Various

“ Satire is thought useful, too much because it gratifies the uncharitableness of our nature. But to hold up wisdom and virtue to our admiration, is better than to apply the lash, however dexterously, to vice and folly. There are, perhaps, no fictions exciting the imagination so strongly as the Waverley Novels, which have a less tendency to corrupt the heart ”

“ Imaginary Treasures.—The thirsty man dreams of fountains and running streams; the hungry man of ideal banquets; and the poor man of heaps of hidden gold: nothing certainly is more magnificent than the imagination of a beggar.
Spaniards.—There is a natural talent or mother wit, as it is called, about the Spaniards, which renders them intellectual and agreeable companions, whatever may be their condition in life, and however imperfect may have been their education: add to this they are never vulgar, nature has endowed them with an inherent dignity of spirit. ”

“ Society doubtless imposes many restrictions on its members, but it also confers far greater comparative advantages in lieu of them, so that if we were fairly to weigh the benefits received, against the losses sustained, we should find law to be a blessing, without which we could not exist in any real comfort ”

“ Permit me to say that this accomplished daughter of the Muse is a native of Denbighshire, North Wales, and was born at the family mansion named "Grwych," about one and a half mile distant from Abergele; and at the period of her first appearance as an authoress, she had not, I think, reached her thirteenth year. I had the pleasure of then being her neighbour, and our Appenine mansion, the Signal Station, at Cave Hill, has been more than once enlivened by Lady, then Miss Felicia Dorothea Browne's society, accompanied by her excellent mother. ”

“ The female characters in the Waverley Novels are touched with much grace and spirit, though they are not, upon the whole, brought so vividly to our minds as the men,—probably because they are more ideal. Such they must necessarily be. The course of woman's existence glides comparatively unobserved in the under-current of domestic life ”

“ Beauty of style is not one of Sir Walter Scott's chief merits. His choice of expressions is, however, better than his disposition of them. His sentences are too full of expletives,—too long, and loosely arranged; exuberant, like his fancy, and untrimmed, as if never subjected to a process of compression,—a limæ labor, perhaps incompatible with the wonderful expedition with which work after work has issued from the press. This facility of production is too remarkable to be overlooked. ”

“ He invests profligacy with no attractive colours, nor lends a false and imposing greatness to atrocious villany. We admire the courage of Macbeth, the ability of Richard, the craft and dexterity of Iago, and the stubborn energy of Shylock,—but we never applaud, nor wish to emulate. We see them too truly as they are. The Author of Waverley, though he approaches nearer to the fault in question than Shakspeare, can never be fairly said to have committed it. ”

“ Thus, when Porteous is hurried away to execution, we attend his ruthless conductors, but we wait not to witness the last details, but flee with Butler from the scene of death, and looking back from afar, see through the lurid glare of torches a human figure dangling in the air—and the whole scene is more present to our minds, than if every successive incident had been regularly unfolded. ”

“ The sullen sunset—the advancing tide—the rocks half hidden by the rising foam—the marks of promised safety fading from sight, and with them the hope they nourished—the ledge which the sufferers gained with difficulty—on the one side, a raging sea, and on the other, a barrier that forbade retreat! ”

“ The birds of North America include about 320 species. They are divided into migratory and resident; though comparatively few in the fur countries are strictly entitled to be called resident. The raven and Canadian and short-billed jays were the only species recognised as being equally numerous at their breeding-places in winter and summer. Many of the species which raise two or more broods within the United States rear only one in the fur countries, the shortness of the summer not admitting of their doing more. ”

“ The clay, from Dorsetshire and Devonshire, is mixed with water, and in this state is passed through fine sieves to separate the grosser particles. The flint and clay are now mixed by measure, and the mud or cream is passed through a sieve in order to render the mixture more complete.
In this state it is called slip, and is now evaporated to a proper consistence in long brick troughs. It is then tempered in the pug-mill, which is an iron cylinder placed perpendicularly, in which an arbor or shaft revolves, having several knives projecting from it, the edges of which are somewhat depressed. ”

“ The under plumage is white and unspotted on the breast and part of the body; but dark umber-brown, approaching to black, on the lower hall of the body, and part of the flanks; the latter towards the vent are marked as on the upper plumage. The under tail coverts are black, broadly tipped with white. The feathers of the thighs and tarsi are light hair-brown, mottled with darker lines. The throat and region of the head is varied with blackish on a white ground. The shafts of all the feathers on the breast are black, rigid, and look like hairs ”

“ From Johnson we get this explanation of it: "What we are bound to do by the impulse of nature, the dictates of law, or the voice of reason." Now, to take these three cases as they stand, nature has surely ordained everything for our advantage, and therefore in obeying her, we have rather an accession than a diminution of power; with respect to ourselves, the calls of nature are even agreeable to us; and as far as our duties concern others, men seem in general to perform their natural duties willingly, such as a duty to a child, a parent, &c. ”

“ The stream of public events has hurried us on so rapidly, that we have found little leisure to record those domestic trials, to which, in common with the rest of his species, the great Marlborough was subject. ”

“ The two or three separate pieces composing the article are then united by means of fluid slip. Spouts and handles of jugs and tea-pots are made and united with the body of the vessel in the same way. Small handles, beadings, mouldings, &c. are formed by means of an iron cylinder, having its bottom perforated so as to mould the clay, as it passes through, into the required figure. A piston is inserted into the top of the cylinder, and caused to descend slowly by means of a screw, in consequence of which the clay is continually passing out through the perforation, and is cut off in lengths. ”

“ The reader may likewise witness a few living evidences of the Company's liberality, in the fine collection of eagles and owls presented by them to the Zoological Society, and exhibiting in the Gardens in the Regent's Park. Such devotion to the advancement of science cannot be too proudly perpetuated in the history of a society established for commercial objects. ”

“ The folded wings fall about three inches and a half short of the tail, which is rounded, the outer feathers being an inch shorter than the central ones. The plumage of the sides of the belly is long, and hangs down over the thighs. The thigh feathers are very downy, but are not long. The tarsi are rather long, and the toes are moderately long; they are clothed to the roots of the nails by a close coat of hairy feathers. The claws are strong, sharp, and very much curved. ”

“ Transitions of Decay.—I have often observed that the more proudly a mansion has been tenanted in the day of its prosperity, the humbler are its inhabitants in the day of its decline, and that the palace of the king, commonly ends in being the nestling place of the beggar. ”

“ The wings in proportion to the size of the bird, are very short; the lesser quills ending in a point. The tail is rather lengthened and considerably rounded, each feather lanceolate, and gradually attenuated to a fine point. The tarsi are somewhat elevated, thickly clothed with feathers to the base of the toes, and over the membrane which connects them. The length of this bird Mr. Swainson thinks to have been 25 inches. The female bird, it should be added, has neither the scale-like feathers nor projecting shafts of the male. ”

“ Yet all of them are more or less at war with order and the institutions of society, and must fall under its heavy ban. And, interested as we are, we are never led to deem the censures of society unjust, or to take part with them in their war against it. ”

“ Cleveland, Robertson, Rashleigh, Christian, might, by a few touches added, and a few expunged, become very captivating villains, and produce a brisk fermentation of mischief in many young and weak heads. ”

“ Wildman sold the moiety of him to Colonel O'Kelly for 650 guineas, and that O'Kelly subsequently bought the other moiety for 1,100 guineas.
"Eclipse was withheld from the course till he was five years of age, and was first tried at Epsom. He had considerable length of waist, and stood over a large space of ground, in which particular he was an opposite form to the flying Childers, a short-backed, compact horse, whose reach lay in his lower limbs; but, from the shape of his body, we are inclined to believe that Eclipse would have beaten Childers in a race over a mile course with equal weights. ”

“ As to these legal duties being voluntary with all men, every day proves that they are not; but with all reasonable persons they must be, for we ought surely to perform that willingly, which is not only intended, but actually is, for our good. ”

“ Besides being involved in these vexatious disputes, Marlborough was again harassed by the workmen employed at Blenheim, who in 1718 renewed their actions against him for arrears of wages due since 1715. He resisted the demand; but a decree issued against him, from which he appealed, though without effect, to the house of lords. No doubt there was excessive meanness here on [pg 360] the part of government, of which Marlborough had just cause to complain. Yet was it beneath the dignity of the greatest man of his age to dispute with his ungrateful country about 9,000£. ”

“ He has not disguised their vices and their weaknesses,—he has not endowed them with incompatible virtues; but, just favouring them charitably, so as to take off the edge of our dislike, has exhibited them nearly as they must necessarily have been. ”

“ From the disproportionately small, convex, thin-quilled, wing,—so thin, that a vacant space, half as broad as a quill appears between each,—the flight may be said to be a sort of fluttering more than any thing else: the bird giving two or three claps of the wings in quick succession, at the same time hurriedly rising ”

“ The great delight that we take in the latter species of knowledge is referable to the curiosity we feel respecting the inhabitants of a country after we have once been assured of its existence. Our first inquiries naturally enough relate to the tenants of our own species ”

“ His heroines are, on the whole, better treated, as such, than his heroes, who are, for the most part, thrown into the ring to be bandied about, the sport of circumstances;—owing almost all their interest to the events which thicken around them. ”

“ His body, after undergoing the process of embalming, and lying in state at Marlborough House, was conveyed in a sort of triumphal car to Westminster Abbey, long lines of carriages following, and all the parade of troops, heralds, and mourners preceding and surrounding the senseless clay. A gorgeous canopy overshadowed it, adorned with plumes, military trophies, and heraldic achievements. [pg 361] Dukes and earls were the chief mourners; the pall being borne by persons of not less eminent rank ”

“ Then with regard to the duties imposed on us by law, many of these appear indeed at first to be great and unnecessary restraints, but if we examine the matter, we shall find that very few laws have been framed that have not rather good than evil for their object. ”

“ Swainson's minute description we learn that the colour of the bill and claws is blueish black. The face is white, and a band of blackish-brown and white crosses the throat. The egrets or ear feathers are tipped with blackish-brown, the inner webs being white varied with wood-brown. The whole of the back is marked with undulated lines or fine bars of dark umber-brown, alternating with white: on the greater wing coverts the white is replaced by pale wood-brown. The primary and secondary feathers are wood-brown, margined inwards with white. ”

“ None have that completeness which constitutes one of the chief merits of Fielding's Tom Jones. There is always either an improbability, or a forced expedient, or an incongruous incident, or an unpleasant break, or too much intricacy, or a hurried conclusion. ”

“ Pileatus, SWAINSON, which has much less power than the claw of the typical Woodpecker; the anterior toe (i.e. middle toe,) being longer and stronger than the posterior—a structure the very reverse of that which characterizes the typical species.
LEGS AND FEET of the ROCKY MOUNTAIN SPOTTED GROUSE, (Tetrao Franklinii, DOUGLAS,) which are thickly covered with long and hair-like feathers. The bird inhabits the valleys of the Rocky Mountains from the sources of the Missouri to those of the Mackenzie, and Mr. ”

“ He knows the effect producible by leaving circumstances in the incompleteness and obscurity in which they often present themselves to the senses of a single person; he tells just what that person could have perceived, and leaves the sketch to be finished by his reader. ”