text:
Page:While the Billy Boils, 1913.djvu/257

 side as well as the men's. I suppose I can get a bit of rations?'

'Ye―yes. (Shortly)―Wot d'yer want?'

' Well, let's see; we want a bit of meat and flour―I think that's all. Got enough tea and sugar to carry us on.'

'All right. Cook! have you got any meat?'

'No!'

To Mitchell: 'Can you kill a sheep?'

'Rather!'

To the cook: 'Give this man a cloth and knife and steel, and let him go up to the yard and kill a sheep? (To Mitchell): 'You can take a fore-quarter and get a bit of flour.'

Half-an-hour later Mitchell came back with the carcase wrapped in the cloth.

'Here yer are; here's your sheep,' he said to the cook.

'That's all right; hang it in there. Did you take a fore-quarter?'

'No.'

'Well, why didn't you? The boss told you to.'

'I didn't want a fore-quarter. I don't like it. I took a hind-quarter.'

So he had.

The cook scratched his head; he seemed to have nothing to say. He thought about trying to think, perhaps, but gave it best. It was too hot and he was out of practice.

'Here, fill these up, will you,' said Mitchell, 'that's the tea-bag, and that's the sugar-bag, and that's the flour-bag.'


text:
Page:While the Billy Boils, 1913.djvu/258

 He had taken them from the front of his shirt.

'Don't be frightened to stretch 'em a little, old man, I've got two mates to feed.'

The cook took the bags mechanically and filled them well before he knew what he was doing. Mitchell talked all the time.

'Thank you,' said he―'got a bit of baking-powder?'

'Ye―yes, here you are.'

'Thank you. Find it dull here, don't you?'

'Well, yes, pretty dull. There's a bit of cooked beef and some bread and cake there, if you want it!'

'Thanks,' said Mitchell, sweeping the broken victuals into an old pillow-slip which he carried on his person for such an emergency. 'I 'spose you find it dull round here.'

'Yes, pretty dull.'

'No one to talk to much?'

'No, not many.'

'Tongue gets rusty?'

'Ye-es, sometimes.'

'Well, so long, and thank yer.'

'So long,' said the cook (he nearly added 'thank yer').

'Well, good day; I'll see you again.'

'Good day.'

Mitchell shouldered his spoil and left.

The cook scratched his head; he had a chat with the overseer afterwards, and they agreed that the traveller was a bit gone.

But Mitchell's head wasn't gone―not much: he was a Sydney jackeroo who had been round a bit―that was all.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/


text:
Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 2.djvu/459

1536.] family; that he loved him for his own high and noble qualities, his liberality, his gentleness, his piety, his princely and illustrious nature. Since Pole, when it suited his convenience, could represent the King's early career in very different colours, it is well to quote some specimens of his more favourable testimony. Addressing Henry himself, he says: 'Quid non promittebant præclaræ illæ virtutes quæ primis annis principatûs tui in te maximc elucebant. In quibus primum pietas quæ una omnium aliarum, et totius humanæ felicitatis quasi fundamentum est, se proferebat. Cui adjunctæ erant quæ maxime in oculis hominum elucere solent, justitia, clementia, liberalitas, prudentia, denique tanta quanta in illâ tenerâ ætate esse potuit. Ut dixit Ezechiel de Rege Assyriorum, in paradiso Dei cedrus te pulcrior non inveniebatur.'—De Unitate Ecclesiæ, lib. 3.Again, writing to Charles V., after speaking of the golden splendour of Henry's early reign, his wealth, his moderation, the happiness of the people, and the circle of illustrious men who surrounded his throne, he goes on—'Hi vero illam indolem sequebantur quam Regi Deus ipsi prius dederat, cujus exemplar in Rege suo viderunt. Fuit enim indoles ejus aliquando prorsus regia. Summum in eo pietatis studium apparebat et religionis cultus; magnus amor justitiæ, non abhorrens tamen natura ut tum quidem videbatur a clementia.'And the time at which the supposed change took place is also marked distinctly:—'Satanas in carne adhuc manentem naturâ hominis jam videtur spoliasse … suâ induisse … in quâ nihil præter formam videtur reliquisse quod sit hominis; … ne vitia quidem … sed cum omni virtute et donis illis Dei cœlestibus quibus cum optimis Regum comparari poterat, antequam in vicariatum Filii ejus se ingereret [præditus est]; postquam ilium honorem impie ambivit et arripuit, non solum virtutibus omnibus privatus est sed etiam,' etc.—Apologia ad Carolum Quintum.It was 'necessary to the position' of Romanist writers to find the promise of evil in Henry's early life, after his separation from the Papacy; and stories like those which we read in grew like mushrooms in the compost of hatred. But it is certain that so long as he was orthodox he was regarded as a model of a Catholic prince. Cardinal Contarini laments his fall, as a fall like Lucifer's: 'Quî fieri potuit per Deum immortalem,' he wrote to Pole, 'ut animus ille, tam mitis, tam mansuetus ut ad bene merendum de hominum genere a naturâ factus esse videatur, sit adeo immutatus.'—''Epist. Reg. Poli'', vol. ii. p. 31. Nor did he fail to


text:
Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 2.djvu/460

440 profit by the advantages which were heaped upon him. He studied industriously at Paris, and at Padua, acquiring, as he believed, all knowledge which living teachers could impart to him; and he was himself so well satisfied with the result, that at the mature age of thirty-six he could describe himself to Henry as one who, although a young man, 'had long been conversant with old men; had long judged the eldest man that lived too young for him to learn wisdom from.' Many ambitious youths have experienced the same opinion of themselves; few have ventured on so confident an expression of it. But for his family's sake, as much as for his own, the King continued to regard him with favour; and could he have prevailed upon himself to acquiesce in the divorce of Queen Catherine, it is possible that he would have succeeded Warham in the English primacy.

From conviction, however, or from the tendency to contradiction characteristic of a peculiar kind of talent, Pole was unable to adopt an opinion so desirable for his interests. First doubtfully, and afterwards emphatically and positively, he declared his dissent from the resolutions of Parliament and Convocation. He had witnessed with his own eyes the means by which the sentences had been obtained of the universities abroad. He was satisfied of the injustice of the cause. He assured himself that to proceed in it would be perilous to the realm.

His birth and the King's regard for him gave an


text:
User talk:195.137.178.130

Welcome
Welcome

Hello, 195.137.178.130, and welcome to Wikisource! Thank you for. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few good links for newcomers:
 * Help pages
 * Style guide
 * Inclusion policy
 * For Wikipedians

You may be interested in participating in Add the code active projects, PotM or CotW to your page for current wikisource projects.
 * Proofread of the Month
 * Community collaboration
 * Requested texts

You can put a brief description of your interests on your user page and contributions to another Wikimedia project, such as Wikipedia and Commons.

I hope you enjoy contributing to Wikisource, the library that is free for everyone to use! In discussions, please "sign" your comments using four tildes ( ~ ); this will automatically produce your IP address (or username if you're logged in) and the date. If you need help, ask me on my talk page, or ask your question here (click  [ edit] ) and place  before your question.

Again, welcome! Beeswaxcandle (talk) 07:03, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

title: User talk:195.137.178.130


text:
Page:The Irish in Australia.djvu/249

 When the banished Archpriest returned to Ireland, the illustrious Dr. England, Bishop of Charleston, in the United States, happened to be on a visit to his native land, and to this able and accomplished prelate. Father O'Flinn narrated the ill-treatment and the injustice he had received at the hands of the governing powers in distant Australia. Intense was the bishop's indignation at the recital of the persecution to which the good priest had been subjected, and of the grievous wrongs inflicted on the Catholic population of the colony through being deprived of the ministrations of a clergyman of their faith. Dr. England brought the case under the notice of Lord Donoughmore, then member for Cork, by whom it was ventilated in the House of Commons, with the result that the grievance under which the Catholics of the colony had so long laboured was fully recognised, and an act of tardy justice was performed by the Imperial Government in becoming responsible for the sending out to Australia of two salaried and accredited priests. The Rev. John Joseph Therry and the Rev. Philip Conolly were the clergymen who offered to devote their lives to the service of their exiled countrymen at the antipodes. Father Therry, whose long and laborious career amidst many dangers and difficulties has justly won for him the high title of the "Apostle of the Australias," was a native of Cork, like Bishop England, the Apostle of the American Church. He entered Carlow College in his seventeenth year, and had the good

title: Page:The Irish in Australia.djvu/249


text:
Page:While the Billy Boils, 1913.djvu/259

The old man shaded his eyes and peered through the dazzling glow of that broiling Christmas Day. He stood just within the door of a slab-and-bark hut situated upon the bank of a barren creek; sheep-yards lay to the right, and a low line of bare, brown ridges formed a suitable background to the scene.

'Five Bob!' shouted he again; and a dusty sheepdog rose wearily from the shaded side of the hut and looked inquiringly at his master, who pointed towards some sheep which were straggling from the flock.

'Fetch 'em back,' he said confidently.

The dog went off and his master returned to the interior of the hut.

'We'll yard 'em early,' he said to himself; 'the super won't know. We'll yard 'em early, and have the arternoon to ourselves.'

'We'll get dinner,' he added, glancing at some pots on the fire, 'I cud do a bit of doughboy, an' that theer boggabri'11 eat like tater-marrer along of the salt meat.' He moved one of the black buckets from the blaze. 'I likes to keep it jist on the sizzle,' he 229


text:
Page:Sea and River-side Rambles in Victoria.djvu/127

108 Even with these opinions before us, we are disinclined to believe that any insects in a healthy state can afford those conditions which are essential to the development of fungoid growths, for as is remarked in Art. "Enterophyta." Nat. Hist. Sect. Engl. Cyclo., "a failure of the ordinary vital powers to carry on the healthy processes of life seem ordinarily to be the inviting cause of such a development of these plants as would constitute a disease," but we conceive that it is only after life is destroyed and decomposition set in that the Sphæria commences to germinate,—our friends however must observe and judge for themselves.

But our ramble has occupied more time than we anticipated, so we will only descend the hill towards the Barwon on our way homewards, gathering as we go some specimens of the remarkable Polygonum junceum or the Crantzia Australasica growing submersed in the water.


text:
Page:While the Billy Boils, 1913.djvu/260

 said in explanation to himself; 'hard bilin' makes it tough―I'll keep it jist-a-simmerin'.'

Here his soliloquy was interrupted by the return of the dog.

'All right, Five Bob,' said the hatter, 'dinner'll be ready dreckly. Jist keep yer eye on the sheep till I calls yer; keep 'em well rounded up, an' we'll yard 'em afterwards and have a holiday.

'This speech was accompanied by a gesture evidently intelligible, for the dog retired as though he understood English, and the cooking proceeded.

'I'll take a pick an' shovel with me an' root up that old black fellow,' mused the shepherd, evidently following up a recent train of thought; ' I reckon it'll do now. I'll put in the spuds.'

The last sentence referred to the cooking, the first to a black fellow's grave about which he was curious.

'The sheep's a-campin',' said the soliloquiser, glancing through the door. l So me an' Five Bob '11 be able to get our dinner in peace. I wish I had just enough fat to make the pan siss; I'd treat myself to a leather-jacket; but it took three weeks' skimmin' to get enough for them theer doughboys.'

In due time the dinner was dished up; and the old man seated himself on a block, with the lid of a gin-case across his knees for a table. Five Bob squatted opposite with the liveliest interest and appreciation depicted on his intelligent countenance.

Dinner proceeded very quietly, except when the carver paused to ask the dog how some tasty morsel went with him, and Five Bob's tail declared that it went very well indeed


text: Page:Sea and River-side Rambles in Victoria.djvu/128


text:
Page:Our New Zealand Cousins.djvu/183

 can reach, it follows farm after farm, and takes in cottages, corn-ricks, trim plantations, hedge-rows, and busy ploughing teams in its comprehensive survey.

When I was last here, Makikiki was purely a flax swamp, with not a human habitation within miles of it; and it was only famous as being a grand shooting ground for ducks.

Waimate too! I remember when there was but the home station here, one "bush pub.," and forge, and a few sawyers' huts. Now the dense bush has all been cut away. Waimate is the terminus of a branch railway, and can boast stores, hotels, and buildings equal to most country towns—verily "the former things have passed away, and lo, now all things have become new."

We cross the Waitaki, one of the snow-fed rivers, by another lengthy bridge, and I recall to my mind the old punt which used to convey passengers precariously across in the olden time. Oamaru presents the same amphitheatre of grassy knolls, but the tussocks on the heights are gone. Villas and gardens have taken their place. The town looks gay and lively, the white stone giving it quite a palatial look. What enormous stores! What mills! woollen factory! cheese factory! saw mills! &c. In fact, a repetition of Timaru. Another breakwater in the bay. All this since I was here last.

Ascending the steep incline, we emerge upon a succession of broken, tumbled slopes. Grand farms here. The farmers are lifting their potatoes

title: Page:Our New Zealand Cousins.djvu/183


text:
Page:While the Billy Boils, 1913.djvu/261

 'Here y'are, try this,' cried the old man, tossing him a large piece of doughboy. A click of Five Bob's jaws and the dough was gone.

'Clean into his liver!' said the old man with a faint smile.

He washed up the tinware in the water the duff had been boiled in, and then, with the assistance of the dog, yarded the sheep.

This accomplished, he took a pick and shovel and an old sack, and started out over the ridge, followed, of course, by his four-legged mate. After tramping some three miles he reached a spur, running out from the main ridge. At the extreme end of this, under some gum-trees, was a little mound of earth, barely defined in the grass and indented in the centre as all blackfellows' graves were.

He set to work to dig it up, and sure enough, in about half an hour he bottomed on payable dirt.

When he had raked up all the bones, he amused himself by putting them together on the grass and by speculating as to whether they had belonged to black or white, male or female. Failing, however, to arrive at any satisfactory conclusion, he dusted them with great care, put them in the bag, and started for home.

He took a short cut this time over the ridge and down a gully which was full of ring-barked trees and long white grass. He had nearly reached its mouth when a great greasy black iguana clambered up a sapling from under his feet and looked fightable.

'Dang the jumpt-up thing?' cried the old man. 'It gin me a start!'

At the foot of the sapling he espied an object which


text:
Page:Sea and River-side Rambles in Victoria.djvu/129

110 CHAPTER XII.

THE HOPKINS.

ho! Further away from the haunts of men to where, undisturbed by anything but the sweet sounds of Nature, with lovely wild plants around us, giving odour as we press them, we may ruralise at will. We have long had a friendship for this River, for years have wandered, day by day, on its margin, have seen it in all weathers and in all moods,—now gliding along with scarcely a ripple but that caused by the wing of the swallow as it skimmed its surface, or the masses of Jelly fishes which at some seasons abound here, at other times disturbed by winds and floods; which was its grander aspect we never could decide, since each had its peculiar charms to enchant us, but glancing now round our study walls and recalling from the representations thereon, the companions of our rambles there, how pleasingly we are reminded of the happiness we enjoyed—red letter days indeed!

This pretty stream rises in the Pyrenees and flows near Mount Ararat, but passing somewhat away from the Gold Fields, does not prove of service for washing the precious metal,—on it flows through high banks and low, with here and there a steep rock on one side, and rich arable land on the other, the former densely covered with festoons of the bright pink


text:
Page:Our New Zealand Cousins.djvu/184

 and the long rows of well-filled sacks testify to the fertility of the soil. We pass the famous quarries of white stone, and looking over the surrounding country, can see numerous evidences of volcanic action in the circular mounds which stud the landscape. Sites of extinct fumaroles and geysers these.

Away to the left the Pacific reflects the rays of the afternoon sun. Moeraki Lighthouse glistens in the warm light, and the sheen sparkles on lovely bays, and glistens along the wavy line of great curling breakers on the beach.

Yonder is Shag Point jutting out into deep water. There is a colliery at work at the extreme verge of the headland. Otago is rich in minerals, and her coalfields are important and extensive.

Palmerston is a pretty town in a hollow, surrounded by hills, low and undulating. The Salvation Army has been doing a great work here. The leaders were two lasses, and they have succeeded in enlisting a large following, and have shut up several hotels. So we are informed by a polite, though pale young gentleman, who makes himself very pleasant, gives us much unsolicited information, and winds up by wanting to sell us a few celluloid cuffs and collars.

In self-sacrificing gratitude, we pass him on to a burly farmer, who eventually, on our recommendation, purchases a set, and doubtless made a very good bargain. This peripatetic peddling we find to be a feature of the railways here. The pedlar is generally employed by the leading newspapers to

title: Page:Our New Zealand Cousins.djvu/184


text:
Page:While the Billy Boils, 1913.djvu/262

 he at first thought was the blackened carcass of a sheep, but on closer examination discovered to be the body of a man; it lay with its forehead resting on its hands, dried to a mummy by the intense heat of the western summer.

'Me luck's in for the day and no mistake!' said the shepherd, scratching the back of his head, while he took stock of the remains. He picked up a stick and tapped the body on the shoulder; the flesh sounded like leather. He turned it over on its side; it fell flat on its back like a board, and the shrivelled eyes seemed to peer up at him from under the blackened wrists.

He stepped back involuntarily, but, recovering himself, leant on his stick and took in all the ghastly details.

There was nothing in the blackened features to tell aught of name or race, but the dress proclaimed the remains to be those of a European. The old man caught sight of a black bottle in the grass, close beside the corpse. This set him thinking. Presently he knelt down and examined the soles of the dead man's Blucher boots, and then, rising with an air of conviction, exclaimed: 'Brummy! by gosh!―busted up at last!'

'I tole yer so, Brummy;' he said impressively, addressing the corpse, 'I allers told yer as how it 'ud be―an' here y'are, you thundering jumpt-up cuss-o'-God fool. Yer cud earn mor'n any man in the colony, but yer'd lush it all away. I allers sed as how it 'ud end, an' now yer kin see fur y'self.'

'I spect yer was a comin' t' me t' get fixt up an' set straight agin; then yer was agoin' to swear off,


text:
Page:Sea and River-side Rambles in Victoria.djvu/130

111  or "pigs feces," the green Correa or native Fuschia, the russet flowered Pomaderris, and many others. Numerous are the tributaries to the stream in its course,—Muston's Creek, the Salt Creek from Lake Bolac, then about ten miles from the sea, Black's River or Emu Creek, and further on, Cudgee or Brucknall's Creek: these with freshwater springs supply the current flow. A little lower down we come to the Falls of the Hopkins, whose limpid waters sparkle in the sun, and a few miles further still, to the Allansford Bridge, past which the stream glides musically along, like the murmur of a pebbly brook in the old country, through rich black soil, well stocked with flowers, and tenanted by industrious hard-working men. On the margin of another waterfall, about a mile onward, up to which the tide flows from the sea, is Tooram, the station of John M. Allan, Esq., one of the earliest settlers in the district, thickly surrounded by Eucalypti, Cherrytrees, Box and Light wood, old and young, such as we may travel a long distance without again seeing in such luxuriance.

Nor are these richly foliaged trees, quiet as they seem to us now, destitute of animal life; come you at nightfall, and under the guidance of one of the many Natives who invariably camp here, watch the merry gambols of the Flying Squirrels and Opossums, leaping from branch to branch; listen to the heavy munching of the Wombat, who is feeding timidly on the grass which surrounds his burrow, into which, if he observes us, he hastens with a celerity which his looks belie; the slothful Koala, or Native Bear too, comes forth to feast on the young leaves of the Gumtree, and the long-


text:
Page:While the Billy Boils, 1913.djvu/263

 same as yer allers did; an' here y'are, an' now I expect I'll have t' fix yer up for the last time an' make yer decent, for 'twon't do t' leave yer a-lyin' out here like a dead sheep.'

He picked up the corked bottle and examined it. To his great surprise it was nearly full of rum.

'Well, this gits me,' exclaimed the old man; 'me luck's in, this Christmas, an' no mistake. He must a' got the jams early in his spree, or he wouldn't be a-making for me with near a bottleful left. How-somenever, here goes.'

Looking round, his eyes lit up with satisfaction as he saw some waste bits of bark which had been left by a party of strippers who had been getting bark there for the stations. He picked up two pieces, one about four and the other six feet long, and each about two feet wide, and brought them over to the body. He laid the longest strip by the side of the corpse, which he proceeded to lift on to it.

'Come on, Brummy,' he said, in a softer tone than usual, 'yer ain't as bad as yer might be, considerin' as it must be three good months since yer slipped yer wind. I spect it was the rum as preserved yer. It was the death of yer when yer was alive, an' now yer dead, it preserves yer like―like a mummy.'

Then he placed the other strip on top, with the hollow side downwards―thus sandwiching the defunct between the two pieces―removed the saddle strap, which he wore for a belt, and buckled it round one end, while he tried to think of something to tie up the other with.

'I can't take any more strips off my shirt,' he said,


text:
Page:While the Billy Boils, 1913.djvu/264

 critically examining the skirts of the old blue over-shirt he wore. 'I might get a strip or two more off, but it's short enough already. Let's see; how long have I been awearin' of that shirt; Oh, I remember, I bought it jist two days afore Five Bob was pupped. I can't afford a new shirt jist yet; howsomenever, seein' it's Brummy, I'll jist borrow a couple more strips and sew 'em on agen when I git home.'

He up-ended Brummy, and placing his shoulder against the middle of the lower sheet of bark, lifted the corpse to a horizontal position; then taking the bag of bones in his hand, he started for home.

'I ain't a-spendin' sech a dull Christmas arter all,' he reflected, as he plodded on; but he had not walked above a hundred yards when he saw a black iguana sidling into the grass by the side of the path.

'That's another of them theer dang things! ' he exclaimed. 'That's two I've seed this mornin'.'

Presently he remarked: 'Yer don't smell none too sweet, Brummy. It must 'a' been jist about the middle of shearin' when yer pegged out. I wonder who got yer last cheque. Shoo! theer's another black gohanner―theer must be a flock on 'em.'

He rested Brummy on the ground while he had another pull at the bottle, and, before going on, packed the bag of bones on his shoulder under the body, but he soon stopped again.

'The thunderin' jumpt-up bones is all skew-whift,' he said. ' 'Ole on, Brummy, an' I'll fix 'em;' and he leaned the dead man against a tree while he settled the bones on his shoulder, and took another pull at the bottle.


text:
Page:Our New Zealand Cousins.djvu/185

 secure lists of passengers and odd items of news; but he will sell you books, periodicals, refreshments, wild ducks, and other game shot by himself, and, as in this case, celluloid collars and cuffs. I daresay the young gentleman would have insured our lives, or taken our portraits had we been so disposed; and he possibly would have been able to arrange for our funerals in case of an accident. We live and learn. Literature, commerce, and sport, here go hand in hand.

At Puketeraki there is a small native settlement of about fifty adults, and here we pass the first native bush we have seen to-day. This is one of the very few remaining native settlements in Otago. There are only now some six or eight families. "How are the mighty fallen!" No more war dances and freebooting forays, ending with a cannibal feast nowadays. The men farm a little now, and subsist on the keep of a few sheep.

We are now nearing Dunedin. Through the gathering gloom we can see the white gleam of curling breakers on the cliffs beneath us. We are dashing along at a breakneck pace above the moaning sea, midway up the cliffy heights. The scenery here, we are told, is very grand and awe-inspiring. We can well believe it, but alas for the veil of darkness which hides each charm from view. Soon we see the motley heights of Port Chalmers; anon, the long serried rows of lamp lights in the steep streets of the great city itself. They look like the watch-fires of a great army, bivouacking among the hills. The train rolls into

title: Page:Our New Zealand Cousins.djvu/185


text:
Page:While the Billy Boils, 1913.djvu/265

 About a mile further on he heard a rustling in the grass to the right, and, looking round, saw another iguana gliding off sideways, with its long snaky neck turned towards him.

This puzzled the shepherd considerably, the strangest part of it being that Five Bob wouldn't touch the reptile, but slunk off with his tail down when ordered to 'sick 'em.'

Theer's sothin' comic about them theer gohanners,' said the old man at last. "I've seed swarms of grasshoppers an' big mobs of kangaroos, but dang me if ever I seed a flock of black gohanners afore!'

On reaching the hut the old man dumped the corpse against the wall, wrong end up, and stood scratching his head while he endeavoured to collect his muddled thoughts; but he had not placed Brummy at the correct angle, and, consequently, that individual fell forward and struck him a violent blow on the shoulder with the iron toes of his Blucher boots.

The shock sobered him. He sprang a good yard, instinctively hitching up his moleskins in preparation for flight; but a backward glance revealed to him the true cause of this supposed attack from the rear. Then he lifted the body, stood it on its feet against the chimney, and ruminated as to where he should lodge his mate for the night, not noticing that the shorter sheet of bark had slipped down on the boots and left the face exposed.

'I spect I'll have ter put yer into the chimney-trough for the night, Brummy, 'said he, turning round to confront the corpse. 'Yer can't expect me to take yer into the hut, though I did it when yer was in a worse state thanLord!'


text:
Page:While the Billy Boils, 1913.djvu/266

 The shepherd was not prepared for the awful scrutiny that gleamed on him from those empty sockets; his nerves received a shock, and it was some time before he recovered himself sufficiently to speak.

'Now look a-here, Brummy,' said he, shaking his finger severely at the delinquent, 'I don't want to pick a row with yer; I'd do as much for yer an' more than any other man, an' well yer knows it; but if yer starts playin' any of yer jumpt-up pranktical jokes on me, and a scarin' of me after a-humpin' of yer 'ome, by the 'oly frost I'll kick yer to jim-rags, so I will.'

This admonition delivered, he hoisted Brummy into the chimney trough, and with a last glance towards the sheep-yards, he retired to his bunk to have, as he said, a snooze.

He had more than a 'snooze' however, for when he woke, it was dark, and the bushman's instinct told him it must be nearly nine o'clock.

He lit a slush lamp and poured the remainder of the rum into a pannikin; but, just as he was about to lift the draught to his lips he heard a peculiar rustling sound overhead, and put the pot down on the table with a slam that spilled some of the precious liquor.

Five Bob whimpered, and the old shepherd, though used, as one living alone in the bush must necessarily be, to the weird and dismal, felt the icy breath of fear at his heart.

He reached hastily for his old shot-gun, and went out to investigate. He walked round the hut several times and examined the roof on all sides, but saw nothing. Brummy appeared to be in the same position.


text:
Page:Sea and River-side Rambles in Victoria.djvu/131

112 snouted Bandicoot (Perameles nasuta), climbs about the fallen timber. We have a specimen before us as we write; it measures from the tip of the snout to the end of the tail 16 inches, the tail itself being 2 inches. Iris very dark brown, upper parts of the body dark grey, the lower white, the tail slightly hairy, certainly not scaly, as some writers state (at least in the individual before us), head very long, with slender naked muzzle; fore feet with five toes, the two middle very long, with long claws, the third much shorter, and two clawless rudimentary ones placed some distance behind the others. The hind foot has four toes, the middle one remarkably long, those on each side being only half the length, and the fourth some way back, also rudimentary. One of the claws on the side toe is bifid. We have taken the young from the pouch about September, at which time also the Flying Squirrel breeds.

The Natives avow that the Koala, (Phascolarctos cinereus;) never drinks water, and as we have elsewhere remarked, we are inclined to believe that not only it, but all the animals of this country can subsist for a considerable time without; yet in confinement we have frequently seen it thrust its head into a pan of water, probably to supply the moisture which it missed in the dry long gathered gum stalks and leaves which formed its food,—when these were not fresh, the stems were always devoured first, but when new and moist the leaves were eaten with infinite relish. There always appears to us something cruel in keeping any animal of this kind in confinement, where not only it is deprived of its requisite food, but is unable to follow


text:
Page:Our New Zealand Cousins.djvu/186

 the station. We are in Dunedin. Hey! for the comforts and luxuries of the Grand Hotel; and, as we are very tired, we hurry off to bed. Dunedin is worthy of a chapter to itself, and we will not pause now, but continue our trip to the lakes, and return to Dunedin later on.

Leaving the straggling station, the city opens out towards the sea, at Ocean Beach. A great flat of reclaimed land is here being rapidly built upon, and at Caversham there are many good shops, and nice houses.

Forbury Fort, one of the new defences, is rapidly approaching completion, and will protect the city from any bombardment by a hostile cruiser seaward. Above the fort the most prominent landmark is the stately mansion of Mr. E. B. Cargill, whose father was one of the pioneers of Otago, and founders of Dunedin. A monument to his memory graces the great space in the centre of the city. We dash rapidly, with a shrill scream from the engine, through a long tunnel, and on the farther side come in view of the numerous buildings of the New Zealand Drug and Chemical Works. The country around consists of open grassy downs, and at the foot of a high conical wooded hill nestles the neat little village of Burnside. It is a typical Otago village. There is a very pretty church, a large tannery, a fellmongery, a wool mill, with its long flume or water-race on high trestles, carrying water to the noisy, sparkling wheel. All the valleys

title: Page:Our New Zealand Cousins.djvu/186


text:
Page:The Irish in Australia.djvu/250

 fortune of studying for the priesthood under the famous theologian and controversialist, Dr. Doyle, more widely known under his episcopal initials "J. K. L." Ordained in 1815, Father Therry was appointed to a curacy in his native city of Cork, and it was there he met the returned Archpriest O'Flinn, the victim of governmental intolerance at the antipodes. This memorable meeting was the turning-point in the young priest's career. He listened with intense interest to the sad account of oppression and cruel wrongs in a faraway land, and his sympathies were powerfully excited on behalf of his suffering countrymen in Australia, whom he pictured in his mind as holding out their hands, like the vision of St. Patrick of old, and crying out in piteous accents, "Come and abide with us!" Having got the consent of his bishop, and being provided with the necessary credentials from the Imperial Government, the devoted missionary, in company with his colleague. Father Conolly, sailed from the Cove of Cork in the ship "Janus" on December 5th, 1819. They arrived safely in Sydney Harbour at the beginning of May, and presented their credentials to General Macquarie, the same governor who had behaved so badly towards Archpriest O'Flinn. Commissioned as they were by the home authorities, the governor had no option but to receive and recognise Fathers Therry and Conolly, but he showed that his prejudices were as strong as ever by sending them a series of dictatorial written instructions for their guidance. The two newly-arrived priests were warned on their peril "not to try to make converts from the members of the Church of England or from Protestants in general." They were enjoined not to celebrate Mass publicly "except on Sundays and the holidays of the Church of England." But the most outrageous restriction of all was that Fathers Therry and Conolly" were

title: Page:The Irish in Australia.djvu/250


text:
Page:While the Billy Boils, 1913.djvu/267

 At last, persuading himself that the noise was caused by 'possums or the wind, the old man went inside, boiled his billy; and after composing his nerves somewhat with a light supper and a meditative smoke, retired for the night. He was aroused several times before midnight by the same mysterious sound overhead, but, though he rose and examined the roof on each occasion by the light of the rising moon, he discovered nothing.

At last he determined to sit up and watch until daybreak, and for this purpose took up a position on a log a short distance from the hut, with his gun laid in readiness across his knee.

After watching for about an hour, he saw a black object coming over the ridge-pole. He grabbed his gun and fired. The thing disappeared. He ran round to the other side of the hut, and there was a great black iguana in violent convulsions on the ground.

Then the old man saw it all. 'The thunderin' jumpt-up thing has been a-havin' o' me,' he exclaimed. 'The same cuss-o'-God wretch has a-follered me 'ome, an' has been a-havin' its Christmas dinner off of Brummy, an' a-hauntin' o' me into the bargain, the jumpt-up tinker!'

As there was no one by whom he could send a message to the station, and the old man dared not leave the sheep and go himself, he determined to bury the body the next afternoon, reflecting that the authorities could disinter it for inquest if they pleased.

So he brought the sheep home early, and made arrangements for the burial by measuring the outer casing of Brummy and digging a hole according to those dimensions.


text:
Page:Our New Zealand Cousins.djvu/187

 and slopes around are dotted with bright houses. A sluggish creek meanders through the marshy reaches of the lower valley, broadening as it goes, till near the beach it widens into a lake, which gleams like silver in the morning rays.

Another long tunnel leads us now into a richly cultivated valley with numerous farms, the thin scraping of snow on the low-lying hills betokening that winter is at hand.

In this valley lies Mossgiel. Its tweed factory is favourably known all over Australasia, and the products of its looms have achieved a reputation for excellence, equal in its way to those of the famous West of England fabrics. Beyond the tidy trim-looking village rise bold hills, white with their winter vestments. The whole scene, with its snug farms, peaceful herds, clean-cut stubble, trim hedge-rows, and smiling village in the plain, and the white solitary grandeur of the lone silent mountains beyond, affords one of those sharp enjoyable contrasts which are so characteristic of New Zealand scenery.

As we move still further south, evidences of the abnormal rigour of an exceptionally early and severe snowstorm are everywhere apparent. The valleys are all flooded. Shattered trees with broken branches cumbering the ground, give the orchards a mournful look. The very flax and raupo clumps have been broken and flattened, and in many straths the stooks are rotting in the sodden fields. And this is only the early part of May.

title: Page:Our New Zealand Cousins.djvu/187


text:
Page:Sea and River-side Rambles in Victoria.djvu/132

113 its natural habits and instincts, and what food it does get, is doled out at prolonged and irregular intervals, by the hand of some child to whom it has been given as a pet. They are remarkably fond of being noticed, and when scratched on the head, utter a low sort of growl, expressive of their gratification.

Singularly lazy is this creature in all its movements, crawling from bough to bough, with its young one grotesquely holding on to its neck, and even when fired at, it scarcely deigns to notice, certainly does not attempt to evade the danger.

Down the river but a few hundred yards, and we reach a pretty well timbered hillock, which is a favourite resort for holiday folk, who pic-nic here on festive days. We notice shells of the Oyster in abundance, which has evidently existed here in former days; but no trace of any beds can now be discovered by the enterprising fishermen who reside here about, and on the stones we get fine specimens of the Acorn shell or Balanus; this belongs not to the Mollusca or true shell fish, but to a class called Cirrhipeda, from their cirrhi or arms, the true position of which in the Natural Kingdom has awakened much discussion. In this Balanus so called from the Greek balanos (an acorn,) you will observe that the shell is sessile, being firmly attached by its base, and consisting of six different pieces or valves, varying much in size, but forming a hollow cone: in the opening of this cone are four other valves which serve as an operculum or covering;—wait until the tide returns and you will see issuing from an aperture formed by the opening of two of these valves, the most beautiful plume of feathery


text:
Page:The Irish in Australia.djvu/251

 not to interfere with the religious instruction of the Catholic children in the orphan schools, all the inmates of which are to be instructed in the faith and doctrines of the Church of England." Father Therry never lost an opportunity of protesting with all his might against this tyrannical and infamous decree. In punishment of his pertinacity, he was once suspended from his clerical office by the government for a considerable period, and it was only after an appeal to the Imperial authorities that he was reinstated. It is needless to say that the indomitable priest triumphed eventually, and vindicated the right of the Catholic Church to the spiritual control and training of her own children.

Soon after their arrival, the two priests resolved to separate in order that they might achieve a maximum of good. Father Conolly taking charge of the growing settlement in Van Diemen's Land in the far south, whilst Father Therry remained in the parent settlement at Sydney. He lost no time in setting about the erection of a suitable church, for, up to that time, the Catholic population of Sydney, though numbering 10,000, had no ecclesiastical edifice they could call their own. So much success attended his exertions that, in the year after his arrival in the colony, the foundation-stone of the old St. Mary's Cathedral—the precursor of the present noble structure—was laid amidst great congratulations and rejoicings. For five long years did Father Therry labour devotedly, without the assistance of a brother priest, amongst the Catholics of the settled districts of New South Wales. Many are the anecdotes related of his uncompromising zeal, energy, and determination in the discharge of his sacred duties. Mr. Bonwick records that on one occasion the good priest received a message that a convict, who had been sentenced to death,

title: Page:The Irish in Australia.djvu/251


text:
Page:While the Billy Boils, 1913.djvu/268

 'That 'minds me,' he said, 'I never rightly knowed Brummy's religion, blest if ever I did. Howsomenever, there's one thing sartin―none o' them theer pianer-fingered parsons is a-goin' ter take the trouble ter travel out inter this God-forgotten part to hold sarvice over him, seein' as how his last cheque's blued. But, as I've got the fun'ral arrangements all in me own hands, I'll do jestice to it, and see that Brummy has a good comfortable buryin'―and more's unpossible.'

'It's time yer turned in Brum,' he said, lifting the body down.

He carried it to the grave and dropped it into one corner like a post. He arranged the bark so as to cover the face, and, by means of a piece of clothes line, lowered the body to a horizontal position. Then he threw in an armful of gum leaves, and then, very reluctantly, took the shovel and dropped in a few shovelfuls of earth.

'An' this is the last of Brummy,' he said, leaning on his spade and looking away over the tops of the ragged gums on the distant range.

This reflection seemed to engender a flood of memories, in which the old man became absorbed. He leaned heavily upon his spade and thought.

'Arter all,' he murmured sadly. 'Arter all―it were Brummy.'

'Brummy,' he said at last, 'it's all over now; nothin' matters now―nothin' didn't ever matter, nor―nor don't. You uster say as how it 'ud be all right termorrer' (pause); 'termorrer's come, Brummy―come fur you―it ain't come fur me yet, but―it's a-comin''


text:
Page:Sea and River-side Rambles in Victoria.djvu/133

114 like cirrhi, which are so densely covered with hairs that the minutest thing cannot pass through them. "Poor unthinking wight," remarks Gosse, "whoever he may be, Infusory, or Annelid, or Cypris, or germ of Sponge, that meets the clutch of those enclosing fingers! The bristles that pass across the interspaces, locking into each other, shut out all chance of escape; the living net is whipped in, the valves close over the orifice, and the ill-fated wretch presently finds himself in the cavernous maw of the hungry Cirrhiped." And there is an allied genus which may be found shorewards—the common Barnacle, adhering by its long flexible and contractile peduncle to pieces of timber, bottles, &c.; its shell which is milk-white, is almost flat and composed of five pieces, two of which on each side are triangular, with an elongated piece at the back; the cirrhi in them are very like. those of the Balanus, being rolled and unrolled with such rapidity that a whirlpool is formed into which minute objects are drawn and captured. This Barnacle is interesting, as having been the subject of an egregious error on the part of some of our old Naturalists, who gave it the name of Anatifera, from an idea that the Barnacle Goose (Anas erythopus-Penn.) was produced from it,—old Gerrard so mentions it in his Herbal, and figures it in all its stages from the shell to the bird. Aldrovandus too gives a quaint picture of the Barnacles hanging from a tree, and the "Goslings hatched on trees," swimming about under the shade thereof, with this superscription.

A little picturesque island next meets the eye, endeared to many from its having been chosen as a


text:
Page:Our New Zealand Cousins.djvu/188

 Now we skirt Lake Waihola, generally a clear shallow bed of water, averaging a depth of about twelve feet. It is now muddy and turbid, and swollen with the floods from a branch of the Taieri River, which flows into it. A piercing wind comes whistling over the Taieri plains, and lashes the lake into mimic mountains.

Oh, could I but transport this wealth of water to poor drought-smitten Australia. "Water, water, everywhere" here. Lakes, streams, standing pools. Great shallow meres, with crowds of wild ducks, stocks standing in water in many of the fields. The bare brown hills, and cheerless stubbles, all dank and sodden with the plashing rain. All the noses in the carriages are blue. Our feet feel like lead, and it is very hard, indeed, to resist the depressing influence of the cold.

At and about Stirling there is a lakelet in every hollow, and the snow is lying very low down on the hills. Near by, at Kaitangata, there are some rather famous coal-mines, which are being vigorously opened out and worked.

We are now in the Clutha district. All the settlers are Scotch here, with but a few exceptions. They are deep-chested, big-headed, ruddy-faced people. Kindly hearted and keenly intelligent, they are the right stamp of men to found a noble nation.

The Clutha country is prettily diversified and more wooded than the long ranges of dun hills and undulating slopes we have been passing hitherto. The Clutha River is a broad stream,

title: Page:Our New Zealand Cousins.djvu/188


text:
Page:While the Billy Boils, 1913.djvu/269

 He threw in some more earth.

'Yer don't remember, Brummy, an' mebbe yer don't want to remember―I don't want to remember―but―well, but, yer see that's where yer got the pull on me.'

He shovelled in some more earth and paused again.

The dog rose, with ears erect, and looked anxiously first at his master and then into the grave.

'Theer oughter be somethin' sed,' muttered the old man; ''tain't right to put 'im under like a dog. There oughter be some sort o' sarmin.' He sighed heavily in the listening silence that followed this remark and proceeded with his work. He filled the grave to the brim this time, and fashioned the mound carefully with his spade. Once or twice he muttered the words, 'I am the rassaraction.' He was evidently trying to remember, as he laid the tools quietly aside, and stood at the head of the grave, the something that ought to be said. He removed his hat, placed it carefully on the grass, held his hands out from his sides and a little to the front, drew a long deep breath, and said with a solemnity that greatly disturbed Five Bob, 'Hashes ter hashes, dus ter dus, Brummy,―an'―an' in hopes of a great an' gerlorious rassaraction!'

He sat down on a log near by, rested his elbows on his knees and passed his hand wearily over his forehead―but only as one who was tired and felt the heat; and presently he rose, took up the tools and walked back to the hut.

And the sun sank again on the grand Australian bush―the nurse and tutor of eccentric minds, the home of the weird, and of much that is different from things in other lands.


text:
Page:Sea and River-side Rambles in Victoria.djvu/134

115 burial site in early days for near relatives. Further on, after passing some lovely spots in the bends of the stream, overhung cypress-like with the drooping foliage of Casuarinæ, we arrive at Bethungall, where reside more hospitable friends, to whom we never fail to pay our respects in passing, and from this point it is an easy walk to the "Caves" on the coast, alluded to at page 33. Herds of Wallabies frequent this neighbourhood, and even now the Emu is not unfrequently met with, finding abundance of food in the young shoots of the Brake Fern (Pteris esculenta.) On the high banks here, where flourish some gay flowering plants, the Fish-hawk rears its young, and the tracks of the Native Cat are everywhere conspicuous. The Cormorant (Phalacrocorax leucogaster) with its olive brown plumage and white breast, mopes on any snag which may rise out of the water, taking flight for a few yards as our boat disturbs him, but anon perching again the moment all is quiet. The pretty Night or Nankeen Heron, the Blue Crane, and also the White Egret are met with here.

At last, having been steadily sticking to our oars for a few minutes, we catch sight of—

but before we reach it, let us rest awhile and light our pipes, as the air blows keenly in from the coast;—here is a spot for the Naturalist!! Look out on the mud flats yonder, there is a splendid Ibis picking its steps carefully, and keeping a sharp look out for any small Crustacea which fall in its way,—some noble Pelicans too with well crammed pouches we see,—in the shallow


text:
Page:Our New Zealand Cousins.djvu/189

 swift and brown with flood. The town of Balclutha is unhappily situated on a flat, which is liable to inundations from the river. Four years ago the bridge was washed away. The churches are very ornamental, and form a noticeable feature here, as indeed they do in every settlement in Otago. The early fathers evidently did "not forsake the assembling of themselves together as the manner of some is."

A few more miles, and we alight at a quiet little wayside station, where we are hospitably met by the minister of the parish, a younger brother, whom I have not seen for several years. We are soon snugly ensconced in the cosy little country manse, and the evening is devoted to asking and answering such questions as the reader can well imagine embrace a wide range of subjects.

I spent the greater part of a pleasant week with the good young minister and his comely, buxom wife and bonny black-eyed bairnie. The quiet, homely atmosphere of the manse, the hearty greetings of the kindly, simple country folks; the peace and quiet of the secluded "pairish" were inexpressively grateful, after the hurry and bustle of city life; and yet a little of such life would go a long way with me. A country pastor's life is no bed of roses in the colonies. The roads in winter are shockingly bad. The parish generally is of great extent, and the mere physical labour involved, in faithfully discharging pastoral duties, such as ministering to the sick and sorrowing, would tax severely the energies of a strong, robust

title: Page:Our New Zealand Cousins.djvu/189


text:
Page:Our New Zealand Cousins.djvu/190

 man. He has to preach three times on Sundays, in three different centres, and must keep up his studies if he is to-be a faithful and successful minister. He is often called upon to undertake duties outside his own parish, and the cares of schools, church organizations, presbytery and synod meetings, are exacting and incessant. He must take an active part in all social movements in his neighbourhood, and beside his own immediate daily troubles, must have a ready ear and sympathizing heart for every tale of sorrow or distress that may be brought to him. With the education and tastes of a gentleman, he must be ever among the people—of the people—a ministering, comforting source of strength and enlightenment to his people, reflecting the temper and character of the Master whose servant he is. And, alas! how often is he fated to have his motives misinterpreted; his best and purest intentions misrepresented; his brightest and holiest aspirations sneered at and maligned. The wonder is that so many highly cultured, sensitive men are found for the office of the ministry, when worldly callings offer so much more tempting and tangible inducements.

It was peculiarly gratifying to me to see the cordial relations that existed between my good young brother and his flock. The stipend of an Otago clergyman is but 220l. a year, no more than the salary of a good clerk; but this sordid view of their position does not present itself to the young fellows I was privileged to meet, and

title: Page:Our New Zealand Cousins.djvu/190


text:
Page:Our New Zealand Cousins.djvu/191

 the kindly regard and affectionate esteem of the farmers and their young folks are immeasurably above all money value. The relations subsisting between people and pastor were much more like the old home life than anything I had yet seen in the Australian colonies.

A great spiritual work is being done in these remote little country places. A really pretty new church had been built in the south half of this parish, and opened free of debt. The young people especially had been wakened up to a lively interest in the higher life, and both by precept and example the young ministers I met in this part of New Zealand were approving themselves "good workmen, needing not to be ashamed." They take an active, intelligent part in secular matters, as well as sacred, and are a credit to the good old true blue Presbyterian stock.

A good impulse, for instance, had been given to tree-planting in the parish, the minister having set the example by adorning the bare spaces round the manse and church; but many other good impulses were working far beneath the surface, and producing good fruits of unselfish acts and purer lives.

Amid all the crudities and falsities of modern infidelity, the sneerings and scoffings of indifferentists, and contemptuous isolation of Pharisaic sectarians, it was positively refreshing to get into this warm atmosphere of Christian-loving regard for each other between pastor and flock, and I can never forget the heartiness of the welcome

title: Page:Our New Zealand Cousins.djvu/191


text:
Page:Our New Zealand Cousins.djvu/192

 I received from these shrewd yet simple farmers, just because I was the brother of their minister.

The roads were awful, as I have said, but equestrianism is the favourite mode of progression here. Every youngster has his horse, and is usually followed by a motley retinue of dogs, who wage incessant vendetta against the ubiquitous rabbits. Ploughing was general over all the downs. Potatoes were being dug up, and stored in winter pits. Occasionally the smoke from a peripatetic threshing-machine would darken the air round some busy farm, and at times can be noticed another less pleasing smoke, as some slovenly farmer adopts the wasteful agency of fire to get rid of his surplus straw. Frequent cropping of the same cereal, either oats or wheat without rotation, has produced its inevitable result in some places here, as it will elsewhere; but why farmers anywhere will disregard the plain teachings of experience and common sense, goes beyond my comprehension. The straw which is so foolishly burnt might be used in an open courtyard to give comfort and warmth to the farm animals in winter. It could be cut up into chaff and mixed with chopped roots and a little salt, and in this way form a valuable fodder. Mixed with lime and earth, and allowed to rot, it forms a valuable fertilizer. But to burn it is a sinful waste, and I was surprised that douce, steady, thrifty Scotchmen should adopt such an insane method with so valuable a material.

title: Page:Our New Zealand Cousins.djvu/192


text:
Page:Sea and River-side Rambles in Victoria.djvu/135

116 water are myriads of the long turreted shell Cerithium, Trochi, and others, and where the stream deepens there is a fine Black Swan (Cygnus atratus) floating majestically along. Certainly no "rara avis" is this bird in Victoria, inhabiting all the Western lagoons in flocks, varying from two to six or probably more—they generally move from one place to another at night, uttering most discordant cries as they fly. Bishop Stanley in his "History of British Birds," p. 393, remarks that although this bird cannot dive, it contrives to immerse itself so deep in the water, as to render its body nearly invisible, and thus avoid detection.

The boat-house of the "Faugh-a-ballagh" Club, reminds us of happy days we have spent with its jovial crew on this stream, and it is worth while to land here to stroll through the Cemetery which is so well cared for,—no ostentation whatever in laying out the grounds, but a quiet rural simplicity pervading everything connected with it, and wild flowers springing up spontaneously to deck the graves of those lying there.

Next we come to the Fisherman's hut and punt;—let us rest again on our oars, and see the result of his haul. Here are Bream, Mullet, Salmon Trout, and a stray Herring (which fish is generally taken with a fly higher up the stream), in plenty surely to augur well for the success of any Fishing Company properly organised. We observe specimens of Paludina, or Marsh Shell: and in flower the pretty Myoporum, tightly embraced by the dodder-like Cassytha. We have a specimen of Trigla, or Gurnard, captured here some few years since, which if not identical with the


text:
Page:Our New Zealand Cousins.djvu/193

 The University of Otago has recently taken a new departure in a most sensible and practical direction, in sending travelling professors to lecture to the mining population on the chemistry and technology of rocks, ores, &c. They might well enlarge their field, and give lectures to farmers on chemistry of soils, rotation of crops, adaptations of mechanics to farming processes, and on other subjects of practical importance to farmers.

But of this more anon.

We left the peaceful manse of Warepa with many regrets, and passing through a bare pastoral and agricultural country, with little of interest in the scenery, reached Gore, the bustling little town where the Waimea cross-roads railway branches off through the fertile but bare Waimea plains, to join the Lakes line at Lumsden.

All the burns and streams in this part of the country are well stocked with trout, and in the season this is quite an angler's paradise. The Mataura River, a stream of some magnitude, traverses the Waimea plains, and runs past Gore. It is full of trout. The price of a fishing licence is twenty shillings for the season.

Gore, eighteen years ago, had not even a house to boast of. It was only a police camp, and a few canvas tents constituted the township. It is now the busy centre of a fine farming district. It has a great saw-mill, a flour-mill or two, and some capital stores, hotels, banks, and other buildings lining its well-laid-out streets.

It lies at the mouth of the wide Waimea Valley.

title: Page:Our New Zealand Cousins.djvu/193


text:
Page:Our New Zealand Cousins.djvu/194

 On both sides we see stretching away to the far horizon, like gleaming barriers of marble, tier on tier, terrace on terrace, peak on pinnacle, and pinnacle on peak, of the cold, glittering, alpine Cordilleras, every point being glorified by the slanting rays of a declining sun, glinting down from between bars of gold and amber and purple, until at length he sinks suddenly behind a Sierra, and the valley is rapidly enswathed in the sombre veil of a wintry night.

Intensely cold, and very hungry and weary, we bowl along through the darkness; and at length, about ten o'clock, are rejoiced to see the red lights of the Mountaineer gleaming on the waters of Lake Wakatipu as she floats alongside the wooden wharf at Kingston.

title: Page:Our New Zealand Cousins.djvu/194


text: Our New Zealand Cousins/Chapter 13

title: Our New Zealand Cousins/Chapter 13


text:
Author:Edward Stanley

 * Edward George Geoffrey Smith Stanley (1799-1869), 14th Earl of Derby
 * Edward Henry Stanley (1826–1893), 15th Earl of Derby
 * Edward Stanley (1779-1849), Bishop of Norwich
 * Edward Stanley (1793-1862), author of books on surgery, twice President of the Royal College of Surgeons of England

title: Author:Edward Stanley


text:
User:Thhist

Hi, I'm Thhist. You can find me at the English Wikipedia.

I have added the following texts to Wikisource:
 * Harald Hardrada in the Strategikon of Kekaumenos (my translation)

title: User:Thhist


text:
Author:Edward Stanley (1779-1849)

Works

 * A Familiar History of Birds

title: Author:Edward Stanley (1779-1849)


text:
Author talk:Mary Alice Marshall

Obituary
Miss Mary Alice Marshall, a member of the Society since 1906 and its Vice-president from 1920 to 1924 inclusive, died in Cambridge. Mass., March 29, 1925. Marshall's home from early childhood was in the village of Still River, a part of the town of Harvard, Mass. It was a stimulating atmosphere in which she grew up, where the parents were alive to all beauty in nature and to the best thought of their time; where books and flowers abounded and a compound microscope stood ready for use; and where children were trained to observe carefully and describe accurately what they saw.

After her schooling was over, she spent a few years in teaching, and later was a proof-reader in the office of the Manchester, N. H., Mirror. This work she left because of her mother's failing health, and for many years was kept at the old home, caring for both parents. Always she studied the life of the fields and woods within her reach; and she was a good gardener. But what those who knew her will remember, more than what she did, is that she was the finest, sanest, most loyal friend, and that Emerson's phrase about one "who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude" seemed made for her.

Miss Marshall's herbarium, consisting largely of local ferns collected by herself and containing the interesting specimens of proliferous ebony spleenwort from the basement of a school building which she once described in the, was bequeathed by her to the Society. — American Fern Journal, Vol. 15.

title: Author talk:Mary Alice Marshall


text:
Page:Historical Essays and Studies.djvu/356

 XII

GERMAN SCHOOLS OF HISTORY

once lamented that there were no German historians in his time worthy of the name; and now M. Darmesteter tells us that they are ahead of other nations by twenty years. A perplexed person might read Professor Wegele's Deutsche Historiographie without being quite sure which is right. Nine-tenths of his volume are devoted to the brave men who lived before Agamemnon, and the chapter on the rise of historical science, the only one which is meant for mankind, begins at page 975, and is the last. Before this century the Germans had scarcely reached the common level even in the storage of erudition. Their provincial histories could not be compared with those of Burgundy, of Brittany, or of Languedoc; they had nothing equal to the Annals of Bologna or of Milan, to Mamachi's Life of Saint Dominic, or even to Secousse's Charles of Navarre. History was subordinate to other things, to divinity, philosophy, and law; and the story worth telling would be the process of emancipation by which the servant of many masters rose to be a master over them, and having become a law to itself imposed it on others. The beginning was made by Niebuhr, and none of those who followed and strengthened the powerful impulse which he gave rival the best of their countrymen in perspicuity and grace.

When Germans assert that their real supremacy rests with their historians, they mean it in the sense of Bentley 344


text:
Page:Historical Essays and Studies.djvu/357

Rh and Colebrooke, not of Machiavelli and Saint-Simon, in the sense in which the Bishop of Durham and Sir Henry Maine take the lead in England, the sense in which M. Fustel de Coulanges calls history the most arduous of the sciences. A famous scholar, enumerating the models of historical excellence, named Humboldt, Savigny, Grimm, and Ritter, not one of whom had ever written history proper, in the common, classical, literary use of the term.

The better part of the ground has been occupied already by those who have celebrated German achievement in other branches of literature. Neander, Böckh, Baur, Schwegler, Lassen have their record elsewhere. Excepting Niebuhr and Ranke, Professor Wegele has had to deprive himself of his best materials. The division of labour removes almost every man who was an historian and something more.

Historical writing was old, but historical thinking was new in Germany when it sprang from the shock of the French Revolution. Condemnation of history had been the strongest plank in the platform of 1789. The evils exposed in the cahiers were not accidents of the age, but the bequest of malignant forces at work for centuries. Irresponsible power, the caprice of war, slavery, intolerance, arbitrary arrest, the deadly prison, the inhuman aggravation of the pains of death, had been the steady produce of elaborate design. The men who struck at the misery inflicted by traditional authority believed no dogma so firmly as that of the folly of their ancestors. The supreme object of their striving was to depose and to degrade a tyrant who, at his best, was blind and ignorant and cruel, and who, moreover, was dead. Their sternest resolve was that generations of astrologers, sorcerers, and torturers, of legislators unable to read, of sovereigns only able to kill, that the wisdom of the code noir and the statute book of George II. should not be suffered to reign over Watt and Hunter, over Lavoisier and Laplace, Smith and Kant; and the most vigorous of the revolutionary


text:
Page:Narrativeavoyag01wilsgoog.djvu/353

Rh

title: Page:Narrativeavoyag01wilsgoog.djvu/353


text:
Page:Historical Essays and Studies.djvu/358

346 thinkers, Jefferson and Sieyès, studied both to banish the past and to prevent the present from again overshadowing the future. It was under this flag that the armies conquered Germany, destroying and transforming, and left no institution standing but the monarchy of Frederic the Great.

The romantic reaction which began with the invasion of 1794 was the revolt of outraged history. The nation fortified itself against the new ideas by calling up the old, and made the ages of faith and of imagination a defence from the age of reason. Whereas the pagan Renaissance was the artificial resurrection of a world long buried, the romantic Renaissance revived the natural order and restored the broken links from end to end. It inculcated sympathy with what is past, unlovable, indefensible, especially with the age of twilight and scenes favourable to the faculties which the calculators despised. The romantic writers relieved present need with all the abounding treasure of other times, subjecting thereby the will and the conscience of the living to the will and conscience of the dead. Their lasting influence was out of proportion to their immediate performance. They were weak because they wanted strictness and accuracy, and never perceived that the Revolution was itself historic, having roots that could be profitably traced far back in the ages. But they were strong by the recovery of lost knowledge, and by making it possible to understand, to appreciate, and even to admire things which the judgment of rationalism condemned in the mass of worthless and indiscriminate error. They trifled for a time with fancy, but they doubled the horizon of Europe. They admitted India to an equality with Greece, mediæval Rome with classical; and the thoughts they set in motion produced Creuzer's Comparative Mythology and Bopp's Conjugations, Grimm's enthusiasm for the liberty and belief of Odin's worshippers, and Otfried Müller's zeal for the factor of race.

As long as the romantics were a literary school, running æsthetical canons in opposition to Goethe, they


text:
Page:Lindigo.djvu/140

140 shot his horse through the heart, wishing to take Melrose alive, who, on coming to earth with his horse, got entrapped, having one leg fast under the carcase.

Charlie sprung from his saddle to disarm him, but on approaching him, received the other charge in his left side, which made him stagger, but the ball fortunately glanced off his powder flask, which he carried in the breast pocket of his coat. "Shoot me, you villain, you have a charmed life," roared the disappointed bushranger; but his captor refused the demand, and secured him on the spot.

The combat between the other two did not last so long, for on exchanging shots, Williams fell wounded, and became an easy captive to his active antagonist.

A party of troopers who were scouring the neighbourhood, through the information of Mr. Ramsey, were attracted by the firing, and made for the spot, when the bushrangers were handed over to their charge.

On Charlie's return to Mr. Forbes', a scene presented itself which was heartrending to behold. Miss Forbes, who a short time before was in the height of happiness, was now the picture of despair as she lay upon her couch. The family, who had been congratulating her so recently, were now bewailing her approaching end in the noontide of her youth and beauty, and heaping execrations on the head of the destroyer of their peace. The clergyman, who had come to solemnise her marriage, was now engaged in administering to her dying moments.

On seeing Charlie return, she feebly beckoned to him; when he approached her, she whispered in his ear, "you have not taken his life?" Charlie told her that he had not, but that he had secured him. She then replied—"Thanks, I shall now die happy. I feared that you, above all others, should stain your hands with his blood, since you were the saviour of our family from disgrace; but alas! you are unable to save my life, which is as well, I hope. Farewell, may your life be longer and happier than mine." She then called around to her the weeping family, and after an affecting adieu, breathed her last.

The excitement manifested on the apprehension and trial of the bushrangers had never been equalled in the

title: Page:Lindigo.djvu/140


text: Lindigo, the White Woman/Chapter 18

title: Lindigo, the White Woman/Chapter 18


text:
Page:Historical Essays and Studies.djvu/359

Rh remained unconscious of the active principle within. Dante and Calderon, Nibelungen and Sakuntala, were not so near the core as Burke's maxim that wisdom and religion dictate that we should follow events, and not attempt to lead, much less to force them. When their ideas came to be taken up by reasoners, they were found to involve a system of scientific definitions charged with interminable consequences. Their philosopher was Schelling, who married Schlegel's wife, and who, condensing the vapour of the school into something like solid propositions, taught that the State does not exist for purposes of men, and is not governed by laws of their devising, but by the cosmic force above.

Upon this aphorism, Savigny, the jurist of the party, developed the historic method of jurisprudence. The sovereign legislator is not the government, but the nation. Law, like language, proceeds from its primitive nature and its experience and is part of its identity. The deliberations of lawgiving consist in ascertaining not what is best, but what is consistent with usage. Laws are found, not made, for the treatment adapted to successive emergencies is already latent in the public conscience, and must be evolved from precedent. Laws and constitutions expand by sustenance drawn from the constant and original spring; the force preparing the future is the same that made the past, and the function of the jurist is to trace and to obey it faithfully, without attempting to explain it away.

Learning and eloquence long effectually concealed the logical effect of this doctrine. It assorted so well with the spirit of the age that it predominated for half a century against Bentham, and Hegel, and the year 1848, and is yielding slowly to the keener dialectics and deeper philosophy of Ihering. It is the strongest of all the agencies that have directed German effort towards history, viewed as a remedy for the eighteenth century and the malady of vain speculation. When Laboulaye described it as a school that had no masters in France and only one disciple, who was himself, it was controlling Germany.


text:
Page:Historical Essays and Studies.djvu/360

348 In the mind of Savigny and his followers their doctrine made for progress and independence, but not for liberty. The notion that each generation of men is powerless over its own fortunes, and receives them subject to inherited conditions, combined well with the rooted conservatism of the country. But it possessed that property of the works of genius, that it could be carried out in opposite directions. If the nation is the source of law, it is reasonable to infer that national consent is a normal element in legislation, and that the State ought legitimately to take its limits from the nation. Niebuhr, in unguarded moments, drew one of these inferences, and Dahlmann the other. And it came to pass that the historical school, having abolished the law of nature which was the motive of 1789, instituted the law of nationality, which became the motive of 1848.

Bishop Stubbs informs us that history is likely to make men wise, and is sure to make them sad. In the long chapter of the melancholy historians no figure is more tragic than Niebuhr, the politician, as Savigny was the civilian, of the school. He had flashes of admiration for the English Government as it appeared under Eldonian auspices; but when the world went off the ancient ways, he lost his temper and his spirits, and his end was a warning to weaker men to keep their studies apart from the hopes and fears of life. Had he survived, he would have been what Radowitz became, the king's intimate adviser. The inflexible qualities which repelled his colleagues and spoilt him for a statesman fitted him for a critical historian. His passion for truthfulness was such that he defied Stein to show that he had ever subscribed himself the obedient servant of a man he did not respect. With his high notions there was no writer whom he could trust, and neither ancient nor modern veracity could stand before him.

The first edition of his Roman History, afterwards repudiated, began the evolution of historic science. It exhibited the theory that truth is not buried underneath tradition—that, although the Romans had forgotten the


text:
Page:Historical Essays and Studies.djvu/361

Rh early state of their institutions, the processes of history are so well defined that it is possible to work back from the known to the unknown, from effect to cause, and so to recover the unrecorded past. This was the visible sign of the new doctrine of fixed lines, invariable laws, and overruled action of men. It indicated a mode of certainty which did not depend on the credit of historians. When they have been tested to the breaking-point, the critic comes in and begins his proper work. The right sphere of these operations is the primitive obscurity. They could not flourish in the daylight, and Niebuhr never showed that he knew how to apply them to events and characters told by contemporaries. When he filled the meagre outline of Manlius by transferring to him the character of Mirabeau, he gave the example which Stanley followed when he put Lord Shaftesbury into the Reformation, and Mr. Golightly into the Jewish monarchy. The weighty volumes, crowded with doubtful but suggestive matter, won so little popular success that he laid them by for many years. When he rewrote them, under the spur of contradiction, and in the midst of a vigorous intellectual movement which was partly his work, they found less favour than the finished productions of Savigny. The historical school penetrated everywhere and remodelled every branch of legal study excepting ecclesiastical and comparative law, which resisted the national principle. But the work of Niebuhr's life stood still. There was a temporary reaction in favour of Roman views of Roman history;and he had been dead for twenty years before he began to be superseded by innovators bolder and better appointed than himself. Schwegler's early death deprived Germany of the one man who combined real philosophic talent with the rarest critical faculty. Mommsen, whose book was begun at the same time as Schwegler's, realised that union of qualities which Macaulay described when he said that Niebuhr would have been the first writer of his time if his talent for communicating truths had borne any proportion to his talent for investigating them.


text: Page:Outlines of European History.djvu/242


text: Page:Outlines of European History.djvu/276


text: Page:Outlines of European History.djvu/377


text: Page:Outlines of European History.djvu/789


text: Page:Outlines of European History.djvu/805


text: Page:Outlines of European History.djvu/808


text: Page:Outlines of European History.djvu/810


text: Page:Outlines of European History.djvu/480


text: Page:Outlines of European History.djvu/648


text: Page:Outlines of European History.djvu/687


text: Page:Outlines of European History.djvu/690


text: Page:Outlines of European History.djvu/671


text: Page:Outlines of European History.djvu/674


text: Page:Outlines of European History.djvu/807


text: Page:Outlines of European History.djvu/806


text: Page:Outlines of European History.djvu/791


text: Page:Outlines of European History.djvu/790


text: Page:Outlines of European History.djvu/546


text: Page:Outlines of European History.djvu/672


text: Page:Outlines of European History.djvu/518


text: Page:Outlines of European History.djvu/497


text: Page:Outlines of European History.djvu/496


text: Page:Outlines of European History.djvu/442


text: Page:Outlines of European History.djvu/432


text:
Page:Outlines of European History.djvu/271

 * 221


text: Page:Outlines of European History.djvu/188


text: Page:Outlines of European History.djvu/87


text: Page:Outlines of European History.djvu/86


text: Page:Outlines of European History.djvu/8


text: Page:Outlines of European History.djvu/431


text:
Page:Historical Essays and Studies.djvu/362

350 The fruit of the Roman History ripened for Greece. The men who made it known in this country were Thirlwall and Grote; it sent Otfried Müller to historical studies; and Böckh dedicated to Niebuhr a work which has stood the test of time better than his own. Under the powerful sway which Böckh exercised in Prussia for fifty years, Hellenic studies obtained the lead. A deeper scholar than Niebuhr, an historian, which the Saxon philologists disdained to be, he abandoned Rome to jurists and politicians, and primitive times to romantic theorists. His own taste was for the hardest possible facts and the clearest proofs. Like Niebuhr, he believed that antiquity is covered over with error, which will shrivel like a parched scroll, and that hidden truth will be brought to light. But instead of the incommunicable genius of conjecture he set to work with a new organon, and substituted improved evidence for dazzling guesswork.

Inscriptions had been always a source of dire confusion, for it paid local antiquaries to forge them, and two hundred consuls were invented by a single impostor. Niebuhr dismissed this branch of inquiry wholesale, saying that nobody could be expected to master it. Böckh showed that it could be made an instrument of discovery as efficacious as the boldest ingenuity, and it became, in his firm and patient hands, the corner-stone of the building. Besides showing the way of reaching truth even beyond Thucydides, he was an illustrious example of the historian who puts himself out of sight and displays what is certain, suppressing rigidly his personal sentiments. The tone of elegiac and cathartic poetry is one thing: the epic tone is another. After hearing his course on ancient philosophy, I asked him why his lectures were more interesting than his books. Böckh answered benignly, "Because I give my finished researches to the public, and keep my own views (die ideale Anschauung) for the students."

The Public Economy of the Athenians is almost the only history produced before the critical epoch which still stands, unshaken and erect. The critical epoch


text:
Page:Beowulf (Wyatt).djvu/234

210

title: Page:Beowulf (Wyatt).djvu/234


text:
Page:Whymper - Scrambles amongst the Alps.djvu/227

Rh snow, well hardened, clung to the rift with great tenacity, and gave us a path when the rocks refused one. In half-an-hour we got to the top of the great snow-slope, Walker said—"Let us glissade;" the guides—"No, it is too steep." Our friend, however, started off at a standing glissade and advanced for a time very skilfully; but after a while he lost his balance, and progressed downwards and backwards with great rapidity, in a way that seemed to us very much like tumbling head over heels. He let go his axe, and left it behind, but it overtook him and batted him heartily. He and it travelled in this fashion for some hundreds of feet, and at last subsided into


text:
Page:Whymper - Scrambles amongst the Alps.djvu/225

Rh At 3.55 on the 21st we set out up the Vallon, passed for a time over pasture-land, and then over a stony waste, deeply channelled by watercourses. At 5.30 the two principal Aiguilles were well seen, and as, by this time, it was evident that the authors of

the Sardinian official map had romanced as extensively in this neighbourhood as elsewhere, it was necessary to hold a council.

Three questions were submitted to it:—Firstly, Which is the highest of these Aiguilles? Secondly, Which shall we go up? Thirdly, How is it to be done?

The French engineers, it was said, had determined that the two highest of them were respectively 11,513 and 11,529 feet in height; but we were without information as to which two they had measured Joanne indeed said (but without specifying whether he meant all three) that the Aiguilles had been several times ascended, and particularly mentioned that the one of 11,513 feet was "relatively easy."

We therefore said, "We will go up the peak of 11,529 feet." But that determination did not settle the second question. Joanne's "relatively easy" peak, according to his description, was evidently the most northern of the three. Our peak then was to be one of the


text:
Page:Whymper - Scrambles amongst the Alps.djvu/235

Rh Meiringen, on April 6, 1828. He was first brought into public notice in Hinchcliff's Summer Months in the Alps, and was known to very few persons at the time that little work was published. In 1855 he was "Boots" at the Grimsel Hotel, and in those days, when he went out on expeditions, it was for the benefit of his master, the proprietor; Melchior himself only got the trinkgelt. In 1856 he migrated to the Schwarenbach Inn on the Gemmi, where he employed his time in carving objects for sale. In 1858 he made numerous expeditions with Messrs. Hinchcliff and Stephen, and proved to his employers that he possessed first-rate skill, indomitable courage, and an admirable character. His position has never been doubtful since that year, and for a long time there has been no guide whose services have been more in request: he is usually engaged a year in advance.

It would be almost an easier task to say what he has not done than to catalogue his achievements. Invariable success attends his arms; he leads his followers to victory, but not to death. I believe that no accident has ever befallen travellers in his charge. Like his friend Almer, he can be called a safe man. It is the highest praise that can be given to a first-rate guide.

Early in the afternoon we found ourselves in the little inn at La Grave, on the great Lautaret road, a rickety, tumble-down sort of place, with nothing stable about it, as Moore wittily


text:
Page:Historical Essays and Studies.djvu/363

Rh lies between 1824 and 1828. To mark the distinction between what was planted in those five years and the wild growth that preceded them, is half the work that Professor Wegele had to do.

In natural gifts and in acquirements the earlier writers were not, upon the whole, inferior to those who, with better opportunities, have made them a prey to dumb forgetfulness. It is matter of legendary notoriety that Schlosser consumed so many thousand volumes in a given time. The Symbolik of his colleague Creuzer is a mine of learning animated with ideas. Voigt was among the first who, either from the easy indifference of rationalism or from the manifold interest of romanticism, released the mediæval Papacy from the dilemma of good or bad. Few of those who have come since Luden can write so well. Raumer earned the praise of having written readably on the Middle Ages, and made it known that there was much to be learnt from the Italians. Many writers of this epoch had qualities not cultivated afterwards by men of sterner stuff, and addressed their style to readers less learned than themselves, who preferred a clean text to perpetual dissertation. All the works of Schlosser deserve the malediction which Mr. Morley pronounced on one of them; yet there was a blunt integrity about him, and his influence upon men so superior to himself as Gervinus, Rothe, and Bernhardi proves, what his writings do not, that he possessed some higher quality. Luden made a name for patriotism; and Raumer was a liberal, often in tepid water for his opinions. Of the three periods into which the attitude of Germans towards the Middle Ages has been distributed,—the contemptuous, the admiring, and the intelligent, these men generally represent the second. In point of trustworthiness they are near the level of their French contemporaries; of Thierry amplifying Ivanhoe, Barante transcribing Monstrelet, and Michaud flogging all the dead horses of the First Crusade. Waitz and Leo said of them that they could read texts but never studied them; and they stand condemned as men who did not know how to


text:
Page:Historical Essays and Studies.djvu/364

352 distinguish authentic knowledge from second-hand, and were at the mercy of their informants. They are gathered to the geographers who made charts before Columbus.

A new art of employing authorities came in with Ranke in 1824. Müller's Introduction to the Science of Mythology quickly followed; Gieseler and Neander began their histories of the Church; and Menzel, after an inferior book on the Middle Ages, published the first volume of what was long the best modern history of Germany. Niebuhr prepared the new edition, which is the pillar of his fame, in 1827; and in 1828 Stenzel adapted to the Gregorian epoch the canons of criticism which Ranke had made obligatory on every serious writer. These seven or eight works were the symptom of a great transition.

Ranke has not only written a larger number of mostly excellent books than any man that ever lived, but he has taken pains from the first to explain how the thing is done. He attained a position unparalleled in literature, less by the display of extraordinary faculties than by perfect mastery of the secret of his craft, and that secret he has always made it his business to impart. For his most eminent predecessors, history was applied politics, fluid law, religion exemplified, or the school of patriotism. Ranke was the first German to pursue it for no purpose but its own. He tried to make the generality of educated men understand how it came about that the world of the fifteenth century was changed into the Europe of the nineteenth. His own definite persuasions regarding church and king were not suffered to permeate his books. It was meritorious in Böckh, but not heroic, to contain his feelings about the Attic treasure and the setting of Arcturus; but Ranke was concerned with all the materials of abiding conflict, with every cause for which he cared and men are willing to kill or die.

He expects no professional knowledge in his readers, and never writes for specialists. He seldom probes to the bottom the problems of public life and the characters of men, and passes dryshod over much that is in dispute.


text:
Page:Historical Essays and Studies.djvu/365

Rh As he writes history, not biography, he abstains from the secrets of private life; and as he writes history, not dogma, he never sorts men into black and white according to their bearing in vital controversies. His evil-doers escape the just rigour of the law, and he avoids hero-worship as the last ditch of prehistoric prejudice. He touches lightly on matters pertaining to the jurist and divine, but he has not their exclusiveness. His surface is more level than theirs, but his horizon is wider. The cup is not drained; part of the story is left untold; and the world is much better and very much worse than he chooses to say.

Ranke was profoundly influenced by Niebuhr; and the example of so wise a man sinking under the load of political disappointment impressed him with the belief that it is well for people generally to disconnect their scientific and their practical life. Niebuhr's treatment of history required men as able as himself, and as familiar with the play of institutions, but boded disaster in weaker hands. Ranke brought his art down to a lower capacity. In the preliminary measure of testing authorities, he showed that it is possible, by careful analysis, to learn whence a writer obtains his facts; and this part of the work is often almost mechanical. It depresses the study of history to a level with the collation of texts, and admits a large and useful body of workers who would make a mess of the three first Muses, or the first decade of Livy.

The task of analysing character is more complicated. There is a peculiarity about the revision of historians that excludes them from the benefit of the common law that innocence must be assumed until guilt is proved. The presumption which is favourable to makers of history is adverse to writers of history. For history deals considerably with hanging matter, and nobody ought to hang on damaged testimony. The life of the witness must be subjected to closer scrutiny than the life of the culprit. He is condemned when he is suspected; doubt is decisive against him. When Father Paul relates that Luther's arguments were thought to be unanswerable at the court of Rome, but were resisted in order that authority might


text:
Page:Whymper - Scrambles amongst the Alps.djvu/237

Rh hesitation and without a halt—lost to their sight one minute as it dived into a crevasse, then seen again clambering up the other side. The higher we rose the easier became   the work, the angles lessened, and our pace increased. The snow remained shadowed, and we walked as easily as on a high road; and when (at 7.45) the summit of the Brèche was seen, we rushed at it as furiously as if it had been a breach in the wall of a fortress, carried the moat by a dash, with a push behind and a pull before, stormed the steep slope above, and at 8.50 stood in the little gap, 11,054 feet above the level of the sea. The Brèche was won. Well might they stare; five hours and a quarter had sufficed for 6500 feet of ascent. We screamed triumphantly as they turned in to breakfast.

All mountaineers know how valuable it is to study beforehand an intended route over new ground from a height at some distance. None but blunderers fail to do so, if it is possible; and one cannot do so too thoroughly. As a rule, the closer one approaches underneath a summit, the more difficult it is to pick out a path with judgment. Inferior peaks seem unduly important, subordinate ridges are exalted, and slopes conceal points beyond; and if one blindly undertakes an ascent, without having acquired a tolerable notion of the relative importance of the parts, and of their positions to one another, it will be miraculous if great difficulties are not encountered.

But although the examination of an intended route from a height at a distance will tell one (who knows the meaning of the


text:
Page:Historical Essays and Studies.djvu/366

354 be upheld, he appeals to the diary of Chieregato, which has not been produced. The story, therefore, stands and falls with his own credibility. Nobody has a right to adopt it who is not able to vindicate the character of Sarpi. There is a test of credibility, and consequently a rule of right and wrong, which everybody must acknowledge, because without it there is no such thing as evidence, and the code which is applied to books applies to events. The maxims by which we judge the statements of Cæsar or of Clarendon enable us to judge their actions. The principles are the same, though the rigour in employing them is unequal.

True impartiality is no respecter of persons, and judges resolutely regardless of the judgment of others. Ranke's merciful abstinence from strong language, his reserve in passing sentence, correspond to two governing facts in the movement to which he belongs. Germans, like other people, have certain hereditary landmarks not good to disturb, certain names too closely associated with national glory to be exposed to profanation. Luther is one of them, and Frederic, and Goethe. Döllinger's double-edged saying, that the nation recognises its own nature in Luther (ihr potenzirtes Selbst), became popular; and the passionate temper of the Reformation tracts no more repels his countrymen than the violence of More, of Milton, or of Grattan interferes with their credit here. Gratitude to the king, pride in the poet, tell in the same way to exclude the vulgar standard and to check unruly speech touching such matters as divine right, arbitrary power, and ethical neutrality. There is, if not depreciation of the moral currency, impatience of the language men utter in censuring equals. The public feels a shock of incongruity when the President of the Bavarian Academy accuses an emperor of the murder of a Bavarian prince, or when Dahlmann crudely says that the sovereigns who divided Poland were as guilty as the Terrorists.

The infallible conscience, the universal and unwritten law, the principles of eternal justice, are precisely those eighteenth-century phantoms against which the romantic


text:
Page:Historical Essays and Studies.djvu/367

Rh and historical school rose in defiance. The belief that men carry about them the knowledge of good and evil is the very root of revolution. Those who, in the words of De Maistre and the Prussian conservatives, desired, not the counter-Revolution, but the contrary of revolution, decreed that the mighty past shall not be measured by present rules and the categorical imperative. Mankind varies and advances in ethical insight; the virtue of to-day was once a crime, and the code changes with the latitude. If King James burnt witches, if Machiavelli taught assassination as an art, if pious crusaders slaughtered peaceful Jews, if Ulysses played fast and loose, we are exhorted to remember the times they lived in, and leave them to the judgment of their peers. Mobility in the moral code, subjection of man to environment, indefinite allowance for date and race, are standing formulas from Schlegel to the realistic philosophy.

Although Ranke practises moderation and restraint, and speaks of transactions and occurrences when it would be safe to speak of turpitude and crime, he kept himself above the indifference and the incapable neutrality of those who held, with Gerard Hamilton, that there are few questions on which one may not vote conscientiously either way. This was the infant shape of impartiality. The Italians, said Raumer, justify the cities of Lombardy; the Germans justify their emperors: both are right and both are wrong. Raumer was not a strong man; but there were many in his day who admired such abdication as the triumph of fairness, and discarded human responsibility. On a solemn occasion Ranke declared that the modern to whom, after Niebuhr, he was most in debt, was Fichte. Of Fichte's philosophy there is little either in Ranke's sixty volumes or elsewhere now. But as the most advanced apostle, since Butler, of the efficacy of conscience, he opposed submission to impersonal forces, and no doubt strengthened Ranke in his resistance to more than one of his most famous colleagues.

Ranke acquired very early an unrivalled knowledge of historical literature, but towards 1840 he began to say


text:
Page:Whymper - Scrambles amongst the Alps.djvu/239

Rh numerous; and the second to see whether its angles are moderate or great. Should they be very steep, it may be better to avoid them altogether, and to mount even by difficult rocks; but upon glaciers of gentle inclination, and with few open crevasses, better progress can always be made than upon the easiest rocks.

So much to explain why we were deceived when looking at the Brèche de la Meije from the Aiguille de la Sausse. We took note of all the difficulties, but did not pay sufficient attention to the distance that the Brèche was south of La Grave. My meaning will be apparent from the accompanying diagram, Fig. 1 (constructed upon the data supplied by the French surveyors), which will also serve to illustrate how badly angles of elevation are judged by the unaided eye.

The village of La Grave is just 5000 feet, and the highest summit of the Meije is 13,080 feet above the level of the sea. There is therefore a difference in their levels of 8080 feet. But the summit of the Meije is south of La Grave about 14,750 feet, and, consequently, a line drawn from La Grave to the summit of the Meije is no steeper than the dotted line drawn from A to C, Fig. 1; or, in other words, if one could go in a direct line from La Grave to the summit of the Meije the ascent would be at an angle of less than 30°. Mne persons out of ten would probably estimate the angle on the spot at double this amount.

The Brèche is 2000 feet below the summit of the Meije, and only 6000 feet above La Grave. A direct ascent from the village


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1901 supplement/Donnelly, Ross


text:
Page:Studies in Letters and Life (Woodberry, 1890).djvu/11

LANDOR.

of the most sensitive and discriminating critics of this century have, in the suffrage for fame, listed themselves for Landor. He seemed almost to achieve immortality within his lifetime, so continuously was the subtle appreciation of the best yielded to him, from the far-off years when Shelley used, at Oxford, to declaim with enthusiasm passages from Gebir, to the time, that seems as yesterday, when Swinburne made his pilgrimage to Italy, to offer his tribute of adoration to the old man at the close of his solitary and troubled career; and still each finer spirit,

During his long life he saw the springtime, and outlived the harvest, of the great poetic revival, and the labor of the Victorian poets