Various

“ The impulse of affection for dear Bianca was strong in every heart, and this, with the prospect of a happy completion of our undertaking, almost changed every sacrifice into a delight. But, young though I be, I have now lived long enough to know, that as the brightest morning sky is often overcast before the close of day, so are our most shining hopes subject to many a cloud and chill before, if ever, they attain to their fulfilment. ”

“ If the fatigue be once brought on, the call for bodily exertion is stilled; the mind is no longer disturbed by it, and all its labours are facilitated. Our common mode of education pays no regard to this: youths appear in school to be strengthened by sleep and food, and too frequently, alas! thrown into an unnatural heat and commotion. How is it possible to fix the attention under such circumstances? The body requires action; if this be not allowed, it will obtain it in silence; it will act upon the passions, and, above all, the fiery temperament of youth will influence the imagination. ”

“ In a historical and antiquarian point of view, however, Ross Castle is indeed one of the most interesting objects to be found in connection with the enchanting scenery of the lakes. It is the time-worn fortress of their ancient chiefs, and its presence connects the history of man in distant times with the objects of eternal natural beauty by which it is surrounded, and imparts to them that delightful feeling or charm of romance which, exquisite as they are, they would necessarily want if it were absent. ”

“ In this astute and intellectual age of ours it has been discovered that it is much easier to abstain altogether from a dangerous indulgence than to adhere strictly to moderation, and temperance has been superseded by teetotalism; and I would just add to this, by way of corollary, that it is much easier to slide into a bad habit than to get rid of it again. But to return to our theme. The effects produced by stimulants are all agreeable for the moment. Wine and opium raise men above earth and all its cares; and so long as the stimulant lasts, they sit as it were at the supper of the gods. ”

“ His intelligence and extensive information render him one of the most delightful of companions. A welcome visitor is he at all times—a welcome addition to the family circle into which it is his delight to drop, just in time to share in the sober, social cup of tea, his favourite beverage. ”

“ The sight of mute personal privation and friendless loneliness would at such a crisis have been influential enough to stir up whatever humanity one had, but when witnessed in a stranger from a far land, in one, too, nurtured under the sapphire skies and blissful clime of Italy, and withering now by a dismal change beneath such dense and murky clouds, and such a pitiless and scourging breeze, the demand on one’s kindly offices was irresistible, and, drawing near to the desolate lad, I accompanied a small gift with a few words in his own most musical and thrilling tongue. ”

“ No man knows it thoroughly but he who has once been its slave. The craving of the nose once accustomed to be fed, for snuff—of the throat and fauces once seasoned to the use, for smoke—and of the teeth and gums once used to be drawn, for the reiterate chew—oh, it is dreadful!—and I say there is no remedy against the evil but teetotalism.
I have said nothing on those popular stimulants, tea and coffee, for, as generally used, I think they are both innocent, as they are certainly agreeable beverages. ”

“ To me the most painful sight in this world is a poor, that is, a destitute child. Whatever misery a grown-up person may be plunged into, a thousand suppositions are left for its palliation: they may once have been well off, or they may have been the artificers of their own ruin, and they may live to see better days: but children—they can have done nothing to deserve that the one blessing unmortgaged at the Fall, the carelessness of youth, should be taken from them.—Lady Bulwer. ”

“ The streets of a great city, whether swept by the tumultuous tide of life by day, or echoing only to the dull and solitary tread of the patrol by night, are never devoid of material for interesting remark or rumination to such as are so disposed. ”

“ The same evening he called all of us, except my sister, to him—declared the proposal of Francesco’s father—asked our opinion separately upon it—and when with one voice we all professed our readiness, our eagerness, to undergo any and every additional labour and privation that might take a tear from our gentle Bianca’s eye, or add a blush or a smile to her now pallid cheek and lips, he answered, “It is just spoken as I would have you speak, my dear wife and children: but saying is easy, doing difficult. ”

“ But though the lands of O’Donoghoe More have passed away from his race, he still retains possession of the waters: and, though dead himself corporeally, he still lives, and governs spiritually in his ancient principality. If, reader, you doubt the truth of our statement, ask the people of the lakes, and they will at once remove your scepticism. They will tell you that he frequently appears to them on May-day, on a milk-white horse, gliding over the glassy lake to the sound of unearthly music, and attended by troops of spirits scattering spring flowers. ”

“ Has not the theoretical enthusiast his mind as much warped, as much enslaved by one idea, as the acknowledged lunatic, only that the former has no lucid intervals? If you see a visionary of this class going along the street, you can tell as well what he is thinking of and will say next as the man that fancies himself a tea-pot or the Czar of Muscovy. The one is as inaccessible to reason as the other: if the one raves, the other dotes!—Hazlitt’s Table-Talk. ”

“ There is perhaps no period so well fitted for these studies of life, as it is in its private and more important aspect, as the close of one of our short and busy winter days, when the pressure of diurnal toil is removed from men’s minds, whether its effect has been to sway them from the contemplation of joy or wretchedness, and unbiassed they are left to imprint their character on the countenance of each. ”

“ ON STIMULANTS. TOBACCO.
Repose is the remedy which nature points out to tired mortals when exhausted either by mental or bodily fatigue. This is her prescription for refreshing man’s animal spirits, and enabling him to resume his labours. Stimulants are by no means congenial with her methods or her processes. They are like whip and spur to the weary steed; they may force him on indeed, but it is at the expense of his constitution and his powers. In medical science, the great art, as the doctors say, is to assist nature ”

“ But when the influence of the spell is over, immediately they sink down as much below the level of ordinary mortals, as they were before raised above it. For a delightful exhilaration of body and mind, they now experience a sad reverse, in which they find much more pleasing music in the prudent advice of the apothecary, than in all the Odes of Anacreon. ”

“ We are barbarous when we attempt to awaken it with the rod; we require from innocent children what is unnatural; we inflict pain on the body to prevent its action; yet activity was bestowed on it by its creator; yet nature renovates this activity every night; the mind is soon carried away by the whirlwind of corporal energies, and lost in the realm of chimeras. ”

“ The savage who has no stock whatever for his support—who is in danger of immediate starvation, if his wonted supplies from the chase or his herds were to fail—is totally regardless of the future in every part of the world; while the rich man, whose subsistence and affluence are almost beyond the reach of chance, is incessantly in disquietude about the manner in which his subsequent life is to be spent. ”

“ It is obvious that tobacco causes an excitement of the nervous system, and thus disturbs the course of nature; but nature never is, and never can be, disturbed with impunity. To apply a stimulus to the system for which there is no natural demand, is to cause a waste of nervous energy, of which nature has need for her own legitimate purposes, and therefore to inflict an injury upon her, greater or less according to the amount of that uncalled for expenditure. ”

“ In consequence, he intimated to my father that on reflection he was disposed to forward the marriage, provided a certain sum, which he named, was settled upon Bianca, as it was scarcely to be expected, he urged, that he would give his son and the heir of all his money to a portionless bride. My father acknowledged his request to be but natural, but professed at once the insufficiency of his means to satisfy it without impoverishing the rest of his family; an act which, however devoted to the happiness of his daughter, conscience would not allow him to commit. ”

“ He always rises through the surface of the lake, and generally amuses himself upon it, but not constantly: for there is a farmer now alive, who declares, as I am told, that riding one evening near the lower end of the lake, he was overtaken by a gentleman who seemed under thirty years of age, very handsome in his person, very sumptuous in his apparel, and very affable in his conversation. ”

“ He was certainly of a most robust constitution, and had never addicted himself to any habit “calculated to shorten life,” as they say at the Insurance Offices, saving and excepting that of taking snuff. Well, it has been said to me, “See how your anti-nicotian theory is set at defiance by this hearty old fellow. If tobacco be a slow poison, it must be, as was said of tea, very slow indeed, or how should we have such an exemplary octogenarian as this, ‘o’er all its ills victorious?’ He has been taking snuff all his life, and yet, you perceive, is nothing the worse for it.” ”

“ The well-fed, well-defended passenger, with muffled neck and arms thrust to the elbow in the pockets of his dreadnought, rubbed shoulders with the half-paralyzed and shivering wretch that shuffled amid the hurrying throng, often apparently without other object than that of joining in the stream of fellow-creatures, whom he could resemble in no other way. Carriage after carriage rolled past, the children of affluence for their tenants, interchanging careless comments, or looking with languid and heedless gaze upon the squalid, the impoverished, the abandoned, the degraded, that, alas! ”

“ With respect to such articles as opium and spirits, the “spirit of the age,” as I have already intimated, runs quite in an opposite direction to that of indulgence; and it is wisely considered that as those who can be temperate in the use of such ticklish commodities must owe a great deal to a happy temperament of constitution, and be few in number, whilst the greater part of mankind are not so felicitously moulded, the rule of teetotalism, viz., entire abstinence, is on the whole the safest and best. ”

“ Life itself, which among the children of the rich is an exuberant overflowing, that, lavish it as they may, still seems inexhaustible, among those of the poor is a lean phantom, grasped at with pain and maintained with a struggle ”

“ Comfortable Circumstances favour Foresight.—It is a most remarkable fact, totally at variance with what might a priori be expected, but confirmed by the universal experience of mankind, that the dominion of reason over the passions, the habit of foresight, and the power of forming a systematic plan for the conduct of life, are just in proportion to the degree in which the danger of immediate or the pressure of actual suffering has been removed from mankind. ”

“ When does cheerfulness appear so undiluted as when a long winter evening’s recreation spreads out before it, whether spent within the mellowed glow of a happy domestic hearth, with all its easy, pure, and unsuspicious pleasures, or in the social reunion with its friendly, careless, and unclouded gaiety? ”

“ But there is one article in our pharmacopœia of stimulants, upon which there seems to be some difference of opinion, and with regard to which I should wish to record my humble opinion. I allude to the nicotian leaf-tobacco.
Now, I regret to say that a long and attentive study of the subject compels me to pronounce an unfavourable sentence on this article. Whatever value it may possess as a medicine—and that, in the present state of our knowledge, is not much—I must say that, as an instrument of luxury in ordinary use, it is unwholesome and injurious. ”

“ It is just as if a man was to insist on your hearing him go through the fifth chapter of the Book of Judges every time you meet, or like the story of the Cosmogony in the Vicar of Wakefield. It is a tune played on a barrel-organ. It is a common vehicle of discourse into which people get and are set down when they please, without any pains or trouble to themselves. ”

“ It is a job not at all calculated for the lover of agreeable fiction, and hence the world hears little on the subject. Those after-reckonings are nevertheless serious, though unpalatable things. Pleasure here acts much like a tavern host, who remembers most accurately all the good things he provides, though his guests are both apt and willing to forget them. Every item is carefully put down, and must be paid for. ”