My gracious liege, this too much lenity Not he, that sets his foot upon her back. For love of all the gods, Let's leave the hermit pity with our mother; And when we have our armours buckled on, Let venom'd vengeance ride upon our swords. PLANTS-Force of Gravity on. As a curious instance of adaptation between the force of gravity, and forces which exist in the vegetable world, we may take the positions PLANTS. of flowers. Some flowers grow with the hollow of their cup upwards: others "hang the pensive head," and turn the opening downwards. Now of these "nodding flowers," as Linnæus calls them, he observes that they are such as have their pistils longer than the stamens; and, in consequence of this position, the dust from the anthers which are at the end of the stamens can fall upon the stigma or extremity of the pistil; which process is requisite for making the flower fertile. Other botanists have remarked, that the position changes at different periods of the flower's progress. The pistil of the Euphorbia (which is a little globe or germen upon a slender stalk) grows upright at first, and is taller than the stamens: at the period suited to its fecundation, the stalk bends under the weight of the ball at its extremity, so as to depress the germen below the stamens: after this it again becomes erect, the globe being now a fruit filled with fertile seeds. The positions in all these cases depend upon the length and flexibility of the stalk which supports the flower, or, in the case of the Euphorbia, the germen. It is clear that a very slight alteration in the force of gravity, or in the stiffness of the stalk, would entirely alter the position of the flower-cup, and thus make the continuation of the species impossible. We have therefore here a little mechanical contrivance, which would have been frustrated if the proper intensity of gravity had not been assumed in the reckoning. An earth greater or smaller, denser or rarer than the one on which we live, would require a change in the structure and strength of the footstalks of all the little flowers that hang their heads under our hedges. There is something curious in thus considering the whole mass of the earth from pole to pole, and from circumference to centre, as employed in keeping a snowdrop in the position most suited to the promotion of its vegetable health. PLAYERS-Instructions to. Whewell. PLEASING. dumb-show and noise: I would have such a fellow whipped for o'erdoing Termagant; it! out-herods Herod: Pray you, avoid it. Be not too tame neither, but let your own discretion be your tutor; suit the action to the word, the word to the action; with this special observance, that you o'erstep not the modesty of nature; for anything so overdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first, and now, was, and is, to hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to nature; to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time, his form and pressure. Now, this overdone, or come tardy of, though it make the unskilful laugh, cannot but make the judicious grieve; the censure of which one must, in your allowance, o'erweigh a whole theatre of others. Oh, there be players, that I have seen play, and heard others praise, and that highly-not to speak it profanely, that, neither having the accent of Christians, nor the gait of Christian, Pagan, nor man, have so strutted, and bellowed, that I have thought some of nature's journeymen had made men, and not made them well, they imitated humanity so abominably. Oh, reform it altogether: and let those that play your clowns, speak no more than is set down for them; for there be of them, that will themselves laugh, to set on some quantity of barren spectators to laugh too; though, in the meantime, some necessary question of the play be then to be considered: that's villanous; and shows a most pitiful ambition in the fool that uses it. Shakspeare. PLAYERS-Fictitious Passions of. What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba, he do, Had he the motive and the cue for passion That I have? He would drown the stage with tears, Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue: but if you mouth it, as many of our players do, I had as lief the town-crier spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the air too much with your hand, thus; but use all gently; for in the very torrent, tempest, and (as I may say) whirlwind of your passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance, that may give it smoothness. Oh, it offends me to the soul, to hear a robustious periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings, who, for the most part, are capable of nothing but inexplicable | body; and the pleasure of pleasing ought to And cleave the general ear with horrid speech; Make mad the guilty, and appal the free, Confound the ignorant, and amaze, indeed, The very faculties of eyes and ears. PLEASING-Pleasure of. Ibid We all live upon the hope of pleasing some PLEASING. be greatest, and, at least, always will be greatest, when our endeavours are exerted in consequence of our duty. Johnson. PLEASURE-not Continuous. If all the year were playing holidays, come, And nothing pleaseth but rare accidents. Shakspeare. PLEASURE-Definition of. Pleasure is the reflex of unimpeded energy. PLEASURE-Disappointment of. Pleasure, when it is a man's chief purpose, disappoints itself; and the constant application to it palls the faculty of enjoying it, though it leaves the sense of our inability for that we wish, with a disrelish of everything else. Thus the intermediate seasons of the man of pleasure are more heavy than one would impose upon the vilest criminal. PLEASURE-Enervation of. Steele. What if a body might have all the pleasures in the world for asking? Who would so unman himself as, by accepting them, to desert his soul, and become a perpetual slave to his Seneca. senses? Like dew upon the grass, when pleasure's sun Shines on your virtues, all your virtue's done. Marston. PLEASURE-Enjoyment of. Enjoy your present pleasures so as not to I injure those that are to follow. Seneca. PLEASURE-Epochs of. No enjoyment, however inconsiderable, is confined to the present moment. A man is the happier for life from having made once an agreeable tour, or lived for any length of time with pleasant people, or enjoyed any considerable interval of innocent pleasure. Sidney Smith. PLEASURE-Dangerous Fascination of. I have sat upon the shore, and waited for the gradual approach of the sea, and have seen its dancing waves and white surf, and admired that He who measured it with His hand had given to it such life and motion; and I have lingered till its gentle waters grew into mighty billows, and had well nigh swept me from my firmest footing. So have I seen a heedless youth gazing with a too curious spirit upon the sweet motions and gentle approaches of an inviting pleasure, till it has PLEASURE. detained his eye and imprisoned his feet, and swelled upon his soul, and swept him to a swift destruction. Hon. Mrs. Montague. PLEASURE-a Gift. Of pleasure next the final cause explore; In aid to reason was the goddess sent, PLEASURE-Man of. Young. He is one who, desirous of being more happy than any man can be, is less happy than most men are; one who seeks happiness everywhere but where it is to be found; one who outtoils the labourer, not only without his wages, but paying dearly for it. He is an immortal being that has but two marks of a man about him, upright stature, and the power of playing the fool, which a monkey has not. He is an immortal being that triumphs in this single, deplorable, and yet false hope, that he shall be as happy as a monkey when he is dead, though he despairs of being so while yet alive. He is an immortal being that would lose none of its most darling delights, if he were a brute in the mire; but would lose them all entirely, if he were an angel in heaven. It is certain, therefore, that he desires not to be there and if he not so much as desires it now, how can he ever hope it, when his day of dissipation is over? And if no hope, what is our man of pleasure?-A man of distraction and despair to-morrow. Young. The man of pleasure, as the phrase is, is the most ridiculous of all beings: he travels, indeed, with his riband, plume, and bells; his dress and his music; but through a toilsome and beaten road; and every day nauseously repeats the same tract. Ibid. PLEASURE-Moderation in. Though a taste of pleasure may quicken the relish of life, an unrestrained indulgence leads to inevitable destruction. Dodsley. Pleasure must first have the warrant that it is without sin; then, the measure, that it is without excess. Adams. He who can at all times sacrifice pleasure to duty approaches sublimity. Lavater. T No man's body is as strong as his appetites, but Heaven has corrected the boundlessness of his voluptuous desires by stinting his strength and contracting his capacities. The pleasure of the religious man is an easy and a portable pleasure, such as he can carry about in his bosom. A man putting all his pleasures into this one, is like a traveller putting all his One reason why God hath scattered up and down several degrees of pleasure and pain, in all the things that environ and affect us, and blended them together, in almost all that our thoughts and senses have to do with, is, that we, finding imperfection, dissatisfaction, and want of complete happiness in all the enjoyments which the creatures can afford us, might be led to seek it in the enjoyment of Him with whom "there is fulness of joy, and at whose right hand are pleasures for evermore." | PLEASURES. PLEASURES-Moderation in. Pleasures waste the spirits more than pains; therefore the latter can be endured longer, and in greater degree, than the former. Zimmerman. Venture not to the utmost bounds of even lawful pleasure; the limits of good and evil join. Fuller. PLEASURES-Rational. It is an error to imagine that devotion enjoins a total contempt of all the pleasures and amusements of human society. It checks, indeed, that spirit of dissipation which is too prevalent. It not only prohibits pleasures which are unlawful, but likewise that unlawful degree of attachment to pleasures in themselves innocent, which withdraws the attention of man from what is serious and important. But it brings amusement under due limitation, without extirpating it. It forbids it as the business, but permits it as the relaxation of life. For there is nothing in the spirit of true religion which is hostile to a cheerful enjoyment of our situation in the world. Blair. At an external life beyond our fate? Bestowing fire from heaven, and then, too late, Finding the pleasure given repaid with pain ! I And vultures to the heart of the bestower, Who, having lavish'd his high gift in vain, Lies chain'd to his lone rock by the seashore. Byron. POESY-Inspirations of. In dim outshadowing, earth's first poets, from the loveliness of external nature, evoked beautiful spiritualizations. To them the sturdy | forests teemed with aërial beings; the gushing spirits rejoiced in fantastic sprites; the leaping cataracts gleamed with translucent shades; the cavernous hills were the abodes of genii; and the earth-girdling ocean was guarded by mysterious forms. Such were the creations of the far-searching mind in its early consciousness of the existence of unseen powers. Poesy serveth and conferreth to magnanimity, morality, and to delectation. Bacon. Plunged for his sense, but found no bottom POET-Dower of the. Nature denied him much, But gave him at his birth what most he valued A passionate love for music, sculpture, painting, Trace the young poet's fate: And he seems happy in so many friends. 1 |