The Edinburgh Review: Or Critical Journal, Volume 16

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A. Constable, 1810

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Page 43 - The timid girls, half dreading their design, Dip the small foot in the retarded brine, And search for crimson weeds, which spreading flow., Or lie like pictures on the sand below ; With all those bright red pebbles, that the sun Through the small waves so softly shines upon...
Page 115 - It may, and must be true, that Mr. Hastings has repeatedly offended against the rights and privileges of Asiatic government, if he was the faithful deputy of a power which could not maintain itself for an hour without trampling upon both...
Page 52 - Books cannot always please, however good; Minds are not ever craving for their food; But sleep will soon the weary soul prepare For cares to-morrow that were this day's care: For forms, for feasts, that sundry times have past, And formal feasts that will for ever last.
Page 115 - said the jealous ruler over the desert encroached upon by the restless foot of English adventure, — " who is it that causes this river to rise in the high mountains, and to empty itself into the ocean ? Who is it that causes to blow the loud winds of winter, and that calms them again in...
Page 117 - It is the nature of everything that is great and useful, both in the animate and inanimate world, to be wild and irregular, and we must be contented to take them with the alloys which belong to them, or live without them. Genius breaks from the fetters of criticism, but its wanderings are sanctioned by its majesty and wisdom when it advances in its path : subject it to the critic, and you tame it into dulness.
Page 49 - When Tides were neap, and, in the sultry day, Through the tall bounding Mud-banks made their way, Which on each side rose swelling, and below The dark warm Flood ran silently and slow; There anchoring, Peter chose from Man to hide, There hang his Head, and view the lazy Tide In its hot slimy Channel slowly glide...
Page 115 - The unhappy people of India, feeble and effeminate as they are from the softness of their climate, and subdued and broken as they have been by the knavery and strength of civilization, still occasionally start up in all the vigour and intelligence of insulted nature : — to be governed at all, they must be governed with a rod of iron ; and our empire in the...
Page 112 - I assert, without the hazard of contradiction, that if Mr Hastings himself could have stood justified or excused in your eyes for publishing this volume in his own defence, the author, if he wrote it...
Page 116 - ... us ; but which it unaccountably falls to my province, whether I will or no, a little to stem the torrent of, by reminding you, that you have a mighty sway in Asia which cannot be maintained by the finer sympathies of life, or the practice of its charities and affections.
Page 115 - Gentlemen, I think I can observe that you are touched with this way of considering the subject, and I can account for it. I have not been considering it through the cold medium of books, but have been speaking of man and his nature, and of human dominion, from what I have seen of them myself amongst reluctant nations submitting to our authority. I know what they feel, and how such feelings can alone be repressed.

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