The Edinburgh Review: Or Critical Journal, Volume 69

Front Cover
A. Constable, 1839

From inside the book

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

Popular passages

Page 230 - His praise, ye Winds, that from four quarters blow, Breathe soft or loud ; and, wave your tops, ye Pines, With every plant, in sign of worship wave. Fountains, and ye that warble, as ye flow, Melodious murmurs, warbling tune his praise.
Page 484 - All overgrown with azure moss and flowers So sweet, the sense faints picturing them! Thou For whose path the Atlantic's level powers Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear The sapless foliage of the ocean, know Thy voice, and suddenly grow grey with fear, And tremble and despoil themselves: oh, hear!
Page 231 - THE author of this volume is a young man of unblemishedcharacter, and of distinguished parliamentary talents, the rising hope of those stern and unbending Tories, who follow, reluctantly and mutinously, a leader, whose experience and eloquence are indispensable to them, but whose cautious temper and moderate opinions they abhor.
Page 230 - With this her solemn bird and this fair moon, And these the gems of heaven, her starry train: But neither breath of morn when she ascends With charm of earliest birds, nor rising sun On this delightful land, nor herb, fruit, flower, Glistering with dew, nor fragrance after showers, Nor grateful evening mild, nor silent night With this her solemn bird, nor walk by moon, Or glittering starlight without thee is sweet.
Page 484 - Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams The blue Mediterranean, where he lay, Lull'd by the coil of his crystalline streams, Beside a pumice isle in Baiae's bay, And saw in sleep old palaces and towers Quivering within the wave's intenser day, All overgrown with azure moss and flowers So sweet, the sense faints picturing them!
Page 233 - ... investigation. His mind is of large grasp ; nor is he deficient in dialectical skill. But he does not give his intellect fair play. There is no want of light, but a great want of what Bacon would have called dry light. Whatever Mr. Gladstone sees is refracted and distorted by a false medium of passions and prejudices. His style bears a remarkable analogy to his mode of thinking, and indeed exercises great influence on his mode of thinking. His rhetoric, though often good of its kind, darkens...
Page 477 - RODE one evening with Count Maddalo Upon the bank of land which breaks the flow Of Adria towards Venice : a bare strand Of hillocks, heaped from ever-shifting sand, Matted with thistles and amphibious weeds, Such as from earth's embrace the salt ooze breeds, Is this; an uninhabited seaside, Which the lone fisher, when his nets are dried, Abandons; and no other object breaks The waste, but one dwarf tree and some few stakes Broken and unrepaired, and the tide makes A narrow space of level sand thereon,...
Page 228 - Concerning therefore this wayward subject against prelaty, the touching whereof is so distasteful and disquietous to a number of men, as by what hath been said I may deserve of charitable readers to be credited, that neither envy nor gall hath entered me upon this controversy, but the enforcement of conscience only, and a preventive fear lest the omitting of this duty should be against me when I would store up to myself the good provision of peaceful hours.
Page 261 - ... in which we live; and there we see that free inquiry on mathematical subjects produces unity, and that free inquiry on moral subjects produces discrepancy.
Page 472 - And winds with short turns down the precipice. And in its depth there is a mighty rock, Which has, from unimaginable years, Sustained itself with terror and with toil Over a gulf, and with the agony With which it clings seems slowly coming down ; Even as a wretched soul hour after hour Clings to the mass of life ; yet, clinging, leans ; And, leaning, makes more dark the dread abyss In which it fears to fall.

Bibliographic information