Essays of a Birmingham Manufacturer, Volume 3Williams & Norgate, 1871 |
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Common terms and phrases
absinthe Académie française Academy Adam Smith ardent spirits artisans Auguste Comte become beer believe candidate capital cashbox cheap civil crime David Hume desire doctrine drinking drunkenness earned England English excess fact favour fermented liquors France French genius German give habits honours hundred idle illegitimacy income intellectual justice labour learning less literary literature living London Lord Dufferin Luigi Tosti Macleod manufacturer marriage means ment Michel Chevalier millions mind moral nation natural neglected opinions order of merit perhaps persons philosophy political economy popular present produce pursuits Queen readers rewards Scotland self-maintenance Sir Morton Peto Sir William Hamilton smith sober sobriety society sovereigns Stock or Effects success tavern teetotallers things thinkers thought tion towns truth vice wages wine women workmen writer young
Popular passages
Page 6 - As eager to anticipate their grave ; And the sea yawned around her, like a hell, And down she sucked with her the whirling wave, Like one who grapples with his enemy, And strives to strangle him before he die.
Page 6 - And first one universal shriek there rush'd, Louder than the loud ocean, like a crash Of echoing thunder; and then all was hush'd, Save the wild wind and the remorseless dash Of billows; but at intervals there gush'd, Accompanied with a convulsive splash, A solitary shriek, the bubbling cry Of some strong swimmer in his agony.
Page 55 - I passed through the ordinary course of education with success, and was seized very early with a passion for literature, which has been the ruling passion of my life, and the great source of my enjoyments.
Page 99 - I had expected pleasure from the invention of the arguments, from the arrangement of them, from the putting of them together, and from the thought in the interim that I was engaged in an innocent contest for literary honour.
Page 67 - ... this idle way of reading and considering things. By this means, time, even in solitude, is happily got rid of without the pain of attention ; neither is any part of it more put to the account of idleness, one can scarce...
Page 25 - ... of the country requires. The consequence is, that there is no nation in Europe in which we find so wide an interval between the highest minds and the lowest minds. The German philosophers possess a learning and a reach of thought which places them at the head of the civilized world. The German people are more superstitious, more prejudiced, and, notwithstanding the care which the government takes of their education, more really ignorant and more unfit to guide themselves than are the inhabitants...
Page 243 - ... on the coast of Guinea. When a French regiment comes from some of the northern provinces of France, where wine is somewhat dear, to be quartered in the southern, where it is very cheap, the soldiers, I have frequently heard it observed, are at first debauched by the cheapness and novelty of good wine; but alter a few months residence, the greater part of them become as sober as the rest of the inhabitants.
Page 225 - I endeavored to convince him that the bodily strength afforded by beer could only be in proportion to the grain or flour of the barley dissolved in the water of which it was made ; that there was more flour in a pennyworth of bread ; and therefore, if...
Page 26 - ... thus disturbed the normal proportions of society. Owing to this, the highest intellects have, in Germany, so outstripped the general progress of the nation, that there is no sympathy between the two parties ; nor are there at present any means by which they may be brought into contact. Their great authors address themselves, not to their country, but to each other. They are sure of a select and learned audience, and they use what, in reality, is a learned language ; they turn their...
Page 55 - My studious disposition, my sobriety, and my industry gave my family a notion that the law was a proper profession for me, but I found an unsurmountable aversion to everything but the pursuits of philosophy and general learning...