Thomas Cole

“ He therefore determined not to make France his home. There is a journal of his tour in vol. xxxiv. of his collections.
He left Bletchley in November 1767, and on Lady day in the following year he very honourably resigned the rectory in favour of Browne Willis's grandson, the Rev. Thomas Willis, merely because he knew it was his patron's intention so to bestow the living if he had lived to effect an exchange. Cole now went into a hired house at Waterbeach, five miles from Cambridge. This house, little better than a cottage, was very uncomfortable (Addit. MS. 5824, f. 36b) . ”

“ Cole returned and located on the east side of Touisset Neck, on Kickemuit River in Warren. The farm he owned and the well he dug in 1677 are yet in possession of his lineal descendants. Mr. Cole was a member of John Myles's Church and was an influential man in town and church. He died Jan. 26, 1699, leaving a large descent to perpetuate the name and good qualities of their distinguished ancestor. Miss Asenath W. Cole, a descendant, lives on the ancestral land, and is loyal to the Cole history. ”

“ Thomas had before long to admit that he had been suspecting an innocent man, and that man his own client. At first he was inclined to be incredulous; but, when witness after witness was produced, he had to admit absolutely that Joan and Ellery had proved their case. The testimony of one, or even two, witnesses might have been doubted; but the cumulative effect of the evidence, given by the old night-watchman, Kitty Frensham, and Horace Mandleham, and the men whom “the Spaniard” had found, was irresistible. ”

“ She was particularly angry with Thomas.
“I call it abominable. We have just succeeded in clearing one innocent man, whom an hour or two ago you believed to be guilty: and now you are wantonly throwing suspicion on some one else. What business is it of yours? I know Winter had nothing to do with it.”
“That is all very well, Miss Cowper; but it was my duty to tell the police, and, moreover, by doing so, I probably speeded up Mr. Brooklyn’s release by at least twenty-four hours. It is always wise to have the police on your side—when you can.” ”

“ Carlyle, a brooch with the portrait of her dog Nero, given by the mistress to "little Charlotte," a sock of Carlyle's with his initials neatly marked in red thread, and two small cardboard boxes, each containing locks of the hair of Thomas Carlyle and his wife. Trivial things, which yet in their haunting intimacy are too sacred, it seems, to be stared at by the curious sightseers.
In a corner hangs an etching that deserves a more prominent place, the desolate picture of a funereal cortège wending its slow way against a bleak background of snow and leaden sky.... ”

“ Hogarth has painted the portrait of Thomas Coram, the old sailor who endowed the hospital, and the picture hangs in the gallery there. A kindly gentleman he looks, with ruddy smiling face which may well be the index of a heart large enough to hold the big family he fathers.
That family sits in the galleries of the church on each side of the organ, the girls in their white caps and aprons to the right, to the left the boys in their funny uniform of brown cloth, with red waistcoats and twinkling brass buttons. "Love children!" ”

“ That man Thomas seems to have found out something you had missed. It is your turn to pick up something that has escaped him. Watch the servants at Liskeard House—the maids as well as Winter and Morgan. Keep an eye on the whole household. And meanwhile I will find out all about that girl at Fittleworth. I can have inquiries made locally on the spot. ”

“ D. the story of Sir Thomas More's head, which his daughter bribed a man to remove from the spike on the bridge and drop into a boat [34] below where she sat, and the old lady said, "It must 'ave bin a good shot". The person responsible for Mrs. D.'s anatomy left out the bump of reverence; sentiment is also foreign to her composition, whilst her scepticism of anything she cannot actually see and touch is a deeply ingrained quality. Sir Thomas More, Henry VIII, Charles II, the Christian martyrs, are, in her estimation, to be taken with a grain of salt. ”

“ As this highest Idea stands over all ideas as the cause of all being and knowing, so over all gods, alike hard to find and to describe, stands the one, eternal, invisible god, the Framer and Father of all things. ”

“ Thus we must wait for the rise of Christian philosophy, and take as our terminus a quo the middle of the second century, when first there appears that literature which bears evidence to the conversion of philosophers to the Christian Church, and affords us examples of their attempts to present the new doctrines to the schools which they had abandoned. ”

“ And this estimate of the function of philosophy with respect to theological truth, which the Fathers worked out on the [Pg 56] basis of the concrete example of the course of Greek thought, though with a view to a much wider application, has its justification in the very nature and conditions of thought itself. For philosophy is essentially a process—its very life depends on its being in motion, in process of change and development. Each system is evolved out of its predecessors, and contains within itself the germs of its successors—it is the link which connects the past with the future. ”

“ In one of the towns where I was superintendent, the school had had no student activities during the preceding year except football and baseball. The teams had been coached by an outsider who was intensely interested in having a winning team but cared little for the value of athletics to the boys or to the school. ”

“ But even with all the aids of revelation, the Fathers would not claim that man can advance to a full or adequate knowledge of God—we can simply know so much about God as is necessary for practical purposes—for ascertaining our proper end and duties. ”

“ A large school can no more get along without these and be a live institution than can a church without its young peoples’ societies and programs, its men’s club suppers, and its ladies’ aid societies and be a live church organization.
“But aside from welding the school into a unit of effort and purpose, these organizations, like the minor activities, serve to socialize the institution, to bring pupils and teachers together in a way that the classroom does not afford, to 'bring out’ students, to discover latent talents, and to spur students on to a maximum standard of excellence. ”

“ The Fathers think that in the Christian doctrine of God they find all the true elements contributed by previous thought, and besides these an infinite depth of truth unthought of by the Greeks, all unified and harmonized in a way that makes it a sharp contrast to the fragmentary and abstract character of the Hellenic theology. ”

“ A teacher should always be desirous of making a good personal impression, yet I have seen young women seeking positions waiting at the big counter in the superintendent’s office who were dressed more suitably for a social function than for a business call. Not long ago we were greatly in need of a commercial teacher. A young woman of otherwise good qualifications made application. Her attire was somewhat extreme and we decided it would be well to have her visit the principal of the school who needed the teacher. ”

“ Men were asked to judge of Christianity by its fruits, and to receive the faith which it professed, not because of its rational demonstration, but because of the authority of Him who promulgated it. The persons to whom the arguments were addressed, too, explain much of the silence of the Fathers. To the Jew or religious Gentile it would be superfluous to address elaborate arguments to prove the existence of God, and it was to these classes that many of the works under discussion were addressed. ”

“ And when the Church finally turned towards the Gentile world, it was still the popular religion, the religion of the poets, rather than the philosophy of the schools, with which its apologists first came into contact, and it is very evident from such writings as the recently recovered Apology of Aristides, "philosopher of Athens," and many other works extending over the whole Ante-Nicene period, that much of the energy of the early exponents of Christianity was directed towards the conversion of the populace who still adhered, at least formally, to the religion of their own poets. ”

“ The Showman:
It was my fault, I always tell my wife
I put too great constraint upon his will;
Things would be changed if he were with us still.
I ought not to have forced him to the trade.
King Cole:
"A forced thing finds a vent," my father said;
And yet a quickening tells me that your son
Is not far from you now; for I am one
Who feels these things, like comfort in the heart.
The couple watched King Cole and shrank apart,
For brightness covered him with glittering.
"Tell me your present troubles," said the King,
"For you are worn. What sorrow makes you sad?" ”

“ One half of the teachers have apparently suffered from the delay that so often occurs when school material is not ready when it is needed. Sometimes conditions arise due to the shifting of pupils or other unforeseen difficulties which make a delay in the furnishing of supplies and equipment unavoidable. ”

“ For this reason Cole has wielded, more than most of our artists, a powerful influence outside of his art with a people which, with all its volatility, yet maintains the traditions of a deeply religious ancestry. It was in this many-sidedness of his genius, that brought him into contact with widely varied sympathies, that Cole's chief power consisted; for if we look at his work from the art point of view alone, we are impressed with its inequality, the lack of early art influences which it exhibits, and an attempt sometimes at dramatic force which occasionally lapses into mere sensationalism. ”

“ Origen, too, states that "for ourselves, we maintain that human nature is in no way able to seek after God, or to attain a clear knowledge of Him without the help of Him whom it seeks." [47]
The inconsistency between these two fundamental positions of the Fathers, of which much is often made, is, I think, more apparent than real. ”

“ Not all teachers can assume sponsorship for such organizations.
“These activities are to the school what the Fourth of July parade, the Elks’ big-brother picnic, and the Wayfarer are to the city. A city could get along without these activities and save itself a deal of hard work and expense. But enterprising men consider them worth ten times the effort and expense to the community as a whole. Some undesirable features follow in the wake of all these large city enterprises. Streets become congested, the police have to do double duty ”

“ The existence of the former of these, it is true, as of the latter, may be obscured and nearly obliterated by sin and the consequent disorganization; for in the teaching of the Fathers, as in that of their Master, it is the pure in heart that see God, [48] and it is only the man whose nature is kept in due balance by a life of moral rectitude—the "righteous man" of the Scriptures—who can be expected to exhibit clearly this "natural opinion" or to attain to a full knowledge and appreciation of the Christian doctrine of God. ”

“ King Cole moved softly in the Ring again,
Where now the owls and he were left alone:
The night was loud with water upon stone.
He watched the night; then taking up his flute,
He breathed a piping of this life of ours,
The half-seen prize, the difficult pursuit,
The passionate lusts that shut us in their towers,
The love that helps us on, the fear that lowers,
The pride that makes us and the pride that mars,
The beauty and the truth that are our stars. ”

“ He went about the country painting portraits, but with little financial success. Removing to New York (1825) , he displayed some landscapes in the window of an eating-house, where they attracted the attention of the painter Colonel Trumbull, who sought him out, bought one of his canvases, and found him patrons. From this time Cole was prosperous. He is best remembered by a series of pictures consisting of four canvases representing “The Voyage of Life,” and another series of five canvases representing “The Course of Empire,” the latter now in the gallery of the New York Historical Society. ”

“ It is not dexterity, technique, knowledge, that impresses us in studying the works of Cole, so much as character. One feels that in them is seen the handwriting of one of the greatest men who have ever trod this continent. ”

“ With us, he was making his first trip across. From London I learned he went to Capetown, South Africa.
The greatest character on board was old Cole. In [Pg 45] all my life I have never seen a man his equal in many respects. Medium in size with brawny arms and an over-developed muscular neck, he reminded one of a huge beast, muscles superbly developed and mind untrained. Cole was some forty years of age, and a boaster from the word "Go." At the early age of ten he ran away from his parents in Norway, and secured passage on a sail boat bound for Odessa on the Black Sea. ”

“ Cole.
“We will be friends, nevertheless,” she said with [Pg 32] a captivating smile. “I will visit your church in the morning, and you will return to luncheon with me, and we will have a little game of billiards afterward.”
Mr. Cole’s delicate face grew ashy. He, John Chrysostom Cole, playing billiards on Sunday! What would his mother say—and what would the bishop say! Olivia looked a little shocked because of course Madame Koller must know better. Not so the Colonel. He laughed heartlessly at Mr. Cole, and began to think Eliza Peyton was a more amusing person than he had fancied. ”