Draughtsmanship

“ Do you suppose, young upstart, that it was less painful to me and many another among us? Cursed be this day, that has soiled our weapons with the blood of women and slaves, and may every drachma which I take from the plunder here bring ill-luck with it! Call the accident that has kept you out of this despicable work a stroke of good fortune, but beware how you look down upon those whose oath forces them to crush out every human feeling from their hearts! ”

“ Instead of adding to their wealth by traffic, or by lending at high interest,' thought he, 'these men waste what they have, to no purpose. Had I a drachma, well, one drachma is too little, but had I one talent, or, better, a plot of land, I would increase it yearly, and toward the end of life I should be as wealthy as the wealthiest nomarch.
"'But how begin!' said he, sighing. 'Only fools are favored by the gods; and I am filled with wisdom from my wig to my two naked heels. ”

“ If any went ill-satisfied from the treasury, while it was in your lordship's management, it proclaimed the want of desert, and not of friends: You distributed your master's favour with so equal hands, that justice herself could not have held the scales more even; but with that natural propensity to do good, that had that treasure been your own, your inclination to bounty must have ruined you. No man attended to be denied: No man bribed for expedition: Want and desert were pleas sufficient. ”

“ None are so busy as the fool and knave.
Those let me curse; what vengeance will they urge,
Whose ordures neither plague nor fire can purge?
Nor sharp experience can to duty bring,
Nor angry Heaven, nor a forgiving king! 190
In gospel-phrase, their chapmen they betray;
Their shops are dens, the buyer is their prey.
The knack of trades is living on the spoil;
They boast even when each other they beguile.
Customs to steal is such a trivial thing,
That 'tis their charter to defraud their king. ”

“ A bungler of a draughtsman might reproduce something which would resemble the Temeraire, and granting him the colour sense which the poetic Turner had, he would debauch the most critical into admiration of his failure, but only the most highly-educated of draughtsmen could have caught those graceful sweeps as she parted the waves, and left that creamy furrow behind her. ”

“ As Streams, through Mines, bear Tincture of their Ore.
While Emp'rique Politicians use deceipt,
Hide what they give, and cure but by a cheat;
You boldly shew that Skill which they pretend,
And work by means as noble as your end:
Which should you veil, we might unwind the clue,
As Men do Nature, till we came to you. ”

“ The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats. ”

“ The formal statesman, that set up for wisdom and honesty, was exposed as a dull tool, and yet a knave, losing at play his own revenue, and the bribes incident to his post, besides enjoying the infamy of a poor and fruitless knavery without any concern. The demure lady, that would scarce sip off the glass in company, was shewn carousing her bottles in private, of cool Nantz too, sometimes, to correct the crudities of her last night's debauch. In short, in my books were seen men and women as they were, not as they would seem,—stript of their hypocrisy, spoiled of the fig-leaves of their quality. ”

“ When domesticity, for instance, is called drudgery, all the difficulty arises from a double meaning in the word. If drudgery only means dreadfully hard work, I admit the woman drudges in the home, as a man might drudge at the Cathedral of Amiens or drudge behind a gun at Trafalgar. ”

“ By so many unforeseen accidents is prudence itself liable to be embarrassed! So difficult is it, sometimes, for the quickest sagacity, and most enlightened experience, to judge what measures ought to be taken! To trust another to sound an unknown coast, appeared to Drake folly and presumption; to be absent from his fleet, though but for an hour, proved nothing less than to hazard the success of all their labours, hardships, and dangers. ”

“ If, however, so disastrous an element as favouritism should ever in the future creep into the army, and should thrive and prevail under the cloak of selecting men by merit, it will be more disastrous to discipline, more ruinous to the tenacity, as we may term it, of the army, than all the bribery or corruption that the most subtle enemy could bring to bear on the weak or vacillating. To be superseded in any way is, of course, annoying to every man. ”

“ Now shout, to shew your loyalty. [A great shout.] —Hear'st thou that, slave Antonio? These obstreperous villains shout, and know not for what they make a noise. You shall see me manage them, that you may judge what ignorant beasts they are.—For whom do you shout now? Who's to live and reign; tell me that, the wisest of you?
1 Rabble. Even who you please, captain.
Must. La, you there! I told you so.
2 Rabble. We are not bound to know, who is to live and reign; our business is only to rise upon command, and plunder.
3 Rabble. Ay, the richest of both parties; for they are our enemies. ”

“ Lays hold on the dagger.
Cort. You menace me and court me in a breath:
Your Cupid looks as dreadfully as death.
Alm. Your hopes, without, are vanished into smoke:
Your captains taken, and your armies broke.
Cort. In vain you urge me with my miseries:
When fortune falls, high courages can rise ”

“ What with the quickness of the enemy, and the slowness of the people to work without their wages, and the chief men running after the shows and pastimes of the court, and others keeping their hands by their sides through want of the most necessary materials, and the waste that comes of wanton idleness,—it is said by certain wise persons that it will be no wonder if our enemies come to our very shores to defy us, and burn our shipping in our own river. ”

“ A brewer's drayman beating an eminent European General with a stick, though a singularly bright and pleasing vision, is not a complete one. Only when the brewer's drayman beats the brewer with a stick shall we see the clear and radiant sunrise of British self-government. The fun will really start when we begin to thump the oppressors of England as well as the oppressors of Hungary. It is, however, a definite decline in the spiritual character of draymen that now they can thump neither one nor the other. ”

“ If it were not improper to dwell longer on an incident, at the first view so inconsiderable, it might be added, that it deserves the reflection of those, who, when they are engaged in affairs not adequate to their abilities, pass them over with a contemptuous neglect, and while they amuse themselves with chimerical schemes, and plans of future undertakings, suffer every opportunity of smaller advantage to slip away, as unworthy their regard. They may learn, from the example of Drake, that diligence in employments of less consequence, is the most successful introduction to greater enterprises. ”

“ They brought along with them fresh, strange ambitions, unscrupulousness, determination to obtain power for the furtherance of their personal aims, and a greed which the circumstances in which they found themselves placed was bound to develop into something even worse than a vice, because it made light of human life as well as of human property. ”

“ In you 'tis virtue, what is vice in me.
Alib. That ill is pardoned, which does good procure.
Guy. The good's uncertain, but the ill is sure.
Alib. When kings grow stubborn, slothful, or unwise,
Each private man for public good should rise. ”

“ Whensoever they present themselves before you in the sacred tribunal, interrogate that sort of people, by what means they grow so rich? what secret they have to make their offices and employments bring them in such mighty sums? If they are shy of telling you, turn and wind them every way, and the most mildly that you can, make them speak, in spite of themselves. You shall soon discover their tricks, and secret ways of management, by which an inconsiderable number of those they call men of business, divert, to their own private advantages, what was designed for the public profit. ”

“ And my own slaves the sovereigns:—'tis resolved.
Weak princes flatter, when they want the power
To curb their people; tender plants must bend:
But when a government is grown to strength,
Like some old oak, rough with its armed bark,
It yields not to the tug, but only nods,
And turns to sullen state.
Bend. Then you resolve
To implore her pity, and to beg relief?
Emp. Death! must I beg the pity of my slave?
Must a king beg?—Yes; love's a greater king;
A tyrant, nay, a devil, that possesses me:
He tunes the organs of my voice, and speaks,
Unknown to me, within me ”

“ By never, never making the concession, one may end by becoming a perceptible force for good."
"What concession are you talking about, in God's name?" Nick demanded.
"Why, that we're here all for dreariness. It's impossible to grant it sometimes if you wish to deny it ever."
"And what do you mean then by dreariness? That's modern slang and terribly vague. Many good things are dreary—virtue and decency and charity, and perseverance and courage and honour."
"Say at once that life's dreary, my dear fellow!" Gabriel Nash exclaimed. ”

“ These, my lord, are considerations, which I should not pass so lightly over, had I room to manage them as they deserve; for no man can be so inconsiderable in a nation, as not to have a share in the welfare of it; and if he be a true Englishman, he must at the same time be fired with indignation, and revenge himself as he can on the disturbers of his country. ”

“ Slept quiet in its channels, bubbles o'er;
So several factions, from this first ferment,
Work up to foam, and threat the government.
Some by their friends, more by themselves thought wise,
Opposed the power to which they could not rise ”

“ No, unthinking creatures that you are; nothing will come right until you drop your insincere chatter, your haggling, your agitating and compromising, and begin to think. Here is a people that has lost the basis of its existence, because, in its blind faith in authority, it staked that existence on prosperity and power; and both are gone. Do you want to stake our existence, on ships, soldiers, mines, trade-connexions, which we no longer possess, or upon the soil, of which we have not enough, or upon our broken will to work? ”

“ His anxiety was divided betwixt the task of stopping the conflagration, and the no less necessary and piteous duty of relieving those thousands, who, having lost their all by the fire, had neither a morsel of food, nor a place of shelter. For the one purpose, he spared neither commands, threats, example, nor liberal rewards, which he lavished with his own hand; for the other, he opened his naval and military magazines, and distributed among the miserable and starving sufferers, the provisions designed for his fleet and army. ”

“ With this determination they set earnestly to work, and succeeded in removing the greater portion of the goods; when they made another attempt, happily with better success than previously; and brought the dray from its miry adherence to a position on the bank. It was then reladen with the goods; while the men, barely recovered from the chagrin caused by the misadventure, performed their work with a sullen moroseness, enlivening their gloom by animadversions on the river, the country, and everybody connected with their peregrination. ”

“ The country had been literally submerged by a silver flood which had poured its argent waves into every nook and cranny of the Republic, stimulating human endeavor to most unnatural and harmful vigor. ”

“ I turned like a lion in its cage, trying to work out an enigma that escaped me. But everything in this world is conquered by perseverance and by energy. I swear to you that I shall discover the wretch who committed the act of infamy. Keep up your courage, my good darling, and look the world in the face. You have the right to do so. ”

“ If you refuse—he is in the hands of desperate men, who will never give him up except on their own terms; they will wait until, driven to despair, you will offer them, through the press, a fortune, and—even then you may receive, after long waiting, only a corpse. ”

“ Every thoughtless squire supposes that, with the aid of his ignorant bailiff, he can effect a perfect drainage of his estate; but there is a worse man behind the squire and the bailiff,—the draining conjuror. ”

“ A general examination of all men to discover the defective and the sub-normal, coupled with a demand that all such be sent to some place of confinement, would meet with such a protest from all classes seriously affected as to end not only the demand but the further agitation of the subject. ”

“ If recollection of former injuries, extra-loyalty, and contempt and hatred of their adversaries, produced rigour and tyranny in the one party, it will hardly be denied, on the other hand, that, if the zeal for God's house did not eat up the conventiclers, it devoured, at least, to imitate the phrase of Dryden, no small portion of their loyalty, sober sense, and good breeding. ”

“ Too often also, they make men languish at the treasury, with long delays, and cunning shifts, or some other captious trick; men, I say, to whom the exchequer is owing, that they may be driven to compound with those sharks of state for half their due, and let them go off with the other half. ”

“ Now we understood why these people looked so weary and listless. What could be expected from men and women without ambition or responsibility, the gain of whose toil was placed to the public credit and doled out to them in rations? ”

“ I could construct traps for animals, I knew what roots and berries were good to eat, there was plenty of water to drink, and I might find some weapons. Besides, it was possible that another ship might come to the bay, the captain and sailors belonging to which would not be as self-sufficient as were those I had just left. I might still remain concealed in the bush for a long time, and probably might make my way down to the Umzimvubu tribe, and live the remainder of my life as a chief. The white men I had seen were not of a class to impress me much with the advantages of civilisation. ”