1 In him a just ambition stands confess'd; No mean attachments e'er seduced his tongue PATRIOTISM-True. Melmoth. PEACE-Desirableness of. I desire To reconcile me to his friendly peace: 'Tis death to me, to be at enmity; I hate it, and desire all good men's love. Shakspeare. PEACE-Happiness of. Peace is the happy, natural state of man; PEACE-of Mind. Would you taste the tranquil scene? Be sure your bosoms be serene : Devoid of hate, devoid of strife, Devoid of all that poisons life; The noblest motive is the public good. Virgil. And much it 'vails you, in their place, O beauteous Peace, Of many years; yet in my breast revives Worse than our Etna's most destructive fires, With cheerful toil. Our Enna blooms afresh; Afresh the sweets of thee, my Hybla, flow: Our nymphs and shepherds, sporting in each vale, Inspire new song, and wake the pastoral reed. PEACE-Delights of. Thomson. Fair Peace! how lovely, how delightful thou! Brave minds, howe'er at war, are secret friends, PEACEMAKERS. PEACEMAKERS-Blessedness of. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God. St. Matthew. PEASANT-Life of the. His bed of wool yields safe and quiet sleep, While by his side the faithful spouse hath place; His little son into his bosom creeps, And when he dies, green turfs, with grassy tomb, content him. Fletcher. PEASANTRY-a Country's Pride. Princes and lords may flourish or may fade,A breath can make them, as a breath has made; But a bold peasantry, their country's pride, When once destroy'd, can never be supplied. Goldsmith. PEBBLES-Natural History of. Only a pebble! Oh man, that stone which you thrust so contemptuously out of your way is older than all else on this earth. When the waters under heaven were gathered together unto one place, that pebble was there. Who can tell us the story of those first days, when the earth was in sore travail, when her heaving bosom belched forth torrents of fire, vast avalanches of hissing, seething water, and volumes of deadly vapours;-when glowing, blazing streams of lava threw a bloody red glare on the silent, lifeless earth, and, amidst a trembling and thundering that shook the firmament, a thousand volcanoes at once lifted up their fiery heads;-when out of the foaming waters there rose suddenly the rocky foundations of firm land, and greeted the light that God had created? That pebble was life's first offspring on earth. The Spirit of God moved on the waters, and life was breathed on the very gases that were hid in the heart of the vapoury globe. They parted in love, they parted in hate; they fled and they met. Atom joined atom; loving sisters kissed each other; and this love, the great child of that spirit on earth, brought forth its first fruit,-the pebble. De Vere. PEDANT-The. The man, who stretch'd in Isis' calm retreat, To books and study gives seven years compleat, See? strow'd with learned dust, his night-cap on, He walks, an object new beneath the sun! The boys flock round him, and the people stare; Brimful of learning, see that pedant stride, Bristling with horrid Greek, and puff'd with pride! A thousand authors he in vain has read, PEDANTRY-Characteristics of. A man who has been brought up among books, and is able to talk of nothing else, is a very indifferent companion, and what we call a pedant. But we should enlarge the title, and give it to every one that does not know how to think out of his profession and particular way of life. What is a greater pedant than a mere man of the town? Bar him in the playhouses a catalogue of the reigning beauties, and you strike him dumb. The military pedant always talks in a camp, and in storming towns, making lodgments, and fighting battles, from one end of the year to the other. Everything he speaks smells of gunpowder; if you take away his artillery from him, he has not a word to say for himself. The law pedant is perpetually putting cases, repeating the transactions of Westminster Hall, wrangling with you upon the most indifferent circumstances of life, and not to be convinced of the distance of a place. or of the most trivial point in conversation, but by dint of argument. The state pedant is wrapt up in news, and lost in politics. If you mention any of the sovereigus of Europe, he talks very notably; but if you go out of the Gazette, you drop him. In short, a mere courtier, a mere soldier, a mere scholar, a mere anything, is an insipid pedantic character, and equally ridiculous. Addison. PEDANTRY-Definition of. Pedantry, in the common acceptation of the word, means an absurd ostentation of learning, and stiffness of phraseology, proceeding from a misguided knowledge of books, and a total ignorance of men. Mackenzie. The the merchant tailor. The modern Earl of Warwick is not descended from "the Kingmaker," but from William Greville, the woolstapler; whilst the modern Earls of Northumberland find their head, not in the Percies, but in Hugh Smithson, a respectable Loudon apothecary. The founders of the families of Dartmouth, Radnor, Ducie, and Pomfret, were respectively a skinner, a silk manufacturer, a merchant tailor, and a Calais merchant; whilst the founders of the peerages of Tankerville, Dormer, and Coventry, were mercers. ancestors of Earl Romney, and Lord Dudley and Ward, were goldsmiths and jewellers; and Lord Dacres was a banker in the reign of Charles I., as Lord Overstone is in that of Queen Victoria. Edward Osborne, the founder of the Dukedom of Leeds, was apprentice to William Hewet, a rich clothworker on Londonbridge, whose only daughter he courageously rescued from drowning, by leaping into the Thames after her, and eventually married. Among other peerages founded by trade, are those of Fitzwilliam, Leigh, Petre, Cowper, Darnley, Hill, and Carrington. The founders of the houses of Foley and Normanby were remarkable men in many respects, and, as furnishing striking examples of energy of character, the story of their lives is especially worthy of preservation. Smiles. A pension, given as a reward for service to the state, is surely as good a ground of property as any security for money advanced to the state. It is a better; for money is paid, and well paid, to obtain that service. Burke. PENSIVENESS-Pleasures of. Resplendent halls and fashion's proud array, The smiles of flattery and the pomp of art, Music, and mirth, and dancing, to the heart Of him whose every hope hath waned away, Are but as mockeries. Him it pleases more, When sunlight fades from the grey western sky, To listen to the sere leaves whirling dry Around his path, and to the torrent's roar; There, resting on some mossy pediment, Chill penury weighs down the heart itself; and though it sometimes be endured with calmness, it is but the calmness of despair. Mrs. Jameson. PEOPLE-Different Kinds of. The world may be divided into people that read, people that write, people that think, and fox hunters. PEOPLE-Knowing the. Shenstone. I confess myself to be one of those who believe, that it is not always in the capital, or among the busy haunts of a large town, that a traveller has the best opportunities of making himself acquainted with the character, and habits, and dispositions of a strange people. To the capital you doubtless turn, if your object be to examine into the machinery of the general government, or to hold converse with the great and distinguished members of the community, whether they deserve to be so accounted because of any merit attaching to themselves, or owe their greatness to circumstances not of their own creating. But of the people, properly so called, a foreigner can see in the capital very little. He may join them in their public amusements; observe their modes of buying and selling; he may listen to their conversation in the streets, or at a table d'hôte, and form a correct enough judgment of their skill as artisans; but of their character properly so called, that is to say, of the temper of their minds, and of the causes which produce it, he can know nothing. The state of society in one large town resembles, in all essential points, so closely the state of society in another, that the traveller becomes bewildered, and is not unapt to treat as peculiarities in one place, habits which, in point of fact, extend far beyond it. Gleig. PERFECTION-Acquisition of. he may Perfection is attained by slow degrees; she requires the hand of time. Voltaire. PERFECTION-Advancing. Methinks this single consideration of the progress of a finite spirit to perfection, will be sufficient to extinguish all envy in inferior natures, and all contempt in superior. That cherubim, which now appears as a God to a human soul, knows very well that the period PERFECTION. will come about in eternity, when the human soul shall be as perfect as he himself now is : nay, when she shall look down upon that degree of perfection, as much as she now falls short of it. It is true, the higher nature still advances, and by that means preserves his distance and superiority in the scale of being, but he knows that how high soever the station is of which he stands possessed at present, the inferior nature will at length mount up to it, and shine forth in the same degree of glory. Addison. PERFECTION-Aids to. To arrive at perfection, a man should have very sincere friends or inveterate enemies; because he would be made sensible of his good or ill conduct, either by the censures of the one, or the admonitions of the other. Diogenes. PERFECTION-Aiming at. Aim at perfection in everything, though in most things it is unattainable; however, they who aim at it, and persevere, will come much nearer to it than those whose laziness and despondency make them give it up as unattainable. Chesterfield. PERFECTION-in Creation. God never made his work for man to mend. Dryden. PERFECTION-Extent of. A good man is sometimes liable to blame, and a bad man, though not often, may possibly deserve to be commended. Polybius. PERFECTION-of Slow Growth. They say those herbs will keep best, and will longer retain both their hue and verdure, which are dried in the shade, than those which are suddenly scorched with fire or sun. Those wits are like to be most durable, which are closely tutored with a leisurely education: time and gentle constancy ripens better than a sudden violence: neither is it otherwise in our spiritual condition; a wilful slackness is not more dangerous than an overhastening of our perfection. If I may be every moment drawing nearer to the end of my hope, I shall not wish to precipitate. PERSECUTION. prayer or ecclesiastical rites, other than those set forth in the Book of Common Prayer, he should suffer imprisonment for life. Under another act, if they denied the queen's (Elizabeth's) supremacy, they were to suffer the pains of death, and forfeit their estates, as in! cases of high treason. Under another act, if those that were sixteen years of age went not to church, they were to pay a penalty of £20 per month, or be imprisoned until they conformed; and again, if you did not become a member of the established church, you dared not move more than five miles from your house. In 1581 it was enacted, "that it shall be treason to be reconciled to, or withdrawn to, the Romish religion,-aiders to suffer as for misprision of treason. A man marrying not according to the Church of England, could take no lands in right of his wife. A child educated in a popish seminary could not inherit his estate or make a purchase." These and other similar laws were enforced by the tolerant Protestant church and State. They stood so late as the year 1791, when the 31st of George III. somewhat abated their severity. When the Act of Uniformity was passed in Charles the Second's time, 2,000 of the Presbyterian clergymen resigned in one day, although many of them had been tempted by wealth and the highest preferment. When the Society of Friends arose, they were persecuted with the most rancorous hatred: it was a system that cut at the roots of clerical influence, the craft was in danger, and the work of extermination commenced; their meeting-houses were pulled down, and the materials sold; and when, firm in their duty, they met on the ruins, they were attacked by the brutal soldiery, and old men, women, and children, indiscriminately slaughtered. Under the act for fining £20 for non-attendance at church, they were fined grievously, their houses were broken into, their property plundered and destroyed, under the plea of seizing for tithes, church-rates, fines, &c. At Bristol, thirty-eight men paid fines for non-attendance at church for eleven months, £8,360; two of their wives paid £220; and 111 men, for non-attendance for three months, paid £6,660, and forty of their wives, for the same time, paid £1,200; in all, £16,440. The amount of property taken from the Society of Friends, from 1665 to 1833, is estimated at £1,192,820, besides the utter ruin of trade, and property wantonly destroyed in the collection. In London, the prisons were literally filled to suffocation, where, in 1662, twenty died, and seven more soon after their liberation, in consequence of their treatment; in 1664, twenty-five more, and in 1665, fifty-two others. The same inhuman persecu- PERSEVERANCE AND HONOUR. tions were practised throughout the kingdom, from which 369 perished. PERSECUTION-Reward of. Lowry. Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. St. Matthew. PERSEVERANCE. Yet I argue not, PERSEVERANCE-to be Admired. If there be one thing on earth which is truly admirable, it is to see God's wisdom blessing an inferiority of natural powers, where they have been honestly, truly, and zealously cultivated. Dr. Arnold. PERSEVERANCE-to the End. When I take the humour of a thing once, I am like your tailor's needle,-I go through. Ben Jonson. Perseverance, dear my lord, PERSPECTIVE-Attack on. Shakspeare. No great painters ever trouble themselves about perspective, and very few of them know its laws; they draw everything by the eye, and, naturally enough, disdain, in the easy parts of their work, rules which cannot help them in difficult ones. It would take about a month's labour to draw imperfectly, by laws of perspective, what any great Venetian will draw perfectly in five minutes, when he is throwing a wreath of leaves round a head, or bending the curves of a pattern in and out among the folds of drapery. In modern days, Roberts, knows so much perspective as would I doubt if any artist among us, except, David enable him to draw a Gothic arch to scale at a given angle and distance. Turner, though he was professor of perspective to the Royal Academy, did not know what he professed, and never, as far as I remember, drew a single building in true perspective in his life; he drew them only with as much perspective as suited him. Prout also knew nothing of perspective, and twisted his buildings, as Turner did, into whatever shapes he liked. I do not justify this; and would recommend the student Great works are performed not by strength, civility, but to pay no court to it. at least to treat perspective with common Ruskin. but by perseverance. He that shall endure unto the end the same shall be saved. St. Luke. PERSEVERANCE-Power of. Johnson. All the performances of human art, at which we look with praise or wonder, are instances of the resistless force of perseverance; it is by this that the quarry becomes a pyramid, and that distant countries are united by canals. If a man was to compare the effect of a single stroke of a pickaxe, or of one impression of the spade, with the general design and last result, he would be overwhelmed by the sense of their disproportion; yet those petty operations incessantly continued, in time surmount the greatest difficulties, and mountains are levelled, and oceans bounded, by the slender force of human beings. PERSEVERANCE-Success of. A falling drop at last will cave a stone. PERSEVERANCE-a Virtue. Ibid. Lucretius. Perseverance is a Roman virtue, PERSPICUITY-Advantage of. by the understanding of a people. the heart of the nation, invariably adopt some disposal, but without which they could neither act nor subsist. The governments which are founded upon a single principle or a single feeling which is easily defined, are perhaps not the best, but they are unquestionably the strongest and the most durable in the world. De Tocqueville. PERSUASION-Virtue of. There is a way of winning, more by love, |
