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“ In the South the men who led and formed public opinion had almost all been trained in England and were ingrained with English sympathies and even prejudices. In the North the acute general intellect had long ago settled upon the “common rights of Englishmen” as the bulwark behind which they could best resist any attempt on their liberties. The pride of the colonists in their position as Englishmen found a medium of expression in enthusiasm for “the young king”; and it would be hard to imagine a more loyal appendage of the crown than its English colonies in North America in 1760. ”

“ Great Britain, in the treaty of peace, had recognized the independence of the individual States, naming them in order; and her Government followed the same system in all its intercourse with its late colonies. Its restrictive system was maintained, and the States, vying with each other for commerce, could adopt no system of counteracting measures. Every possible burden was thus shifted to American commerce; and Congress could do nothing, for, though it asked for the power to regulate commerce for fifteen years, the States refused it. ”

“ Thus, in the universe there are the first cause as mover, movement as the means, and bodies as the result; in the state we have power as the cause, ministers as the means, and subjects as the effects ; in the family we have the same relation exemplified by father, mother, and children. It is also to be remarked that these three terms bear specific relations to one another, the first is to the second as the second is to the third. Thus, in the great triad of the religious world, God, the Mediator, and Man, God is to the God- Man as the God-Man is to Man. ”

“ It is no “fugitive and cloistered virtue” that Aurelius seeks to encourage; on the contrary, man must lead the “life of the social animal,” must “live as on a mountain;” and “he is an abscess on the universe who withdraws and separates himself from the reason of our common nature through being displeased with the things which happen.” While the prime principle in man is the social, “the next in order is not to yield to the persuasions of the body, when they are not conformable to the rational principle which must govern.” ”

“ The abolitionists had never ceased to din the iniquity of slavery into the ears of the American people. Calhoun, Webster, and Clay, with nearly all the other political leaders of 1850, had united in deploring the wickedness of these fanatics, who were persistently stirring up a question which was steadily widening the distance between the sections. They mistook the symptom for the disease. Slavery itself had put the South out of harmony with its surroundings, and still more out of harmony with the inevitable lines of the country's development. ”

“ Grant, bewildered by the constant and tremendous pressure for appointments, undoubtedly selected some men who were no credit to his administration; when the appointment had been made, his own bitter experience of unjust criticism led him to look with suspicion on any accusation against those whom he had appointed; and his military habits of unquestioning obedience gave him a tendency to expect the same thing from men in politics, and to regard independence as a sort of treason, disqualifying the man guilty of it for any useful criticism. ”

“ On Monday, 16th May 1763, Boswell, then on a second visit to London, had the supreme happiness to make the acquaintance of the object of his almost idolatrous admiration, Dr Johnson. Their first interview in the back parlour of Mr Davies's shop in Russell Street was characteristic of both; the calm strength and ponderous wit of the one, the fluttering folly and childish servility of the other, are portrayed to the life in Boswell's own narrative. Few things are more singular than the intimacy which sprang up between two men so differently constituted. ”

“ The sudden development of wealth gave the country for the first time a distinct wealthy class, not engaged in production of any kind, and very often having none of the characteristics of the people who are the real strength of the country. The inevitable extravagance of Government management, aggravated by a period of civil war, when the people were disposed to excuse almost any error of detail for which good motives could be shown, had its reflex influence on the people, as well as on the Governments of the nation, the States, and the cities. ”

“ ATTACHMENT, in English Law, is a process from a court of record, awarded by the justices at their discretion, on a bare suggestion, or on their own knowledge, and is properly grantable in cases of contempt. It differs from arrest, in that he who arrests a man carries him to a person of higher power to be forthwith disposed of ; but he that attaches keeps the party attached, and presents him in court at the day assigned, as appears by the words of the writ. Another difference is, that arrest is only upon the body of a man, whereas an attachment is often upon his goods. ”

“ There can be no doubt that Aurelius believed in a deity, although Schultz is probably right in maintaining that all his theology amounts to this,—the soul of man is most intimately united to his body, and together they make one animal which we call man; and so the deity is most intimately united to the world or the material universe, and together they form one whole. We find in the Meditations no speculations on the absolute nature of the deity, and no clear expressions of opinion as to a future state. ”

“ The invention of the art of writing afforded the means of substituting precise and permanent records for vague and evanescent tradition; but in the infancy of the world, mankind had learned neither to estimate accurately the duration of time, nor to refer passing events to any fixed epoch. Writing was practised many centuries before historians began to assign dates to the events they narrated. The masterpieces of Herodotus and Thucydides, while setting forth, each in the manner suited to the author's aim, events in the order of their succession, are stories without dates. ”

“ The persistent policy of paying the debt immediately resulted in the higher taxation falling on the richer North and West; and the new wealth of the South will for ever escape the severe taxation which the other sections have been compelled to feel. As a result of the struggle the moral stigma of slavery was removed. The power of the nation, never before asserted openly, had made a place for itself; and yet the continuing power of the States saved the national power from a development into centralized tyranny. ”

“ Aimless and purposeless reading is the bane of a free public library, and it should be the desire of its authorities to do what can be done to induce people to use with due circumspection books of a higher class and of a more useful and informing character. The admirable catalogue of history, biography, and travel of the Boston Public Library, with its suggestive notes and illustrations, had the effect of lowering the reading of fiction from 74 per cent, to 69 per cent. ”

“ Thoreau's fame will rest on Walden, the Excursions, and his Letters, though he wrote nothing which is not deserving of notice. Up till his thirtieth year he dabbled in verse, but he had little ear for metrical music, and he lacked the spiritual impulsiveness of the true poet. He had occasional flashes of insight and could record beautifully, notwithstanding: his little poem ”Haze“ is surcharged with concentrated loveliness. His weakness as a philosopher is his tendency to base the laws of the universe on the experience-born, thought-produced convictions of one man—himself. ”

“ Beyond the short foreground of rugged and precipitous hill-fold, down which the footpath painfully zigzags, a narrow plot of emerald green shelves gently towards a ribbon of glistening yellow sand, here bordered by sedgy rushes, there clear and cleanly cut by the breaking wavelets. Farther in front stretches an expanse of the lightest, softest blue, from 30 to 35 miles in breadth, and sprinkled by the east wind with crescents of snowy foam. ”

“ According to Procopius, our chief, but by no means a trustworthy authority for her life, she was the daughter of Acacius, a bear-feeder of the amphitheatre at Constantinople to the Green Faction, and while still a child was sent on to the stage to earn her living in the performances called mimes. She had no gift for either music or dancing, but made her self notorious by the spirit and impudence of her acting in the rough farces, as one may call them, which delighted the crowd of the capital. ”

“ He who thus obeys it will attain tranquillity of mind; nothing can irritate him, for everything is according to nature, and death itself “is such as generation is, a mystery of nature, a composition out of the same elements, and a decomposition into the same, and altogether not a thing of which any man should be ashamed, for it is not contrary to the nature of a reasonable animal, and not contrary to the reason of our constitution.”
The morality of Marcus Aurelius cannot be said to have been new when it was given to the world, far less can it be said to be systematic. ”

“ Brantome can hardly be regarded as a historian proper, and his Memoirs cannot be accepted as a very trustworthy source of information. But he writes in a quaint conversational way, pouring forth his thoughts, observations, or facts without order or system, and with the greatest frankness and naivete. His works certainly gave an admirable picture of the general court-life of the time, with its unblushing and undisguised profligacy. There is not an homme illustre or a dame galante in all his gallery of portraits who is not stained with vice ”

“ To the saintliness of the cloister he added the wisdom of the man of the world; constant in misfortune, not elated by prosperity, never “carrying things to the sweating point;” preserving, in a time of universal corruption, unreality, and self-indulgence, a nature sweet, pure, self-denying, unaffected, Marcus Aurelius has given to the world one of the finest examples of the possibilities of humanity. ”

“ Even after popular sovereignty had pronounced against a king, class spirit was for some time a fair substitute for aristocracy. The obstacles to communication, which compelled the mass of the people to live a very isolated existence, gave abnormal prominence and influence to those who, by ability or wealth, could overcome these obstacles; and common feeling made these a class, with many symptoms of strong class feelings. As often happens, democracy at least thought of a Cæsar when it apprehended class control. ”

“ In the lowest forms of life, the only mode of generation at present known is the division of the body into two or and more parts, each, of which then grows to the size and assumes the form of its parent, and repeats the process of multiplication. This method of multiplication by fission is properly called generation, because the parts which are separated are severally competent to give rise to individual organisms of the same nature as that from which they arose. ”

“ Townshend was of a proud, impetuous disposition, born with a nature more accustomed to rule than to obey. His family had for several generations stood higher in the social life of Norfolk than Walpole's progenitors, and when he himself attained to distinction in politics his position as a member of the Upper House was greater than that enjoyed by his friend in the Commons. As the power of the Lower House increased, and as Walpole became more and more the object of the attacks of the Tories, the pre-eminence of Townshend passed from him. ”

“ It is argued that a belief in abiogenesis is a necessary and corollary from the doctrine of Evolution. This may be true of the occurrence of abiogenesis at some time ; but if the present day, or any recorded epoch of geological time, be in question, the exact contrary holds good. If all living beings have been evolved from pre-existing forms of life, it is enough that a single particle of living protoplasm should once have appeared on the globe, as the result of no matter what agency. In the eyes of a consistent evolutionist any further independent formation of protoplasm would be sheer waste. ”

“ There can be no doubt of the cruel tyranny which the new system of labour organization tends to erect not only over its enemies, the class of employers and those working men who are not of the order, but over its own members. ”

“ It is not until the development of arts and sciences, and the growth of a considerable written literature, and even of a distinct literary class, that we find collections of books which can be called libraries in our modern sense. It is of libraries in the modern sense, and not, except incidentally, of archives that we are to speak.
The researches which have followed the discoveries of Botta and Layard have thrown unexpected light not only upon the history but upon the arts, the sciences, and the literatures of the ancient civilizations of Babylonia and Assyria. ”

“ In the department of History, special attention has been given to the most fruitful branch of modern inquiry and research—the history of early culture, the growth and gradual development of primitive ideas, laws, customs, and institutions, as well as to the conditions and principles of social progress in historical and civilized communities. In a word, every effort has been made to represent in outline the circle of inquiries included in the modern sciences of Anthropology and Sociology. ”

“ His style was founded, in the first instance, upon the practice of the Dutch masters; but ultimately he submitted to the influence of the Poussins and the Italians, rightly believing that their method—in the richer solemnity of its colour and the deeper gravity of its chiaroscuro—was more truly fitted for the portrayal of the scenery of Scotland, more in harmony with the gloom and the glory of its mountains and its glens and the passion of its wave-vexed cliffs. ”

“ That a State convention should have the final power of decision on the question which it was summoned to consider is quite as radical doctrine as has yet been heard of; that a State convention, summoned to consider the one question of secession, should go on, with no appeal to any further popular authority or mandate, to send delegates to meet those of other States and form a new national government, which could only exist by warring on the United States, is a novel feature in American constitutional law. ”

“ Compared, indeed, with elaborate treatises on ethics, the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius are as tonic medicine to succulent food. The charm of his morality lies in its exquisite accent and its infinite tenderness. Where can the connoisseur in morals find anything finer than such sentences as this?—“The pride which is proud of its want of pride is the most intolerable of all;” ”

“ It can hardly be called a work in full colour: it is limited to greys and quiet greens for the earth and pale blues for the sky. It is a sober but very admirable picture, full of diffused daylight, and in the painting of its distance better than any master who had preceded him. The fascination of the remote, afterwards so distinctive an element in Turner's pictures, shows itself here. Perhaps nothing tests the powers or tries the skill of the landscape-painter more severely than the representation of distant effects. ”