Page images
PDF
EPUB
[blocks in formation]

PAINTING-a Universal Language.
The poets are confined to narrow space,
To speak the language of their native place;
The painter widely stretches his command,
His pencil speaks the tongue of every land.
Dryden.

PAINTING-Perfection of.

Fain would I Raphael's godlike art rehearse,
And show th' immortal labours in my verse;
Where, from the mingled strength of shade
and light,

A new creation rises to my sight;
Such heavenly figures from his pencil flow,
So warm with life his blended colours glow.
Addison.

PAINTING-Proficiency of.

The first degree of proficiency is, in painting, what grammar is in literature,-a general preparation for whatever species of the art the student may afterwards choose for his more particular application. The power of drawing, modelling, and using colours, is very properly called the language of the art. Sir Joshua Reynolds.

PAINTING-Style in.

Style in painting is the same as in writing, - power over materials, whether words or colours, by which conceptions or sentiments are conveyed.

PAINTING-Subjects of.

Ibid.

The roof was fretted gold. Not Babylon,
Nor great Alcairo, such magnificence
Equall'd in all their glories, to enshrine
Belus or Serapis their gods, or seat
Their kings, when Egypt with Assyria strove
In wealth and luxury. The ascending pile
Stood fix'd her stately height and straight
the doors,

Opening their brazen folds, discover, wide
Within, her ample spaces, o'er the smooth
And level pavement; from the arch'd roof
Pendent by subtle magic, many a row
Of starry lamps and blazing cressets fed
With naphtha and asphaltus, yielded light
As from a sky.

PARADISE-Individually Lost.

Milton.

Every man has a Paradise around him till he sins, and the angel of an accusing conscience drives him from his Eden. And even then there are holy hours, when this angel sleeps, and man comes back, and with the innocent eyes of a child looks into his lost Paradise again-into the broad gates and Longfellow. rural solitudes of nature.

PARASITE-The.

Your friend, your pimp, your hanger-on, what not?

Your lacquey, but without the shoulder-knot.
Horace.
PARASITE-Description of the.

All the wide world is little else in nature
But parasites, or sub-parasites; and yet
I mean not those that have your bare town
art,

Dost thou love pictures? we will fetch thee To know who's fit to feed them; have no

[blocks in formation]

house,

No family, no care, and therefore mould
Tales for men's ears to bait that sense, or get
Kitchen invention, and some stale receipts
To please the belly and the groin; nor those
With their court-dog tricks, that can fawn and
fleer,

Make their revenue out of legs and faces,
Echo my lord, and lick away a moth:
But your fine elegant rascal, that can rise
And stoop almost together; like an arrow,
Shoot through the air as nimbly as a star;
Turn short, as doth a swallow, and be here
And there, and here and yonder, all at once.
Ben Jonson.

PARASITE-Qualities of the.

A tassel that hangs at my purse-strings; he dogs

Me, and I give him scraps, and pay for his
Ordinary, feed him; be liquors himself
In the juice of my bounty; and when he
Hath suck'd up strength of spirit, he squeezeth

[blocks in formation]

PARENTS.

PARDON-Imploring of.

I must be heard,—I must have leave to speak:
Oh! look upon me with an eye of mercy;
With pity and with charity behold me.
Shut not thy heart against a friend's repentance;
But as there dwells a godlike nature in thee,
Listen with mildness to my supplications;
For ah! I've lost what never can be counted:
My friend, O Belvidera, that dear friend,
Who, next to thee, was all my heart rejoiced in,
Has used me like a slave, shamefully used me;
'Twould break thy pitying heart to hear the
story.

What shall I do? Resentment, indignation, Love, pity, fear, and memory, how I've wrong'd him;

Distract my quiet with the very thought on't, And tear my heart to pieces in my bosom. Otway. PARDON-Seeking for.

For, could you think how mine's perplex'd, I've wrong'd thee much, and Heaven has well what sadness, avenged;

Fears, and despairs, distract the peace within I have not, since we parted, been at peace,

[blocks in formation]

Hover with strong compassion o'er your young Stood like a glaring ghost, and made me cold

[blocks in formation]

PARENTS-Duties of.

The voice of parents is the voice of goda,
For to their children they are heaven's lieu-
tenants;

Made fathers not for common uses merely
Of procreation (beasts and birds would be
As noble then as we are); but to steer

The wanton freight of youth through storms
and dangers,

PARKS-Scenery and Adjuncts of.

Vast lawns that extend like sheets of vivid green, with here and there clumps of gigantic trees, heaping up rich piles of foliage. The solemn pomp of groves and woodland glades, with the deer trooping in silent herds across them, the hare bounding away to the covert, or the pheasant suddenly bursting upon the wing. The brook, taught to wind in the most natural

Which with full sails they bear upon, and meanderings, or expand into a glassy lake; the straighten

The mortal line of life they bend so often.
For these are we made fathers, and for these
May challenge duty on our children's part.
Obedience is the sacrifice of angels,
Whose form you carry.
PARENTS-Example of.

Shakspeare.

Parents must give good example and reverent deportment in the face of their children. And all those instances of charity which usually endear each other-sweetness of conversation, affability, frequent admonition-all significations of love and tenderness, care and watchfulness, must be expressed towards children; that they may look upon their parents as their friends and patrons, their defence and sanctuary, their treasure and their guide.

PARENTS-Fondness of.

sequestered pool, reflecting the quivering trees, with the yellow leaf sleeping on its bosom, and the trout roaming fearlessly about its limpid waters; while some rustic temple, or sylvan statue, grown green and dank with age, gives an air of classic sanctity to the seclusion. Washington Irving.

PARLIAMENT-Acts of.

Acts of Parliament are venerable; but if they correspond not with the writing on the "adamant tablet," where are they? Properly their one element of venerableness, of strength or greatness, is, that they at all times correspond therewith as near as by human possibility they can. They are cherishing destruction in their bosom every hour that they continue otherwise. Carlyle.

Bishop Taylor. PARLIAMENT-Assembling of the.
The king hath drawn
The special head of all the land together.

Thou art the only comfort of my age:
Like an old tree, I stand amongst the storms;
Thou art the only limb that I have left me,
My dear green branch! and how I prize thee,
child,

Heaven only knows.

PARENTS-Over-strict.

Shakspeare.

We assemble parliaments and councils, to have the benefit of their collected wisdom; but we necessarily have, at the same time, the Lee. inconveniences of their collected passions,

Parents are o'erseen,
When, with too strict a rein, they do hold in
Their child's affections; and control that love,
Which the powers divine instruct them with:
When in their shallow judgments, they may
know,

Affection cross'd, brings misery and woe.

Robert Taylour.

PARENTS-Suspicious.
A suspicious parent makes an artful child.
Haliburton.

prejudices, and private interests. By the help of these, artful men overpower their wisdom, and dupe its possessors; and if we may judge by the acts, arrêts, and edicts, all the world over, for regulating commerce, an assembly of great men are the greatest fools upon earth. Franklin.

PARSIMONY-not Economy.

When a cold penury blasts the abilities of a nation, and steals the growth of its active energies, the ill is beyond all calculation. Mere parsimony is not economy. Expense, and great expense, may be an essential part in true economy. Economy is a distributive virtue, and consists, not in saving, but in selection. Parsimony requires no providence, no sagacity, no powers of combination, no comChil-parison, no judgment. Mere instinct, and that not an instinct of the noblest kind, may produce this false economy in perfection. other economy has larger views. It demands a discriminating judgment, and a firm, saga

PARENTS AND CHILDREN.
The joys of parents are secret, and so are
their griefs and fears: they cannot utter the
one, they will not utter the other.

dren sweeten labours, but they make mis-
fortunes more bitter; they increase the cares
of life, but they mitigate the remembrance of
death.

Bacon.

Tho

[blocks in formation]

Or have charged him,

At the sixth hour of morn, at noon, at midnight,

To encounter me with orisons, for then
I am in heaven for him; or ere I could
Give him that parting kiss which I had set
Betwixt two charming words, comes in my
father,

And, like the tyrannous breathing of the north,

Shakes all our buds from growing. Shakspeare. PARTING-Grief of.

His eye being big with tears, Turning his face, he put his hand behind him, And with affection wondrous sensible,

He wrung Bassanio's hand; and so they parted. Ibid.

[blocks in formation]
[blocks in formation]

Let's not unman each other-part at once:
All farewells should be sudden, when for ever,
Else they make an eternity of moments,
And clog the last sad sands of life with tears.
Вутов.

PARTING-Melancholy of.

Farewell! God knows when we shall meet again;

I have a faint, cold fear thrill through my veins, That almost freezes up the heat of life.

Shakspeare.

At length this joy-these dreams-this parting-dissolved themselves into that nameless melancholy in which the overflowing of happiness covers the borders of pain, because our breasts are ever more easily overflowed than filled. Richter.

PARTING-Pangs of.

We

We cannot part with our friends. cannot let our angels go. We do not see that

But thou shalt hear what grief has done for they only go out that archangels may come

me:

If I could live to hear it, I were false;
But as a fearful traveller, who fearing
Assaults, leaves his wealth behind,

I trust my heart with thee, and carry with me
Only an empty casket;

in. We are idolaters of the old. We do not believe in the richness of the soul, in its proper eternity and omnipresence. We do not believe there is any force in to-day to rival or re-create that beautiful yesterday We linger in the ruins of the old tent, where

[blocks in formation]

PARTING-Perils of.

There is one warning lesson in life which few of us have not received, and no book that I can call to memory has noted down with an adequate emphasis. It is this, "Beware of parting." The true sadness is not in the pain of the parting-it is in the when and the how you are to meet again with the face about to vanish from your view; from the passionate farewell to the woman who has your heart in her keeping, to the cordial good-bye exchanged with pleasant companions at a watering-place, 3 country house, or the close of a festive day's blithe and careless excursion-a chord, stronger or weaker, is snapped asunder in every parting, and time's busy fingers are not practised in re-splicing broken ties. Meet again you may: will it be in the same way? with the same sympathies? with the same sentiments? Will the souls, hurrying on in diverse paths, unite once more, as if the interval had been a dream? Rarely, rarely. Bulwer Lytton.

PARTING-Reluctance at.

Ev'n thus two friends condemn'd, Embrace and kiss, and take ten thousand leaves,

Loather a hundred times to part than die. Shakspeare.

Heaven knows how loath I am to part from

[blocks in formation]
[blocks in formation]

Let the sap of reason quench the fire of passion. Shakspeare. PASSION-Present Gratification of.

It is of the nature of passion to seize upon the present gratification, utterly irrespective of consequences, and utterly regardless of other or more excellent gratifications, which may be obtained by self-denial. He whose passions are inflamed looks at nothing beyond the present gratification. Hence, he is liable to seize upon a present enjoyment, to the exclusion of a much more valuable one in future, and even in such a manner as to entail upon himself poignant and remediless misery. And hence, in order to be enabled to enjoy all the happiness of which his present state is capable, the sensitive part of man needs to be combined with another, which, upon a comparison of the present with the future, shall impel him towards that mode either of gratification or of self-denial, which shall most promote his happiness upon the whole. Such is self-love. We give this name to that part of our constitution by which we are incited to do or to forbear, to gratify or to deny our desires, simply on the ground of obtaining the greatest amount of happiness for ourselves, taking into view a limited future, or else our entire future existence. When we act from

« PreviousContinue »