Various

“ Sir William Temple has, however, many eloquent passages in his writings, in one of which he calls gardening the "inclination of kings, the choice of philosophers, and the common favourite of public and private men; a pleasure of the greatest, and the care of the meanest; and, indeed, an employment and a possession, for which no man is too high or too low." Perhaps John Evelyn did more than either of these philosophers. Temple's garden at Moor Park was one of the most beautiful of its kind ”

“ But poor Chatterton was born under a bad star: his passions were too impetuous, and in a distracted moment he deprived himself of an existence, which his genius, and the fostering care of the public would undoubtedly have rendered comfortable and happy. Unknown and miserable while alive, he now calls forth curiosity and attention. Men of wit and learning employ themselves to celebrate his talents, and to express their approbation of his writings. ”

“ Poor Juana was agonized at beholding the state to which her graceless partner was reduced, and hauling him, as well as her own exhausted strength would permit, upon his miserable pallet, washed the blood and dust from his wounds, and watched his return to consciousness with unexampled tenderness and dutiful fidelity. Perez at length opened his eyes, and said, in the mild voice which was natural to him when sober, "My poor Juana, I wish you could fetch your cousin Pedro to see me; I think I shall die." Juana was half distracted at this speech ”

“ As we journeyed onward through the busy herds of crowded cities, we learned the holier influences of gardens in reflecting that a garden has been the scene of man's birth—his fall—and proffered redemption.
It would be difficult to find a subject which has been more fervently treated by poets and philosophers, than the love of gardens. In old Rome, poets sung of their gardens. Ovid is so fond of flowers, that in his account of the Rape of Proserpine, in his Fasti, he devotes several lines to the enumeration of flowers gathered by her attendants. ”

“ Rousseau says, "The celebrated Swiss tune, called the Rans des Vaches, is an air, so dear to the Swiss, that it was forbidden under the pain of death to play it to the troops, as it immediately drew tears from them, and made those who heard it desert, or die of what is called la maladie de pays, so ardent a desire did it excite to return to their native country. It is in vain to seek in this air for energetic accents capable of producing such astonishing effects, for which strangers are unable to account from the music, which is in itself uncouth and wild. ”

“ Nature has worked with a rapid but masterly hand; every touch is bold, and the whole is grand as well as beautiful; while room is left for art to embellish and fertilize that which nature has created with a thousand capabilities. ”

“ Neighbours, however, have auricular organs like walls and little pitchers, tongues like bells, and a spice of meddling and mischief in them like asses; so that no wise person will suppose the conduct of Perez Donilla to his wife was long a secret in Madrid. Juana had two brothers and a cousin resident in the city—Gomez Arias, chief cook to his reverence the Canon Fernando; Hernan Arias, head groom to Don Miguel de Corcoba, a knight of Calatrava; and Pedro Pedrillo, a young barber-surgeon, in business for himself. ”

“ Let the reader look, and be assured that there is the strange spirit that has discovered and wrought all the fine shapes that he has been accustomed to look upon with wonder—Claverhouse, and Burley, and Bothwell,—Meg Merrilies and Elspeth—the high and the low—the fierce and the fair—Cavaliers and Covenanters, and the rest—presenting an assemblage of character that is absolutely unequalled, except in the pages of Shakspeare alone. There is no other writer, be he Greek, or Goth, or Roman, who has ever astonished the world by creations so infinitely diversified. ”

“ On each side rise the romantic hills, piled on each other to a tremendous height; and between them are deep, abrupt, silent glens, which at a distance seem inaccessible to the human foot; while the whole is covered with timber of a gigantic size, and a luxuriant foliage of the deepest hues. ”

“ Bowles apologizes.
Altogether, we have been much gratified with the present work. It contains poetry after our own heart—the poetry of nature and of truth—abounding with tasteful and fervid imagery, but never drawing too freely on the stores of fancy for embellishment. We could detach many passages that have charmed and fascinated us in out reading; but one must suffice for an epigrammatic exit:—
—Hope's still light beyond the storms of Time. ”

“ Every thing here is on a large scale. The eye of the traveller is continually regaled with magnificent scenes. Here are no pigmy mounds dignified with the name of mountains, no rivulets swelled into rivers. ”

“ Everything connected with the name of HOGARTH is interesting to the English reader. He was apprenticed to a silversmith, and from cutting cyphers on silver spoons, he rose to be sergeant painter to the king—and from engraving arms and shop-bills, to painting kings and queens—the very top of the artist's ladder. ”

“ The soul-breathing impulses of genius enabled him to effect all this, and his example, (in support of the maxim, that "every man is the architect of his own fortune,") will be respected and cherished, at home and abroad, as long as self-advancement continues to be the great stimulus to aspiring industry.
The old Elephant public-house therefore merits the attention of all lovers of painting and genius; for in it, previous to his celebrity, lodged WILLIAM HOGARTH. It was built before the fire of London, and although so near, escaped its ravages ”

“ How often in senior common-rooms may be marked the gradual dropping asleep of the learned and venerable members! First, after a few rounds of the bottle, the tongues, which are tired of eulogizing or vituperating the various dishes which had smoked upon the board, gradually begin to be still,—soon conversation comes absolutely to a stand,—the candles grow alarmingly long in the wick,—comparative darkness involves the sage assembly,—and first one, then another, drops off into a placid and harmonious repose. ”

“ An eccentric philosopher, of the last century, used to say, that he liked not only to laugh himself, but to see laughter, and hear laughter. "Laughter, Sir, laughter is good for health; it is a provocative to the appetite, and a friend to digestion. ”

“ Suddenly the chapel bell dissolves the fleeting fabric of the vision; and, behold! the white veil is a poet's imagination, the church spire is still at a miserable distance, the vicarage is a Utopian nonentity, and the fat incumbent, in a state of the ruddiest health, is the only reality of the dream.
—Blackwood's Magazine.
WOMAN
Nothing sets so wide a mark "between the vulgar and the noble seed" as the respect and reverential love of womanhood. A man who is always sneering at woman is generally a coarse profligate, or a coarse bigot, no matter which. ”

“ This air, though always the same, no longer produces the same effects at present as it did upon the Swiss formerly; for having lost their taste for their first simplicity, they no longer regret its loss when reminded of it. So true it is, that we must not seek in physical causes the great effects of sound upon the human heart."
This disease (says Dr. Winterbottom) affects the natives of Africa as strongly as it does those of Switzerland; it is even more violent in its effects on the Africans, and often impels them to dreadful acts of suicide. ”

“ As a mere untravelled practical Englishman, and, moreover, of the old school, Quin, no doubt, ranks high in the lists of gastronomy: but he is completely distanced by many moderns, both in love for and knowledge of the science. ”

“ If ever a sentiment of gratitude for undeserved favours animated the bosom of Perez Donilla, he took, it must be confessed, a strange method of declaring it; not only would he, upon his return from his lawless carousals, grumble over that humble fare, the possession of which at all he ought to have considered as scarce less than a miracle, but, in his madness, unmerciful strappings were sure to be the portion of his miserable wife. Poor Juana bore these cruelties with a patience that ought to have canonized her under the title of St. ”

“ We have often thought that angling alone offers to man the degree of half-business, half-idleness, which the fair sex find in their needle-work or knitting, which, employing the hands, leaves the mind at liberty, and occupying the attention so far as is necessary to remove the painful sense of a vacuity, yet yields room for contemplation, whether upon things heavenly or earthly, cheerful or melancholy.—Quarterly Rev. ”

“ Robert Bruce, grandson of David, Earl of Huntingdon, and grandfather to Robert I. of Scotland, memorable as the restorer of the independence of his country, became one of the competitors for the crown of Scotland in 1290, but being superseded by John Baliol, Bruce retired to England, and settled at his grandfather's estate at Tottenham, repaired the castle, and acquiring another manor, called it and the castle after his own name. Shakspeare says,
Fearless minds climb soonest unto crowns,
and the fortunes of the two Bruces are "confirmation strong as holy writ." ”

“ NOTES OF A READER. PORTRAIT OF SIR WALTER SCOTT.
Appended to a fine portrait of Sir Walter Scott, in the Literary Souvenir for 1829, is the following—by Barry Cornwall:—
We can scarcely imagine a thing much more pleasant indeed, to an artist, than to be brought face to face with some famous person, and permitted to examine and scrutinize his features, with that careful and intense curiosity, that seems necessary to the perfecting a likeness. ”

“ THE SKETCH-BOOK EL BORRACHO.3
Not long since, a couple resided in the suburbs of Madrid, named Perez and Juana Donilla; and a happy couple they might have been, had not Perez contracted a sad habit of drinking, which became more and more confirmed after every draught of good wine; and such draughts were certainly more frequent than his finances were in a state to allow. Night after night was spent at the tavern; fairly might he be said to swallow all that he earned by his daily labour ”

“ Then sweet briars, then wall flowers, which are very delightful to be set under a parlour, or lower chamber window. But those which perfume the air most delightfully, not passed by as the rest, but being trodden upon and crushed, are three, that is burner, wild thyme, and water mints. Therefore, you are to set whole alleys of them, to have the pleasure where you walk or tread." Sir William Temple says Epicurus studied, exercised, and taught his philosophy in his garden. Milton, we know, passed many hours together in his garden at Chalfont ”

“ Brian was very koind in his letter, and sent me all he had—a pound, ma'am—and I set out on my journey on foot, with the three [pg 12] children. The people on the road were very koind and hospitable indeed; I have nothing to say against the Irish for that; they are more hospitabler a deal than in England, though not always so honest. Stranger as I was, I got on very well till I came to the little village here hard by, where my poor boy that is gone first fell sick of the measles. ”

“ The attention of our philosophers was first called to this subject by the falling of one of these masses of matter near Flamborough Head, in Yorkshire; it weighed about 50 pounds, and for some years after its descent [pg 3] did not excite the interest it deserved, nor would perhaps that attention have been paid to it which was required for the investigation of the truth, if a similar and more striking phenomenon had not happened a few years afterwards at Benares, in the East Indies. Some fragments of the stones which fell in India were brought to Sir Joseph Banks by Major Williams ”

“ Before his return his father died, and he entered into the possession of a very large monied fortune, and a small landed estate. He was now able to look over his notes of epicurism, and to discover where the most exquisite dishes were to be had, and the best cooks procured. He had no other servants in his house than men cooks ”

“ But probability is certainly against it, and it seems more likely that they are fragments of comets. For those bodies, from their own nature, must be subject to chemical changes of a very violent nature ”

“ The engraving represents this interesting structure, as it appeared in the year 1686; being copied from a print, after a picture by Wolridge.
The original castle was very ancient, as appears by the foundations, and an old brick tower over a deep well, the upper part of which has been used as a dairy. The castle is said to have been built by Earl Waltheof, who, in 1069 married Judith, niece to William the Conqueror, who gave him the earldom of Northampton and Huntingdon for her portion. Matilda or Maud, their only child, after the death of Simon St. ”

“ It is finished, ma'am. They were ruined, and all sold; and I could not stay with my children to be a burthen. I wrote to husband, and he wrote me word to make my way to Dublin, if I could, to a cousin of his in Pill-lane—here's the direction—and that if he can get leave from his colonel, who is a good gentleman, he will be over to settle me somewhere, to get my bread honest in a little shop, or some way. I am used to work and hard-*ship ”

“ There is much sameness in the character of the scenery; but that sameness is in itself delightful, as it consists in the recurrence of noble traits, which are too pleasing ever to be viewed with indifference; like the regular features which we sometimes find in the face of a [pg 11] lovely woman, their charm consists in their own intrinsic gracefulness, rather than in the variety of their expressions. The Ohio has not the sprightly, fanciful wildness of the Niagara, the St. ”