FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   20   21   22   23   24   25   26   27   28   29   30   31   32   33   34   35   36   37   38   39   40   >>  
SETTING SUN.--_Redibo, tu nunquam_. Haste, traveller, the sun is sinking now-- He shall return again--but never thou. * * * * * THE PINE-APPLE. Oviedo extols the pine-apple above all the fruits which grew in the famous gardens of his time, and above all that he had tasted in his travels in Spain, France, England, Germany, the whole of Italy, Sicily, the Tyrol, and the whole of the Low Countries. "No fruit," says he, "have I known or seen in all these parts, nor do I think that in the world there is one better than it, or equal to it, in all those points which I shall now mention, and which are, beauty of appearance, sweetness of smell, taste of excellent savour; so that there being three senses out of the five which can be gratified by fruit, such is its excellence above all other fruits or dainties in the world, that it gratifies those three, and even the fourth also; to wit the touch. As for the fifth, that is to say, the hearing, fruit, indeed, can neither hear nor listen, but in its place the reader may hear and attend to what is said of this fruit, and he will perceive that I do not deceive myself in what I shall say of it. For albeit fruit can as little be said to possess any of the other four senses, in relation to the which I have, as above, spoken, of these I am to be understood in the exercise and person of him who eats, not of the fruit itself, which hath no life, save the vegetative one, and wants both the sensitive and rational, all three of which exist in man. And he, looking at these pines, and smelling to them, and tasting them, and feeling them, will justly, considering these four parts or particularities, attribute to it the principality above all other fruits." * * * * * STONE-MASON'S CRITICISM Mr. Bowles, the vicar of Bremhill, Wilts, is accustomed occasionally to write epitaphs for the young and aged dead among his own parishioners. An epitaph of his, on an aged father and mother, written in the character of a most exemplary son--the father living to eighty-seven years--ran thus:-- "My father--my poor mother--both are gone, And o'er your cold remains I place this stone, In memory of your virtues. May it tell How _long one_ parent lived, and _both_ how well," &c. When this was shown to the stone-mason critic, (and Mr. Bowles acknowledges he has heard worse public critics in his time,) he obser
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   20   21   22   23   24   25   26   27   28   29   30   31   32   33   34   35   36   37   38   39   40   >>  



Top keywords:
fruits
 

father

 
mother
 

senses

 
Bowles
 
rational
 
sensitive
 

accustomed

 

occasionally

 

vegetative


epitaphs

 

Bremhill

 

justly

 

tasting

 

CRITICISM

 

feeling

 

smelling

 

attribute

 

principality

 

particularities


parent

 

remains

 

memory

 

virtues

 
public
 
critics
 

acknowledges

 

critic

 

written

 

character


epitaph

 
parishioners
 
exemplary
 

living

 

eighty

 

attend

 

Germany

 

Sicily

 

England

 
France

tasted
 
travels
 

Countries

 

points

 
mention
 

gardens

 

famous

 

traveller

 

sinking

 
nunquam