Various

“ The cream of history lies not so much in a bare notation of facts as in the little touches of nature and manners which reproduce for us the actual human life of a former age, and much of this may be gleaned from the history of the Sidneys. They were an interesting family, alike from their rank, their talents, their personal beauty, and the vicissitudes of their fortunes. The Countess was a clever managing woman; and her letters to her absent lord when ambassador in France convey to us many pleasant details of the home-life at Leicester House. ”

“ From all sides light has come upon that remote epoch around which the mist of a fabulous antiquity had already been folded in the days of Herodotus; from the islands and shores of the Ægean, from the tombs of Asia Minor and Palestine, nay, even from the temples and palaces of Egypt and Assyria, have the materials been exhumed for sketching in something like clear outline the origin and growth of Greek civilization. ”

“ The statesmen who assembled at the Congress of Vienna would have laughed any dreamer to scorn who should have suggested that in the lifetime of many of them Germany would become an empire in the hands of Prussia, France a well-organized and orderly republic, and the "geographical expression" of Italy vitalised into one of the great powers of Europe. Nevertheless, if politics is ever to approach the dignity of a science, it must justify a scientific character by its ability to predict events. ”

“ Everywhere I went I found a cultivated English gentleman exerting himself to the best of his ability to extend the blessings of civilisation—justice, education, the development of all local resources. I firmly believe that no government in the world has ever possessed a body of administrators to vie with the Civil Service of India. ”

“ I had no fear of exciting the fanaticism of the Muslim population by going out shooting on their holy day, for there is not much bigotry in Mogador,—Moors, Christians, and Jews observing their several religions peacefully side by side, so that three Sundays come in every week, the Mahometan on Friday, the Jewish on Saturday, and then ours.
The sun, just rising from behind the eastern sand-hills, was gilding all the house-tops and minarets, till our white town looked like a rich assemblage of fairy palaces of gold and ivory ”

“ Every Englishman in office in India has great power, and every Englishman, as the late Lord Lytton once observed to me, is in heart a reformer. His native energy will not enable him to sit still with his hands before him. He must be improving something. The tendency of the English official in India is to over-reform, to introduce what he may deem improvements, but which turn out egregious failures, and this, be it observed, amongst the most conservative people of the world. Some of the most carefully devised schemes for native improvement have culminated in native deterioration. ”

“ It thus appears that a marriage between Mirtillo and Amaryllis will exactly satisfy the conditions demanded by the oracle. There is an under-plot, which consists in providing a lover and a marriage for the woman-hater Silvio. He is loved in vain by the nymph Dorinda, whom he unintentionally wounds with an arrow while out hunting. The pity he feels for her wound softens his heart towards her, and all parties are made happy by this second marriage.
Such is a skeleton of the story of the "Pastor Fido." ”

“ There is on the Danube, which I was navigating, a vast whirlpool, so rapid that if the boatmen did not avail themselves of the assistance of a great number of men belonging to the locality, strong and powerful and well acquainted with the danger, who are there constantly for the purpose, and who struggle with their oars against the rapacious gulf, there is not a vessel in that great river which would not be engulfed! ”

“ The rule as to property in Hindu life is that all the members of a family, father, grandfather, children, and grandchildren, constitute an undivided partnership, having equal shares in the property, although one of them, generally the eldest, is recognised as the manager. It is in the power of any member to sever himself from the family group, and the tendency of our Government has been to encourage efforts of what may be called individualism. But the new stock is but the commencement of another undivided family, so strong is the Hindu feeling in favour of this time-honoured custom. ”

“ In very few cases in all the world and in all ages has it happened that intellectual distinction has been the appanage of one family for as many generations as in that of the Guarini. They came originally from Verona, where Guarino, the first of the family on record, who was born in 1370, taught the learned languages, and was one of the most notable of the band of scholars who laboured at the restoration of classical literature. ”

“ The localization of a myth is merely an indication or sign-post pointing out the direction in which he is to look for his facts. If Greek warriors had never fought in the plains of Troy, we may be pretty sure that the poems of Homer would not have brought Akhilles and Agamemnon under the walls of Ilium. If Phœnician traders had exercised no influence on primæval Greece, Greek legend would have contained no references to them. ”

“ The southern races of Europe, the Spanish and Portuguese, have shown no reluctance to intermix freely with the native races of America, India, and the Philippines, such as has always been exhibited by inhabitants of the British Isles when expatriated to the East or West. But where race, color, religion, prejudice intervene to prevent social intercourse between the English in India and the natives, what a wide gulf is placed between them! ”

“ No one who has ever looked at the moon, indeed, with a telescope of great power has failed to be struck by the appearance of deadness which her surface presents, or to be impressed (at a first view, in any case) , with the idea that he is looking at a world whose period of life must be set in a very remote antiquity. But we must not take such considerations into account in discussing the a priori probabilities that the moon is a very aged world. Thus we have only evidence from analogy to guide us in this part of our enquiry. ”

“ The Greek myths, like the myths of the other nations of the world, are the forgotten and misinterpreted records of the beliefs of primitive man, and of his earliest attempts to explain the phenomena of nature. Restore the original meaning of the language wherein the myth is clothed, and the origin of the myth is found. Myths, in fact, are the words of a dead language to which a wrong sense has been given by a false method of decipherment. A myth, rightly explained, will tell us the beliefs, the feelings, and the knowledge of those among whom it first grew up ”

“ I was already in Siberia, and could not yet realize my misery. During the whole long journey I was more or less delirious. I hoped for a speedy liberation, for I was altogether innocent, and at that time," he continued with a bitter smile, "I yet believed in God. When all hope became extinct, I began madly to rave, but finally settled down utterly crushed and callous. It was a fearful state—for weeks together, all my past life seemed a complete blank, at most I still remembered my name. This, sir, is literally true: Siberia is a very peculiar place." ”

“ If the views which have been now put forward are at all sound, we may perhaps conclude that whilst our Indian empire requires on the part of its rulers the utmost watchfulness to guard against dangers and contingencies which may at any moment arise, yet that with ordinarily wise government we may look forward to a period of indefinitely long duration during which British dominion may flourish. That sooner or later the links which connect England with India will be severed, all history teaches us to expect ”

“ The national conscience is not altogether satisfied with the mode in which some of our possessions have been acquired, but impartial inquiry demonstrates that unless a higher morality had prevailed than has ever yet been witnessed amongst the sons of men, the occasions for conquest and acquisition of territory that have presented themselves to the British during the last hundred years would not have been foregone by any nation in the world. But the feeling I allude to quickens the sense of our obligations to the inhabitants of India. ”

“ It is, in fact, the chief merit of such a government that the taxes are ordinarily light, and are such as are familiarised by old usage. New taxes imposed without the will, or any appeal to the judgment, of the people create the most dangerous kind of disaffection. But if this is true generally, it is especially true in India, where the population is extremely poor, and where hitherto the financier has not been enabled to make the rich contribute their due quota to the revenue of the country. ”

“ Having undertaken the heavy task of their government, it is our duty to demonstrate to posterity that under British rule we have enabled them to advance in the route of civilization and progress. We recognise that in all probability so distant and extensive an empire cannot permanently remain in subjection to a small island in the West, and therefore our constant task is to render the population of India at some day or other capable of self-government. ”

“ Let us consider, in the first place, what is the moon's probable age, not in years, but in development. Here we have only probable evidence to guide us, evidence chiefly derived from the analogy of our own earth. At least, we have only such evidence when we are enquiring into the moon's age as a preliminary to the consideration of her actual aspect and its meaning. ”

“ I subjoin a literal prose translation in preference to borrowing a rhymed one from any of Tasso's translators. This fellow "flits and circles around more unstable than dry leaves in the wind. Without faith, without love, false are his pretended torments, and false the affection which prompts his sighs. A traitorous lover, he loves and despises almost at the same moment, and in triumph displays the spoils of women as impious trophies." ”

“ The Alps, with all their beauty, lose much of their grandeur after one has been in daily contemplation of the majestic snowy range of the Himalayas, while the forests and valleys that skirt its base have no counterpart in Europe. In these partial solitudes we lose much of our conventionality. The mind is to a certain extent elevated by the grand scale on which Nature around is presented. ”

“ Let us see what England has done to India. England, besides governing India politically, has now very wisely commenced the important duty of educating the millions of her Indian children, and of bringing them up to the standard of enlightenment and high civilization which her own have obtained. ”

“ There is as yet little, if any, trace of Oriental influence; a few of the clay vases from Thera, and some of the gold workmanship at Hissarlik, can alone be referred, with more or less hesitation, to Phœnician artists. We have not yet reached the age when Phœnician trade in the West ceased to be the sporadic effort of private individuals, and when trading colonies were established in different parts of the Greek world; Europe is still unaffected by Eastern culture, and the beginnings of Greek art are still free from foreign interference. ”

“ The belief of Herodotus was shared by the scholars of Europe after the revival of learning, and there were none among them who doubted that the civilization of ancient Greece had been brought from Asia or Egypt, or from both. Hebrew was regarded as the primæval language, and the Hebrew records as the fountain-head of all history; just as the Greek vocabulary, therefore, was traced back to the Hebrew lexicon, the legends of primitive Greece were believed to be the echoes of Old Testament history. ”

“ The Phœnician art, in fact, traces of which we find from Assyria to Italy, though based on both Egyptian and Assyrian models, owed far more to Assyria than it did to Egypt. In art, as in mythology and religion, Phœnicia was but a carrier and intermediary between East and West; and just as the Greek legends of Aphrodite and Adonis, of Herakles and his twelve labours, and of the other borrowed heroes of Oriental story came in the first instance from Assyria, so did that art and culture which Kadmus the Phœnician handed on to the Greek race. ”

“ But although this constant aim at improvement among our English administrators too often leads to irritating changes, harassing legislation, and new fiscal charges on the people, causes are at work which tend to eliminate these obstacles to good and stable government. In our experimental application of remedies to evils patent on the surface, our blunders have chiefly arisen from our ignorance of the people. Institutions that had been seen to work well in Europe might, it was thought, be transplanted safely to India. ”

“ But there is one other rock which it is above all essential to avoid when we are considering the problem how best to preserve the duration of British government for the benefit of India. Every ardent administrator desires improvements in his own department; roads, railways, canals, irrigation, improved courts of justice, more efficient police, all find earnest advocates in the high places of government. But improved administration is always costly, and requires additional taxation. ”

“ The tendency of the Indian mind to dreamy speculations on the unseen and the unknown, to metaphysics, and to poetry, has led to a thorough disregard of the valuable offices of history. Accordingly, we find in their great epic poems, which date back, according to the best orientalists, at least seven centuries before Christ, the few historical facts which are mentioned so enveloped in legends, so encumbered with the grossest exaggerations, that it requires assiduous scholarship to extract a scintilla of truth from their relations. ”

“ Now, however slowly we suppose the earth's crust to be changing, it must be admitted that in the course of the next fifteen hundred millions of years the earth will have parted with far the greater part, if not with the whole, of that inherent heat on which the present movements of her surface depend. We know that these movements at once depend upon and indicate processes of contraction. We know that such processes cannot continue at their present rate for many millions of years. ”

“ Even if we accept the theory of accretion which has been recently suggested as better according with known facts, it would still follow that probably the moon had [Pg 114] existence, as a globe of matter nearly of her present size, long before the earth had gathered in the major portion of her substance. Necessarily, therefore, if we assume as far more probable than either theory that the earth and moon attained their present condition by combined processes of condensation and accretion, we should infer that the moon is far the older of the two bodies in years. ”