Various

“ I exclaimed, passionately interrupting him, "I find I cannot avoid you, you have a supernatural gift of omnipresence, but be you fiend or mortal I will now grapple with you;" and accordingly snatching at that obnoxious feature which, like the tail of the rattle-snake, had twice warned me of its master's fatal presence, I grasped it with such zealous good will, that had it been of mortal manufacture it must assuredly have come off in my hands. ”

“ A zealous priest in the north of Ireland missed a constant auditor from his congregation, in which schism had already made depredations. "What keeps our friend Farmer B----away from us?" was the anxious question proposed by the vigilant minister to his assistant, "I have not seen him among us," continued he, "these three weeks; I hope it is not Protestantism that keeps him away," "No," was the reply, "it is worse than that." "Worse than Protestantism? God forbid it should,—Deism?" "No, worse than that." "Worse than Deism! good heavens, I trust it is not Atheism." "No, worse than Atheism!" ”

“ I was roused from this reverie by the hollow sound of the clay as it fell dull and heavy on the coffin-lid. The poor sleeper beneath could not hear it, it is true; his slumber, henceforth, was sound; the full tide of human population pressing fast beside the spot where he lay buried, should never wake him more: no human sorrow should rack his breast, no dream disturb his repose ”

“ The hook usually is fixed in the cartilaginous part of the mouth, where there are no nerves; and a proof that the sufferings of a hooked fish cannot be great is found in the circumstance, that though a trout has been hooked and played for some minutes, he will often, after his escape with the artificial fly in his mouth, take the natural fly, and feed as if nothing had happened; having apparently learnt only from the experiment, that the artificial fly is not proper for food. ”

“ It is painful to think how soon the paintings of Raphael, and Titian, and Correggio, and other illustrious men will perish and pass away. "How long," said Napoleon to David, "will a picture last?" "About four or five hundred years!—a fine immortality!" The poet multiplies his works by means of a cheap material—and Homer, and Virgil, and Dante, and Tasso, and Moliere, and Milton, and Shakspeare, may bid oblivion defiance; the sculptor impresses his conceptions on metal or on marble, and expects to survive the wreck of nations and the wrongs of time ”

“ In the bed-room is a marble cenotaph, on which is an urn that formerly contained the heart of Voltaire, which was removed several years ago, and placed in the church of Les Invalides at Paris. In this room also is an engraving of Voltaire's monument in the church-yard of Ferney. In this, four figures, representing the four quarters of the world, are preparing to honour his bust with wreaths of laurel and palms. Ignorance, meanwhile, with the wings of a fiend, armed with rods, is driving them away in the midst of their pacific employment, and extinguishing a lamp which burns above the tomb. ”

“ We do not see any necessary and natural connexion between death and the end of the third volume of a novel, or the conclusion of the fifth act of a play,—though that connexion in some modern novels, and in most English tragedies, seems to be assumed. Nor does it seem to follow, that, because death is the object of universal dread and aversion, and because terror is one of the objects of tragedy, death must, therefore, necessarily be represented; and not only so, but the more deaths the better. ”

“ DAYS OF FLY FISHING.
That an ex-president (Sir Humphry Davy) of the Royal Society should write a book on field sports may at first sight appear rather unphilosophical; although it is not more fanciful than Bishop Berkeley's volume on tar water, Bishop Watson's improvement in the manufacture of gunpowder, Sir Walter Scott writing a sermon, or a Scotch minister inventing a safety gun, and, as we are told, presenting the same to the King in person. ”

“ So trifling, in fact, is the gap caused by our absence in society, that there needs no patriotic Curtius to leap into it; it closes without a miracle the instant it is made, and none but a disinterested Undertaker knows or cares for whom tolls our passing bell. ”

“ And though the charming and intellectual author of this poem is not an angler herself, yet I can quote the example of her lovely daughters to vindicate fly fishing from the charge of cruelty, and to prove that the most delicate and refined minds can take pleasure in this innocent amusement.
Gay's passionate love for angling is well known; it was his principal occupation in the summer at Amesbury; and "the late excellent John Tobin, author of the Honey Moon, was an ardent angler." Among heroes, Trajan was fond of angling. ”

“ WORKHOUSES
Were first erected in England in the year 1723, when they had an instant and striking effect in reducing the number of poor. Indeed the aversion of the poor to workhouses was so great, that Sir F.M. Eden mentions that some proposed, by way of weakening this aversion, "to call workhouses by some softer and more inoffensive name." Previously to this date, it had been customary to relieve the able-bodied poor at their own houses. ”

“ Albans, and between that and Watford, I have sometimes, even as early as April, caught fish in good condition; but the true season for the Colne is the season of the May-fly. The same may be said of most of the large English rivers containing large trouts, and abounding in May-fly—such as the Test and the Kennett, the one running by Stockbridge, the other by Hungerford. But in the Wandle, at Carshalton and Beddington, the May-fly is not found; and the little blues are the constant, and, when well imitated, killing flies on this water ”

“ According to the House of Commons' returns in 1815, there were no fewer than 925,439 individuals in England and Wales, being about one-eleventh of the then existing population, members of Friendly Societies, formed for the express purpose of affording protection to the members during sickness and old age, and enabling them to subsist without resorting to the parish funds. "No such unquestionable proof of the prevalence of a spirit of providence and independence can be exhibited in any other European country." ”

“ One-ninth of the whole population of Paris are wholly maintained by funds which the different bureaux of charity distribute for their relief; and still a countless horde of mendicants infest her streets, her quays, and all her public places. ”

“ Time and travellers have much impaired the furniture of light-blue silk, and the Austrians, quartered in the house during the late war, have not improved it; the bed-curtains especially, which for the last forty years have supplied each traveller with a precious little bit, hastily torn off, are of course in tatters. ”

“ With this poor pittance they return to their native county, and it adds either to their humble comforts, or creates a small dowry towards a rustic establishment for life. Can a more interesting picture be drawn of virtuous exertion? Why have our poets failed to colour and finish it? More virtue never existed in their favourite shepherdesses than in these Welsh and Shropshire girls! ”

“ Their morals too are exemplary; and they often perform this labour to support aged parents, or to keep their own children from the workhouse! In keen suffering, they endure all that the imagination of a poet could desire; they live hard, they sleep on straw in hovels and barns, and they often burst an artery, or drop down dead from the effect of heat and over-exertion! Yet, such is the state of one portion of our female population, at a time when we are calling ourselves the most polished nation on earth.
COLEBROOK-DALE IRON-WORKS—THE REYNOLDS'. ”

“ Orn.—Surely the May-fly season is not the only season for day-fishing in this river? [the Wandle.] —Hal. Certainly not. There are as many fish to be taken, perhaps, in the spring fishing; but in this deep river they are seldom in good season till the May-fly has been on, and a fortnight hence they will be still better than even now. In September there may be good fish taken here; but the autumnal flies are less plentiful in this river than the spring flies—Phys, Pray tell me what are the species of fly which take in these two seasons.—Hal. You know that trout spawn or deposit their ova, &c. ”

“ The excess of heat seems equally unfavourable, as the excess of cold, to the existence of the smaller species of water-insects, which, during the intensity of sunshine, seldom appear in summer, but rise morning and evening only. ”

“ SHROPSHIRE AND WELSH GIRLS.
There are few Londoners who in their suburban strolls have failed to notice the scores of female fruit-carriers by whose toil the markets are supplied with some of their choicest delicacies. As an interesting illustration of the meritorious character of these handmaids to luxury, I send you the following extract from Sir Richard Phillips's Walk from London to Kew.
PHILO.
In the strawberry season, hundreds of women are employed to carry that delicate fruit to market on their heads ”

“ The formula of the sentence of torture began thus, Christo nomine invocato; and it was therein expressed, that the torture should endure as long as it pleased the inquisitors; and a protest was added, that, if during the torture the culprit should die, or be maimed, or if effusion of blood or mutilation of limb should ensue, the fault should be chargeable to the culprit, and not to the inquisitors. ”

“ On April 17, in the presence of many witnesses, he was shown upwards of two hundred culprits, of whom he had never heard till that moment, and to whose crimes and dispositions he was a total stranger. Dr. Gall immediately pointed out, as a general feature in one of the wards, an extraordinary development in the region of the head where the organ of theft is situated, and in fact every prisoner there was a thief. Some children, also detained for theft, were then shown to him; and in them, too, the same organ was very prominent. ”

“ They are at least six weeks or two months after they have spawned before they recover their flesh; and the time when these fish are at the worst, is likewise the worst time for fly-fishing, both on account of the cold weather, and because there are fewer flies on the water than at any other season. ”

“ The Spaniards are infinitely more careful than the French, and other nations, in planting trees, and in taking care of them; for it rarely happens, when a Spaniard eats fruit in a wood or in the open country, that he does not set the stones or the pips ”

“ Every thing is debased and sophisticated, and "nothing is but what is not." All things are mixed, lowered, debased, deteriorated, by our cozening dealers and shopkeepers; and, bad as they are, there is every reason to fear that they are "mox daturos progeniem vitiosiorem." ”

“ If it be true that familiarity has a tendency to create indifference, if not contempt, it must be considered prudent to have recourse to this strong exhibition as to drastic remedies in medicine, with caution and discrimination, and with a view to the continuance of its effect. ”

“ Such is the narrative of an intelligent traveller, who recently visited Ferney. "Very few," says he, "remain alive, of those who saw the poet: a gardener who conducted us about the grounds had that advantage; he showed us the place where the theatre stood, filling the space on the left-hand side in entering, between the chateau and the chapel, but the inscription on the last, Voltaire à Dieu, was removed during the reign of terror. ”

“ In great cities, cannibalism takes an infinite variety of shapes. In the neighbourhood of St. James's-street there are numerous slaughter-houses, where men are daily consumed by the operation of cards and dice ”

“ Augustine, and with his kingdom was baptized, and embraced the doctrines of Christianity before the rest of the Heptarchy. The other Archbishoprick of Caerleon was translated to St. David's in Pembrokeshire, and afterwards wholly to the See of Canterbury; since which, all England and Wales reckon but two Archbishops, Canterbury and York. The following Archbishops have died at Lambeth Palace;—Wittlesey, in 1375; Kemp, 1453; Dean, 1504; all buried in Canterbury Cathedral: Cardinal Pole, 1558, after lying in state here 40 days was buried at Canterbury; Parker, 1575, buried in Lambeth Chapel ”

“ In a recherché article in the Foreign Quarterly Review we meet with the following marvellous story of Sterkodder, a sort of giant-killing hero of the North, who, having reached his 90th year, became infirm, blind, and eager to die. To leave the world in a natural way was out of the question ”

“ If the thousands of large and small canals from it, and the thousands of men and machines employed to transfer, by artificial means, the water of the Nile to the meadows on its banks—if this be the inundation that is meant, it is true; any other is false ”

“ In that year, however, the chapel fell, and with it were demolished the royal effigies. [2] Mr. Lysons, with his usual accuracy, enumerates nine kings who were crowned here. Kingston formerly sent members to parliament, till, by petition, the inhabitants prayed to be relieved from the burden!
At Hampton Wick, the village on the opposite bank, resided the witty but profligate Sir Richard Steele, in a house which he whimsically denominated "the hovel;" and "from the Hovel at Hampton Wick, April 7, 1711," he dedicated the fourth volume of the Tatler to Charles, Lord Halifax. ”