Arcite

“ As for Palamon, when he saw that Arcite was gone, he made [pg 186] the great tower walls re-echo with his howls of misery. The very fetters on his ankles were wet with his salt tears.
"Alas," he groaned, "Arcite, my cousin, thou hast borne off the prize in this strife of ours! Thou walkest now at liberty in Thebes. Little thou thinkest of me and of my sorrow! Strong thou art, and wise. Doubtless thou art even now gathering together the people of Thebes to invade this land and win the sister of the Duke for thy wife, while I die here in this prison like a caged lion. ”

“ Thou shalt die, or thou shalt cease to love my lady. Choose as thou wilt!"
Then Arcite rose up in his wrath and drew his sword. He said, "Were it not that thou art ill and mad with grief, and [pg 189] that thou hast no weapon here, thou shouldest never step from where thou standest. I deny the bond thou claimest! Fool! how can I help thee to win the lady I fain would wed myself? But because thou art a worthy knight and a gentle, and art ready to fight for thy lady, accept my promise. ”

“ And in truth as Arcite rode in triumph down the lists, looking up at Emilia, Pluto, at the bidding of Saturn, sent from hell a fury, that started from the ground in front of Arcite's horse, which shied and threw his rider; and Arcite pitched on his head, and lay as though dead. They bore him to Theseus' palace, cut his harness from off him, and laid him in a bed.
Theseus for three days entertained the knights of the tourney, and then all of them went their several ways. But Arcite lay dying; no longer had Nature any power ”

“ Palamon said it were small honour for Arcite to be false to his cousin and sworn brother, since each had taken an oath not to hinder the other in love; nay, as a knight Arcite was bound to help him in his amour. But Arcite replied that love knows no law; decrees of man are every day broken for love; moreover Palamon and he were prisoners, and were like two dogs fighting for a bone which meantime a kite bears away. Let each continue in his love, for in prison each must endure. ”

“ Arcite said that in love each man fought for himself; and so they disputed day by day. Now, it so happened that at this time the Duke Perotheus came to visit his old playfellow and friend Theseus, and at his intercession Arcite was liberated, on the condition that on pain of death he should never again be found in the Athenian dominions. Then the two knights grieved in their hearts. 'What matters liberty?' said Arcite,—'I am a banished man! Palamon in his dungeon is happier than I. He can see Emily and be gladdened by her beauty!' 'Woe is me!' said Palamon ”

“ The princes turned and saw Theseus, Duke of Athens. Behind him rode Hippolyta with her sister, Emelia the Radiant, and many knights and ladies.
Palamon answered the Duke's question swiftly, before Arcite had time to speak. "Sire, what need of words? Both of us deserve death. Two wretches are we, burdened with our lives. As thou art a just judge, give to us neither mercy nor refuge, but slay us both. Thou knowrest not that this knight, [pg 190] Philostrate, is thy mortal foe, whom thou hast banished. He is Arcite, who hath deceived thee for that he loveth Emelia. And I too love her. ”

“ Then with trumpets and music, Theseus and Hippolyta and Emilia in a noble procession took their places; and from the west gate under the temple of Mars came Arcite with a red banner, and from the east, under the temple of Venus, Palamon with a white banner. And the names of the two companies were recited, the heralds left pricking up and down, the trumpet and clarion sounded, and the just began. Sore was the fight, and many were wounded and by the duke's proclamation removed from the fight; and many a time fought Palamon and Arcite together. But everything must have an end ”

“ I ask you lovers now, who hath the worse, Arcite or Palamon? ”

“ We thus see (as was duly noted by Ten Brink [21] ) that the original Palemon and Arcite was written in seven-line stanzas, and that some fragments that once belonged to it have found their way into other poems. The opening stanzas of Palemon and Arcite are preserved in the poem of Anelida, ll. 22-46; and we can easily see how they were rewritten so as to form ll. A 859-873 of the Knightes Tale. Above Anelida, l. ”

“ Three centuries he grows, and three he stays, Supreme in state, and in three more decays: So wears the paving pebble in the street, And towns and towers their fatal periods meet: So rivers, rapid once, now naked lie, Forsaken of their springs, and leave their channels dry. ”

“ It is well known that by the movements of strata, portions of rock are often shattered to pieces:--well known also that agate is a deposit of flint by water under certain conditions of heat and pressure: there is, therefore, nothing wonderful in an agate's being broken ”

“ It is an intimate mixture of clay and red iron ochre; is massive; of an earthy fracture; is brownish-red, blood-red, stains and writes red. The oxide of iron is sometimes so considerable, that the ochre may be reckoned an ore of that metal.
The ochre beds of England are in the iron sand, the lowest of the formations which intervene between the chalk and oolites. Beds of fuller’s earth alternate with the iron sand. The following is a section of the ochre pits at Shotover Hill, near Oxford:—
Beneath this, there is a second bed of ochre, separated by a thin bed of clay. ”

“ Let us consider these rude argillite spear-points, and the circumstances under which they occur, a little more closely. In this magazine (January, 1883) , I based the opinion that these objects were of an earlier and other than Indian origin, because of their occurrence in so many localities at a depth greater than that at which jasper and quartz arrow-heads are found. In other words, the plow unearths the Indian relics in great quantities; but, by digging deeper, objects of argillite are found in significant numbers. ”

“ Peter Arkell and Henry quitted the deanery, the former turned to the cloisters; for he had an errand to do in the town, and to go through the cloisters was the shortest way. He encountered some of the college boys in the cloisters, whooping, hallooing, shouting; their feet and their tongues a babel of confusion. Mr. Arkell looked back at them with strange interest. It did not seem so very long since he and his cousin William had been college boys themselves, and had shouted and leaped as merrily as these. ”

“ CHALCEDONY, AGATE, ETC. CHALCEDONY and agate, and their endless varieties, are composed mainly of silica, but the separate individual crystals are so small as to be invisible to the unaided eyesight, and occasionally are so extremely minute that the structure is almost amorphous. The colour and appearance vary greatly, depending upon the impurities contained in the stone, and, since both have been made a criterion for differentiation of types, a host of names have come into use, none of which are susceptible of strict definition. ”

“ We then have a considerable number of the Arches of Nero, following a straight line for another mile to the west end of the Cœlian Hill; where remains of the great reservoir are on a level with the specus carried on the top of this arcade, fifty feet above the ground in that high situation, from which the water was distributed in all directions, first on other arcades, three of which branched off from this point, and afterwards in metal pipes when it was sub-divided ”

“ Crystals of analcite are often perfectly colourless and transparent with a brilliant glassy lustre, but some are opaque and white or pinkish-white. The hardness of the mineral is 5 to 51/2, and its specific gravity is 2·25. Chemically, analcite is a hydrated sodium and aluminium silicate, NaAlSi2O6+H2O; small amounts of the sodium being sometimes replaced by calcium or by potassium. The water of crystallization is readily expelled by heat, with modification of the optical characters of the crystals. Before the blowpipe the mineral readily fuses with intumescence to a colourless glass. ”

“ Its colour is snow-white; structure fine, pulverulent; fracture dull earthy. It is amorphous, and adheres to the tongue. It does not effervesce with acids, even in the slightest degree. The bed of argil reposes on horizontal strata of siliceous sandstone, and is overlaid by shell limestone. In the vein of argil, nodules and veins of flint are arranged so as to make with the horizon an angle of about fifty degrees. The argil has been taken to New Orleans, Pittsburgh, St. ”

“ Those leucite rocks which contain abundant essential plagioclase felspar are known as leucite-tephrites and leucite-basanites. The former consist mainly of plagioclase, leucite and augite, while the latter contain olivine in addition. The leucite is often present in two sets of crystals, both porphyritic and as an ingredient of the ground mass. It is always idiomorphic with rounded outlines. ”

“ Although vitreous and pumiceous forms are known they are rare, and in the great majority of cases these rocks are finely crystalline with a dull or shimmering lustre in the ground-mass. Marked characteristics are the readiness with which they decompose, and the frequency of veins and cavities occupied by natrolite, analcite, scolecite and other zeolites. Small black grains of augite or hornblende and sometimes blue specks of hauyne may be seen in the rocks when they are fresh. ”

“ As elsewhere, two distinct classes of ochre are met with, having a conchoid and an earthy fracture respectively. The latter usually contain rather more ferric oxide, and, in particular, a higher content of foreign substances, the most important of which is quartz sand. In the Table, the ochres with conchoid fracture are marked A, and those with an earthy fracture, B.
The preparation of the ochre is a simple matter, consisting in collecting the mass and sorting out the loose, earthy portions of a pure yellow colour from the denser and darker parts. ”

“ I have described the cañon of the Ardèche; this of the Allier is also a cañon, but they are as unlike as is a blonde beauty to one who is dark. They are both superb, but in manner totally different The Allier runs through rough basalt and crystalline rocks; the Ardèche flows between bluffs of limestone. The latter can be descended in a boat, the Allier cannot. The Allier looks north—the colouring, the vegetation, the climate are northern; the Ardèche in every one of these particulars is southern. The Ardèche has cut its way through a level plateau; the Allier flows between ranges of mountains. ”

“ Zoöl., an adult female, is doubtfully referred to arctica because the damaged tympanic bullae appear to be no larger than in alascensis, and the size of the skull is more as in alascensis although intermediate between that race and arctica. Shape of the skull is more as in arctica. ”

“ They always assume the same disposition, whatever the age of the rocks. Sometimes agate is associated with them, as at Oberstein, in the Palatinate, where that stone was mined in antiquity, and in Uruguay, where it is extracted at this time. Its concentric zones, laid one upon another in successive moldings, testify clearly to a gradual deposit, evidently of an aqueous nature. Waters of incrustation are producing under our eyes deposits of carbonate of lime of identical structure. ”

“ Cement walks are not laid, and temporary boards smack a little too much of a makeshift. Arctics are the invariable rule, but even so the going is not easy, and it is particularly bad at this time of year, for now it is that arctics, which never seem able to last through a winter, suddenly give out at the heel and fill with mud and slush. ”

“ There is a place in Arcadia, (the ancients called it Pheneos,) 36 suspicious for the twofold nature of its water. Stand in dread of it at night; if drunk of in the night time, it is injurious; in the daytime, it is drunk of without any ill effects. So lakes and rivers have, some, one property, and some another. There was a time when Ortygia37 was floating on the waves, 530 xv. 337-366. now it is fixed. The Argo dreaded the Symplegades tossed by the assaults of the waves dashing against them; they now stand immoveable, and resist the attacks of the winds. ”

“ Argive. A school of sculpture, contemporary with the Attic School of Pheidias; of which Polycletus was the head. He was the author of the Canon, or law of proportion in sculpture, exemplified in his Doryphorus (spear-bearer) ; he worked principally in bronze, and was famous for his chryselephantine statues. A specimen of the Argive school of sculpture is the Discobolus of Myron (a contemporary of Polycletus) in the British Museum. It is an ancient copy in marble from the original bronze statue. Closeness to Nature is a distinguishing characteristic of the Argive School.
Fig. 40. Battering-ram. ”

“ Sir Archy is bounding, like some diabolical monster, far before his companions, spite of his owner’s cries; the Arabian has come up and locks the mare; they run neck and neck. Sir Archy whirls past the stand, and wins by a hundred yards. The immense crowd utters a shout that shakes the surrounding forest. ”

“ The nepheline is colourless and transparent when fresh, often in six-sided prisms, but also as irregular interstitial masses filling the spaces between the other minerals, and hard to identify owing to its low double refraction and frequent decomposition. Leucite appears in some tephrites; haüyne is more frequent as small dodecahedra often filled with black inclusions. The augite varies a good deal, being bright green or dark green (aegirine) and rich in sdda in some tephrites and nephelinites, while in basanites and basalts it is often brown “basaltic” augite or purple “titaniferous” augite. ”