefully remove all obstacles to the operation of this instinctive principle ”

“ Aware of this principle, if we wish to use water as a power, we can economize it wonderfully, exerting a great pressure with a small quantity. If we take a small wooden box, water-tight, bore a hole in it, and fill it with water, adapt a long narrow tube to the hole, and fill it up with water, the box will now be burst, and that by the very small quantity contained in the tube. This tube may be a yard long, and very narrow in diameter, not holding more than two ounces of fluid, yet the pressure, being always in proportion to its depth, is the same as if it had been as broad as the box. ”

“ To such persons nothing appears of any moment but the indulgence of a domineering intellectual superiority, to the disregard and discomfiture of their own and everybody else’s comfort. Mounted on an abstract proposition, they trample on every courtesy and decency of behaviour ”

“ Those soft intervals of unbended amusement, in which a man shrinks to his natural dimensions, and throws aside the ornaments or disguises which he feels in privacy to be useless incumbrances, and to lose all effect when they become familiar. ”

“ Industry often prevents what lazy folly thinks inevitable. Industry argues an ingenuous, great, and generous disposition of soul, by unweariedly pursuing things in the fairest light, and disdains to enjoy the fruit of other men’s labours without deserving it. ”

“ The bear meets with the bold hunter or woodcutter in the American backwoods, but is never known to attack him, unless the instinct of submission to man is overruled by other instincts for the time more imperative in their demands. ”

“ THE MONUMENT TO THE MEMORY OF DR DOYLE, BY HOGAN.
In presenting our readers with a drawing, made expressly for the purpose, of the Monumental Sculpture intended to memorise the mortal form of an illustrious Irishman, who was beloved and honoured by the great mass of his countrymen, and respected for his talents by all, we have done that which we trust will give as much pleasure to most of our readers, as it has afforded gratification to ourselves. ”

“ The result was not only beyond anything that the most sanguine could have anticipated in the rapid creation of artists of first-rate excellence, but also in establishing the fact that among our own countrymen the finest genius for art abundantly exists, and that it only requires the requisite objects for study, with encouragement, to develope it. ”

“ Disagreeable People.—Some persons are of so teazing and fidgetty a turn of mind, that they do not give you a moment’s rest. Everything goes wrong with them. They complain of a headache or the weather. They take up a book, and lay it down again—venture an opinion, and retract it before they have half done—offer to serve you, and prevent some one else from doing it. ”

“ One of the principal ingredients that should enter into the composition of an animal tamer, is COURAGE. If the animal you are endeavouring to domesticate perceive that you fear it—and animals are instinctively sharp-sighted—from that instant all chance of control ceases. ”