Various

“ Rousseau has very justly remarked, that excessive application of mind "makes men tender, weakens their constitutions, and when once the body has lost its powers, those of the soul are not easily preserved. Application wears out the machine, exhausts the spirits, destroys the strength, enervates the mind, makes us pusillanimous, unable either to bear fatigue, or to keep our passions under."3
Shakspeare appears to have formed a just conception of the great injury which the corporeal frame experiences from a too close application of mind. ”

“ Thou art civil enough, in all conscience, to those who have a shilling in their pocket;—those who have not, why do they live at all?"
"That's not exactly what surprises me," said Asmodeus; "I don't wonder why they live, but where they live: for I perceive boards in every parish proclaiming that no vagrant—that is, no person who is too poor to pay for his lodging—will be permitted to stay there. ”

“ Oh! the bore of going every day over the same exhausted subjects, to the same dull persons of respectability; yet that is the doom of all domesticity. Then pleasure! A wretched play—a hot opera, under the ghostly fathership of Mr. Monck Mason—a dinner of sixteen, with such silence or such conversation!—a water-party to Richmond, to catch cold and drink bad sauterne—a flirtation, which fills all your friends with alarm, and your writing-desk with love-letters you don't like to burn, and are afraid of being seen ”

“ In the course of this vitally important and deeply-interesting subject of inquiry, it is not my intention to enter into any metaphysical discussion respecting the inscrutable and mysterious union existing between matter and mind, or to endeavour to point out the manner in which the body influences the mind, and the mind the body. Such subjects we do not think to be legitimate objects of inquiry. ”

“ Every one can praise those pretensions, however humble, which do not interfere with his own."
"It is very true; there is never any very great merit, at least in a new author, when you don't hear the abuse louder than the admiration. And now, Asmodeus, with your leave, I will prepare for breakfast, and our morning's walk."
"Oh, dear, dear London, dear even in October! Regent-street, I salute you!—Bond-street, my good fellow, how are you? And you, O beloved Oxford-street! ”

“ The medical philosopher is engaged in less obscure and less uncertain researches; he does not attempt to solve the question regarding the intimate union subsisting between the natural and intellectual portions of our nature, but he wisely confines himself to an attentive examination of the phenomena which result from that union. Man is compounded of a soul and body, so closely united, not identified, that they frequently struggle and occasionally overpower each other. Sometimes the mind ascends the throne and subdues, in a moment, the physical energies of the most powerful of her subjects. ”

“ No persons have their portraits so frequently painted as princes; and the artist who has the fortune to paint them at all ages, as Lawrence did, must watch their personal changes with reflective interest, though he may confine them to the tablet of his memory. ”

“ Nothing will, perhaps, demonstrate more fully the effects of moral causes in producing disease than the structural alterations discoverable in the bodies of those who have died whilst labouring under nostalgia, or the Swiss malady. ”

“ Still the world has lost a grand pleasure in not seeing damned an Opera written by the Manager of the Opera-house,—it would have been such a consolation to all the rejected operatives,—it would have been the prettiest hardship entailed on a great man ever since the time of that speaker who was forced himself to put the question whether he had been guilty of bribery, and should be expelled the House, and had the pleasure of hearing the Ayes predominate. ”

“ Watching for the Soul.—Margaret of Valois, Queen of Navarre, being present at the death-bed of one of her maids of honour, continued to fix her eyes on the dying person with uncommon eagerness and perseverance till she breathed her last. ”

“ In the consultations of Wesper we find related the history of a young man of family 22 years of age, who, having applied himself incessantly to intense mental exertion, was seized with a fit of insanity, in which fit he wounded several persons and killed his keeper. Catalepsy has been known to have been produced by great mental application. Fomelius gives us a remarkable instance of it. A man (says he) who passed whole nights in writing and studying, was suddenly attacked with a fit of catalepsy: all his limbs stiffened in the attitude he was in when the disease first seized him. ”

“ Plato has remarked, with reference to the influence of the mind on the corporeal frame, "Where the action of the soul is too powerful, it attacks the body so powerfully that it throws it into a consuming state; if the soul exerts itself in a peculiar manner on certain occasions, the body is made sensible of it, for it becomes heated and debilitated." An Italian physician also observes on this subject, that the union of the soul with the body is so intimate, that they reciprocally share the good or evil which happens to either of them. ”

“ The annoyance of the husband at the inhospitable answer, and the fatigue of his fine wife, are cleverly managed; while the mischievous pranks of the urchin family among the borders of the flower-garden remind us of the pleasant "Inconveniences of a Convenient Distance." The colouring is most objectionable; though the flowers and fine clothes are very abundant. ”

“ Within the city of London, and in those places in the country where an assize is not set, it is lawful for the bakers to make and sell bread made of wheat, barley, rye, oats, buckwheat, Indian corn, peas, beans, rice, or potatoes, or any of them, along with common salt, pure water, eggs, milk, barm, leaven, potato or other yeast, and mixed in such proportions as they shall think fit. ”

“ At other times the body gains the ascendency, and lays prostrate before her the mightiest of human intellects. Instances illustrative of both propositions are of daily occurrence. It has been said of Sophocles, that being desirous of proving that at an advanced age he was in full possession of his intellectual faculties, he composed a tragedy, was crowned, and died through joy. ”

“ Two Landscapes, by Lawrence, reminding us how strongly the artist's genius was fettered by public taste in Kneller's profitable glory of painting "the living."
In the Water-colour Room, are many interesting productions, and some curiosities in their way. We have Paul Sandby and the quaintly precise Capon beside Glover and Landseer—so that the drawings are as motley as the paintings. Here also are Lawrence's inimitable chalk portraits of his present Majesty and the Duke of Wellington, which show us how much true genius can accomplish in a few lines. ”

“ The organs of sense, by which we acquire all our ideas of external objects, when acted upon, convey the subject of thought to the nervous fibres of the brain; and while the mind is employed in thinking, the part of the brain is in a greater or less degree of motion ”

“ Hence, when the mind, which animates the most robust and best organized body, is violently agitated by fright, rage, grief, vehement desire, or any other passion, whether sudden, or attended by long and painful sensations, the body manifestly suffers, and a variety of diseases, as apoplexy, palsy, madness, fever, and hysterics, may be the consequence. ”

“ At every turn of the river we discovered objects of great interest. The dense and nearly impenetrable forest itself occupied our chief attention; magnificent trees, altogether new to us, were anchored to the ground by bush-rope, convolvuli, and parasitical plants of every variety. ”

“ However, "the great northern barons of England, Percy and Neville, Musgrave, Scope, and Hastings, assembled their forces in numbers sufficient to show that, though the conqueror of Crecy, with his victorious army, was absent in France, there were Englishmen enough left at home to protect the frontiers of his kingdom from violation. The Archbishops of Canterbury and York, the prelates of Durham, Carlisle, and Lincoln, sent their retainers, and attended the rendezvous in person, to add religious enthusiasm to the patriotic zeal of the barons. ”

“ I know not how it is, but my frame is one peculiarly susceptible to ennui. There's no man so instantaneously bored. What activity does this singular constitution in all cases produce! All who are sensitive to ennui do eight times the work of a sleek, contented man. ”

“ Avenbrugger says, that in dissecting the bodies of those who have died in consequence of this disease, organic lesions of the [pg 357] heart generally are detected. A particular musical composition, supposed to be expressive of the happiness of the people, is in great vogue in Switzerland. If this tune or piece of music is played among the Swiss in any foreign country, it tends strongly to recall their affections for their native soil, and their desire of returning, and to induce the desire called nostalgia consequent on their disappointment. ”

“ We proceed to notice those who deserve the most praise:—
Gainsborough's Milk Girl is a most happy production of the pencil: the figure possesses great infantile beauty; and the landscape is rural, and in perfect harmony with the subject. This work has been cleverly copied by Messrs. Sargeant and Lilley in oil, and by Miss Fanny Corbaux in water-colour. ”

“ A somewhat similar circumstance is recorded of Malbranche. The only interview that Bishop Berkley and Malbranche had was in the latter philosopher's cell, when the conversation turned upon the non-existence of matter, and Malbranche is said to have exerted himself so much in the discussion that he died in consequence. Sanctorius relates an instance of a famous orator, who so far exerted his mind in delivering an oration that he became, in a few hours, quite insane.
The effect of a too close application of mind to study on the bodily health has long been a matter of common observation. ”

“ According to the assize acts, a sack of flour weighing 280 lbs. is supposed capable of being baked into 80 quartern loaves; one-fifth of the loaf being supposed to consist of water and salt, and four-fifths of flour. But the number of loaves that may be baked from a sack of flour depends entirely on its goodness. Good flour requires more water than bad flour, and old flour than new flour. Sometimes 82, 83, and even 86 loaves have been made from a sack of flour, and sometimes hardly 80. ”

“ By the way, it would not be a bad plan to substitute a vagrant for a fox, and, to hunt him regularly, you might hunt him with a pack of respectable persons belonging to the middle class, and eat him when he's caught. ”

“ On the west side of the city of Durham, where two roads pass each other, a most famous and elegant cross of stone work was erected to the honour of God, &c. at the sole cost of Ralph, Lord Neville, which cross had seven steps about it, every way squared to the socket wherein the stalk of the cross stood, which socket was fastened to a large square stone; the sole, or bottom stone being of a great thickness, viz. a yard and a half every way: this stone was the eighth step. The stalk of the cross was in length three yards and a half up to the boss, having eight sides all of one piece ”

“ Anything at all decent from a new dramatic author will obtain success far more easily than much higher merit, in another line; literary rivalship not having yet been directed much towards the stage, there are not literary jealousies resolved and united against a dramatist's as against a poet's or a novelist's success. ”

“ A Painter's Gratitude.—Zoffani, the celebrated painter, who was born at Frankfort, 1735, came to England, as a painter of small portraits, when he was about the age of thirty years. He had the honour to be employed by his Majesty, and painted portraits of the royal family; and he was engaged by the Queen, to paint for her a view of the Tribune of the Gallery of Florence. He was somewhat of a humorist; and it is said of him, that whilst he was engaged painting in the Florentine Gallery, the Emperor of Germany visited the Grand Duke ”

“ She said that having often heard the most learned doctors and ecclesiastics assert, that on the extinction of the body the immortal part was set at liberty and unloosed, she could not restrain her anxious curiosity to observe if such separation were visible or discernible ”

“ The most remarkable fish of these rivers are, the peri or omah, two feet long; its teeth and jaws are so strong, that it cracks the shells of most nuts to feed on their kernels, and is most voracious; the Indians say that it snaps off the breasts of women, and emasculates men. ”

“ Whoever incurs their displeasure, receives notice that the homicide litany is about to begin, and such are the effects of the imagination, that the very notice is frequently sufficient with these people to produce the effect. ”

“ The ARCH was an architectural wonder of the last century. It was built in the year 1729, as a passage for the wagon-way, or rail-road for the conveyance of coals from collieries in the vicinity of Tanfield, which were the property of an association called "the Great Allies." ”