Various

“ The excitement brought back a vivid colour to her cheeks, and rekindled the lustre of her large dark eyes. The painter had seized that moment to depict her glowing form—the enthusiasm was but momentary—her angel face soon lost its lovely tint, and her beautiful eyes sunk again into languor. The castle was thronged with noble guests—sick at heart the wretched Isabel wandered abstractedly amid the gay assembly—her large floating eyes seemed straying vacantly around, until they met the bridegroom's look of joy. ”

“ In the arts, while French productions display resource, ingenuity, and dexterity, they at the same time show a striking want of the sense of fitness, and are unfinished and flimsy. Such, in the cities of France, is remarkably the case with whatever regards furniture and decoration, while the productions of cookery are at once impregnated with filth, and admirably calculated to conceal it. In the country, again, with a climate superior to that of England, there is everywhere to be seen open fields, later harvests, corn full of weeds, and inferior grain. ”

“ I soon found that a house would, though the stone and timber were to be had for nothing, cost three times as much as in England. This was on account of the very high wages required by mechanics; but this was not all. None of the materials of a house, except stone and timber, are produced in the colony. Every pane of glass, every nail, every grain of paint, and every piece of furniture, from the kitchen copper to the drawing-room curtains, must have come from England. ”

“ In point of natural fertility, I am inclined to compare this soil to that of France; and I have no doubt that, if the same quantity of agricultural labour as is employed in France, [pg 363] were here bestowed upon an area equal to the French territory, the quantity of produce would fully equal that of France. Timber, coal, iron, and other useful minerals, abound; the harbours and rivers teem with fish; cattle of all sorts thrive and multiply with astonishing rapidity; every fruit that flourishes in Spain and Italy comes to the highest perfection ”

“ As to male dress, an English gentleman always desires his tailor to avoid the extremes of fashion; and, as his dress is grave and manly, it is generally followed throughout Europe. The French use of forks, napkins, &c. really requires some notice. A French gentleman, in adjusting himself at his coarse deal table and shabby cloth, does not hesitate to fix a napkin about his neck, in such a manner as to protect his clothes in front against the certainty of being bespattered by his mode of eating. An Englishman of the middle class would be ashamed of such a contrivance ”

“ A French gentleman not only washes his filthy hands at table, but, after gulping a mouthful, and using it as a gargle, squirts it into the basin standing before him, and the company, who may see the charybdis or maelstrom he has made in it, and the floating filth he has discharged, and which is now whirling in its vortex. In England this practice is unknown, except to those whose taste and stomach are too strong for offence. ”

“ The Lady Isabel was the last descendant of the family of D——; her father had fallen in battle; his lady did not long survive him; and thus, at an early age, Isabel became an orphan. Her mother's brother was appointed her guardian, and, with his son Albert, came to reside at the Castle. The children, thus insulated from the world, and educated entirely at home, saw nothing so worthy to be loved as each other, and their attachment was as romantic as the scenes around them. ”

“ Warren next starts a question as to their moral identity, and says—"There is no reason to doubt that the intellectual operations of the two are as perfectly distinct as those of any two individuals who might be accidentally confined together. Whether similarity of education, and identity of position as to external objects, have inspired them with any extraordinary sameness of mental action, I am unable to say—any farther, at least, than that they seem to agree in their habits and tastes." ”

“ The Turk loves blood;—the Russ loves craft;—The Turk takes at once to the dagger;—the Russ begins by the snare; but when the matter presses, he will use the steel as readily as any Turk on earth. The ferocity of the Turk flourishes in the streets, in his own house, in the seraglio—every where that he has a victim within his reach, and that it pleases him to destroy that victim. ”

“ Perhaps a generation must pass away before the people here will accommodate their habits to the climate, which is that of Italy, without either malaria or the sirocco.
The soil of New South Wales is not particularly fertile. The plains of the Granges, and of the great rivers of China, the lowlands of the West India islands, the swamps of the Gulf of Mexico, and even the marshes of Essex, produce crops of which the people here have no conception ”

“ They are two distinct and perfect youths, well formed and straight, about eighteen years of age, and possessing all the faculties and powers usually enjoyed at that period of life. They are united together by a short band at the pit of the stomach. On first seeing them, it may be supposed, so closely are their sides together—or rather, they over-lap a little—that there is no space between them. On examining them, however, they are found not to touch each other, the band which connects them being, at its shortest part, which is the upper and back part, about two inches long. ”

“ The cook of a man-of-war is no small beer, he is his Majesty's warrant officer, a much bigger wig than a poor little mid, with whom it is condescension on his part to jest.
It seems to be a sort of rule, that no old sailor who has not lost a limb, or an eye at least, shall be eligible to the office; but as the kind of maiming is so far circumscribed that all cooks must have two arms, a laughable proportion of them have but one leg. ”

“ The slightest movement of one is so speedily perceived by the other, as to deceive those who have not observed closely. There is no part of them which has a common perception, excepting the middle of the connecting cord, and a space near it. When a pointed instrument is applied precisely to the middle of the cord, it is felt by both, and also for about an inch on each side ”

“ What has brought so many ships to Port Jackson, and occasioned a further demand for agricultural produce? The transportation of convicts. What has tempted free emigrants to bring capital into the settlement? The true stories that they heard of fortunes made by employing the cheap labour of convicts. But here are questions and answers enough. The case is plain. Nearly all that we possess has arisen from the happy influence of penal emigration and discipline, on production, distribution, and consumption. Thanks to the system of transportation, we have had cheap labour and a ready market ”

“ Is a dreadful evil, being a kind of land piracy. None but back settlers, it is true, are exposed to its burnings, rapes, and massacres; but these are as much British subjects as the inhabitants of Sydney or of Downing Street. And, if the inhabitants of towns escape those horrors, they are liable to be murdered in a quiet way, and their property is exposed to every kind of depredation. ”

“ The French gentleman, incapable of raising his left hand properly to his mouth, first hastily hacks his meat into fragments, then throws down his dirty knife on the cloth, and seizing the fork in his right hand, while his left fixes a mass of bread on his plate, he runs up each fragment against it, and having eaten these, he wipes up his plate with the bread and swallows it. ”

“ The reason is plain: there are millions upon millions of acres, as fertile as mine, to be had for nothing; and, what is more, there are not people to take them. Of my 20,000 acres I reckon about 5,000 to be woodland, though, indeed, there are trees scattered over the whole property, as in an English park. For my amusement, I had a rough estimate made of the money that I could obtain for all this timber, were it growing in any part of England. ”

“ By way of contrast, behold, in the parts first settled, the following proofs of wealth: a thriving capital, and several interior towns, the latter being larger and better constructed than the capitals of some English settlements in America, a hundred years after their foundation; excellent roads; productive turnpikes; crowded market-places; public hotels, superior to the best in North America, even at this late hour; warehouses, through which there is a constant flow of luxuries from all parts of the world; public carriages, almost as well managed as those of England ”

“ From the nature of the band, and the manner in which it grows from each boy, it is impossible that they should be in any other position in relation to each other, but side by side, like soldiers, or coming up a little to front each other. ”

“ Malthus, would not earn as much in this colony as three brawny experienced ploughmen; and though the inordinate vanity of a new people might be gratified by the possession of them, they would be considered as mere ornaments, and would often be wholly neglected for things of greater utility.
House-rent, that great bugbear of certain economists, is indeed a grievous affair at Sydney, as page 20 proves:—
Behold me established at Sydney, in a small house, a poor vamped-up building, more inconvenient, and far more ugly, than you can imagine, for which I pay a rent of £250 a year. ”

“ Deviations from the usual forms of nature are almost universally offensive; but, in this case, neither the personal appearance of the boys, nor the explanation of the phenomenon by which they are united, is calculated to raise a single unpleasant emotion. ”

“ It contains a "lady," who married a poor half-pay lieutenant, and who now drinks tea that would cost in England twenty shillings the pound. They emigrated to New South Wales in 1815. But how did she get that carriage, and how does she manage to send to China for the gunpowder? Thus:—Her husband is both landowner and merchant. Being constantly supplied [pg 365] with a number of convict labourers, he breeds cattle and cultivates grain; and as he gives to his labourers but just enough for their subsistence, he has a large surplus produce. ”

“ The Letter is written by a plain-sailing, plain-dealing man of the world, and though on a foreign topic, is in a homely style. We are therefore persuaded that a few extracts will be useful to the above class of thinkers and readers, as well as to others who do not, like the great man of antiquity, sigh for new worlds. ”

“ Warren, "it is probable that the change of their simple living for the luxuries they now obtain, together with the confinement their situation necessarily involves, will bring their lives to a close within a few years." We hope that such will not be the result of their leaving their native shores; and we are much pleased with this passage in a letter from Drs. Samuel Mitchill and Anderson to Capt. Coffin—"They (the youths) are under the protection of a kind and benevolent gentleman, and we know you will take good care of them, and if they live, return them to their homes again." ”

“ Their arms and legs are perfectly free to move. The band is the only connexion between them; and their proximity does not inconvenience either; each of them, whether standing, sitting, or moving, generally has his arm round the neck or the waist of the other. When they take the arm from this position, so close are they kept together that their shoulders cannot be held straight; and the near shoulder of each being obliged to be held down or up, to allow them room to stand, gives them the appearance of being deformed ”

“ This excessive house-rent is caused by the dearness of labour, which enhances the cost of building; for, either the builder will exact a rent proportioned to his outlay, or (if he cannot obtain such a rent) he will not build.
Free Emigrants.
Of what class then, you ask, have been the great mass of emigrants from England, not convicts? Excellent people in [pg 364] their way, most of them; farmers, army and navy surgeons, subalterns on half-pay, and a number of indescribable adventurers, from about the twentieth rank in England. They came here to live, not to enjoy ”

“ In a room they seem to roll about, as it were, but when they walk to any distance, they proceed straight forward with a gait like other people. As they rise up or sit down, or stoop, their movements are playful, though strange, not ungraceful, and without the appearance of constraint. ”

“ At this moment, moreover, the due level of our peace establishment is but an object of speculative research. No man who looks to the placing of Roumelia, or whose vision reaches even to the palace of Elysée Bourbon, would consent that this country should lose the aid of a single right. ”

“ They differ in intellectual vigour; the perceptions of one are more acute than those of the other, and there is a corresponding coincidence in moral qualities. He who appears most intelligent is somewhat irritable in temper, while the other's disposition is mild. ”

“ At the lower front part the band, which is there soft and fleshy, or rather like soft thick skin, is about five inches long, and would be elastic, were it not for a thick rope-like cartilaginous or gristly substance, which forms the upper part of the band, and which is not above three inches long. The band is probably two inches thick at the upper part, and above an inch at the lower part. The back part of the band, which is rounded from a thickening at the places where it grows from each body, is not so long as the front part, which is comparatively flat. ”