It is wonderful what improvements have taken place in clocks and watches during the last half-century; how accurately the escapements are constructed, how delicately the springs are formed, how easily the wheels move, and what good time they keep. After all, society is but a clock, a very complicated piece of mechanism; and it, too, has undergone, in many countries, the same improvements that have taken place in the little ticking machines that we put in our pockets, or those greater indicators of our progress towards eternity that we hang upon our walls. From the wooden clock, with its...
It is wonderful what improvements have taken place in clocks and watches during the last half-century; how accurately the escapements are constructed,...
Among all the many fine and beautiful figures and modes of reasoning that the universe in which we dwell has afforded for the illustration of the bright hope that is within us of a life renewed beyond the tomb, there is none more beautiful or more exquisite, that I know of, than that which is derived from the seasons; from the second life that bursts forth in spring in objects apparently dead, and from the shadowing forth in the renovation of everything around us of that after destiny which divine revelation calls upon our faith to believe shall yet be ours.
Among all the many fine and beautiful figures and modes of reasoning that the universe in which we dwell has afforded for the illustration of the brig...
The realities of the world are few and small; the illusions many and vast. Not a sense that we possess, and hardly a faculty of the mind, but serves to deceive us; wholly in some cases, and partially in all. Yet, strip nature and life of these deceits, and what would earth become?--what our existence here? See a small fly stepping over the irregularities of a looking-glass and thinking the polished surface but a rough and rugged plain, and we have some idea of what the world would be, if we saw it as perhaps it is.
The realities of the world are few and small; the illusions many and vast. Not a sense that we possess, and hardly a faculty of the mind, but serves t...
Though the weather was hot and sultry, and the summer was at its height, yet the evening was gloomy, and low, angry clouds hung over the distant line of the sea, when, under the shelter of some low-browed cliffs upon the Irish coast, three persons stood together, two of whom were talking earnestly. About four or five miles from the shore, looking like a spectre upon the misty background of clouds, appeared a small brig with her canvas closely reefed, though there was little wind stirring, and nothing announced the approach of a gale, unless it were a long, heavy swell that heaved up the bosom...
Though the weather was hot and sultry, and the summer was at its height, yet the evening was gloomy, and low, angry clouds hung over the distant line ...
I sit alone, with time sufficient before me to put down a record of the last year of my existence, and with the desire, if be possible, to gather together into one view, all the thoughts and feelings, and incidents and anecdotes, which have filled up one of the most painful periods of my existence.
I sit alone, with time sufficient before me to put down a record of the last year of my existence, and with the desire, if be possible, to gather toge...
Music was in the air, and loveliness was spread out over the earth as a mantle. There was a voice of many waters--the bland musical tone of mountain streams singing as they wend their way over the smooth round pebbles of their hilly bed towards the sea. And the song of life, too, was heard from every field, and every glade, and every valley; the trilling of innumerable birds, the hum of insect myriads, the lowing of distant cattle, winding down from the uplands to pen or fold, the plaintive, subdued bleating of the patient sheep, the merry voice of the light-hearted herd as he led home his...
Music was in the air, and loveliness was spread out over the earth as a mantle. There was a voice of many waters--the bland musical tone of mountain s...
About two centuries ago, in times with which we are all familiar, as they comprised a period of English history, the events of which have affected the social condition of the British people more than almost any which have preceded or followed that period--about two centuries ago, there stood upon the slope of a gentle hill, in a picturesque part of England, an old brick mansion of considerable extent, and of a venerable though flourishing exterior. On the right hand and on the left there was a wood of various trees, amidst which Evelyn might have delighted to roam, choice children of the...
About two centuries ago, in times with which we are all familiar, as they comprised a period of English history, the events of which have affected the...
It was in the olden time of merry England--not at that far removes period when our native land first received its jocund name from the bowmen of Sherwood, and when the yeoman or the franklin, who had wandered after some knightly banner to the plains of the Holy Land, looked back upon the little island of his birth with forgetfulness of all but its cheerful hearths and happy days. Oh, no it was in a far later age, when, notwithstanding wars and civil contentions not long past by, our country still deserved the name of merry England, and received it constantly amongst a class peculiarly its...
It was in the olden time of merry England--not at that far removes period when our native land first received its jocund name from the bowmen of Sherw...
It was a dark and stormy night, -a very dark night indeed. No dog's mouth, whether terrier, mastiff, or Newfoundland, was ever so dark as that night. The hatches had been battened down, and every aperture but one, by which any of the great, curly-pated, leaping waves could jump into the vessel, had been closed. What vessel? the reader may perhaps inquire. Well, that being a piece of reasonable curiosity, -although I do wish, as a general thing, that readers would not be so impatient, -I will gratify it, and answer the inquirer's question; and, indeed, would have told him all about it in five...
It was a dark and stormy night, -a very dark night indeed. No dog's mouth, whether terrier, mastiff, or Newfoundland, was ever so dark as that night. ...
At that time in the world's history when watches, in their decline from the fat comeliness of the turnip to the scanty meagerness of the half-crown, had arrived at the intermediate form of a biffin--when the last remnant of a chivalrous spirit instigated men to wear swords every day, and to take purses on horseback--when quadrupeds were preferred to steam, and sails were necessary to a ship--when Chatham and Blackstone appeared in the senate and at the bar, and Goldsmith, Johnson, and Burke, Cowper, Reynolds, Robertson Hume, and Smollett, were just beginning to cumber the highways of arts and...
At that time in the world's history when watches, in their decline from the fat comeliness of the turnip to the scanty meagerness of the half-crown, h...
