Lord Cockburn's works, Volume 1

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A. and C. Black, 1872
 

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Page 26 - No couple could dance unless each party was provided with a ticket prescribing the precise place, in the precise dance. If there was no ticket, the gentleman, or the lady, was dealt with as an intruder, and turned out of the dance.
Page 22 - To me his lectures were like the opening of the heavens. I felt that I had a soul. His noble views, unfolded in glorious sentences, elevated me into a higher world.
Page 237 - The unexpected newness of the thing, the profusion of original characters, the Scotch language, Scotch scenery, Scotch men and women, the simplicity of the writing, and the graphic force of the descriptions, all struck us with an electric shock of delight.
Page 173 - Chalmers here writes, with the honesty and intrepidity which were part of his being, — " the author of this pamphlet can assert, from what to him is the ' highest of all authority, the authority of his own experience, that, after the satisfactory discharge of his^ parish duties, a minister may enjoy five days in the week of uninterrupted leisure, for the prosecution of any science in which his taste
Page 103 - I heard him, in condemning a tailor to death for murdering a soldier by stabbing him, aggravate the offense thus : " and not only did you murder him, whereby he was berea-ved of his life, but you did thrust, or push, or pierce, or project, or propell, the le-thall weapon through the belly-band of his regimen-tal breeches, which were his Majes-ty's...
Page 44 - He was a striking and beautiful person ; tall, very thin, and cadaverously pale ; his hair carefully powdered, though there was little of it except what was collected into a long thin queue ; his eyes dark, clear, and large, like deep pools of pure water. He wore black speckless clothes, silk stockings, silver buckles, and either a slim green silk umbrella, or a genteel brown cane. The general frame and air were feeble and slender. The wildest boy respected Black.
Page 394 - All our anatomists incurred a most unjust and very alarming, though not an unnatural, odium ; Dr. Knox in particular, against whom not only the anger of the populace, but the condemnation of more intelligent persons, was specially directed. But, tried in reference to the invariable and the necessary practice of the profession, our anatomists were spotlessly correct, and Knox the most correct of them all.
Page 43 - Joseph Black's, where his son Sir Adam (the friend of Scott) used to say it was delightful to see the two philosophers rioting over a boiled turnip. Domestically he was kind, but anxious and peppery. His temperature was regulated by Fahrenheit; and often, when sitting quite comfortably, he would start up and put his wife and daughters into commotion, because his eye had fallen on the instrument, and discovered that he was a degree too hot or too cold. He always locked the door of his study when he...
Page 85 - These trials, however, sunk deep not merely into the popular mind, but into the minds of all men who thought. . It was by these proceedings, more than by any other wrong, that the spirit of discontent justified itself throughout the rest of that age.
Page 144 - Ten, even twenty, guineas a sheet for a review, £2000 or £3000 for a single poem, and £1000 each for two philosophical dissertations,* drew authors from dens where they would otherwise have starved, and made Edinburgh a literary mart, famous with strangers, and the pride of its own citizens.

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