PEASANTRY-a Country's Pride.
Princes and lords may flourish or may fade,
A breath can make them, as a breath has
made;

But a bold peasantry, their country's pride,
When once destroy'd, can never be supplied.
Goldsmith.

PEBBLES-Natural History of.

Only a pebble! Oh man, that stone which you thrust so contemptuously out of your way is older than all else on this earth. When the waters under heaven were gathered together unto one place, that pebble was there. Who can tell us the story of those first days, when the earth was in sore travail, when her heaving bosom belched forth torrents of fire, vast avalanches of hissing, seething water, and volumes of deadly vapours;-when glowing, blazing streams of lava threw a bloody red glare on the silent, lifeless earth, and, amidst a trembling and thundering that shook the firmament, a thousand volcanoes at once lifted up their fiery heads;-when out of the foaming waters there rose suddenly the rocky foundations of firm land, and greeted the light that God had created? That pebble was life's first offspring on earth. The Spirit of God moved on the waters, and life was breathed on the very gases that were hid in the heart of the vapoury globe. They parted in love, they parted in hate; they fled and they met. Atom joined atom; loving sisters kissed each other; and this love, the great child of that spirit on earth, brought forth its first fruit,-the pebble. De Vere.

PEDANT-The.
The man, who stretch'd in Isis' calm retreat,
To books and study gives seven years compleat,
See? strow'd with learned dust, his night-cap

on,

He walks, an object new beneath the sun! The boys flock round him, and the people stare;

PEERAGES.

Horace.

PEDANTRY-Affectation of.

Brimful of learning, see that pedant stride, Bristling with horrid Greek, and puff'd with pride!

A thousand authors he in vain has read,
And with their maxims stuffed his empty head;
And thinks that without Aristotle's rule,
Reason is blind, and common sense a fool!

Boileau.

PEDANTRY-Characteristics of.

A man who has been brought up among books, and is able to talk of nothing else, is a very indifferent companion, and what we call a pedant. But we should enlarge the title, and give it to every one that does not know how to think out of his profession and particular way of life. What is a greater pedant than a mere man of the town? Bar him in the playhouses a catalogue of the reigning beauties, and you strike him dumb. The military pedant always talks in a camp, and in storming towns, making lodgments, and fighting battles, from one end of the year to the other. Everything he speaks smells of gunpowder; if you take away his artillery from him, he has not a word to say for himself. The law pedant is perpetually putting cases, repeating the transactions of Westminster Hall, wrangling with you upon the most indifferent circumstances of life, and not to be convinced of the distance of a place. i or of the most trivial point in conversation, but by dint of argument. The state pedant is wrapt up in news, and lost in politics. If you mention any of the sovereigus of Europe, he talks very notably; but if you go out of the Gazette, you drop him. In short, a merc courtier, a mere soldier, a mere scholar, a mere anything, is an insipid pedantic character, and equally ridiculous. Addison.

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1

PEDANTRY-Definition of.

Pedantry, in the common acceptation of the word, means an absurd ostentation of learning, and stiffness of phraseology, proceeding from a misguided knowledge of books, and a total ignorance of men. Mackenzie.

PEERAGES-One Source of.

In olden times, the wealth and commerce of London, conducted as it was by energetic and enterprising men, was a prolific source of peerages. Thus, the Earl of Cornwallis was founded by Thomas Cornwallis, the Cheapside merchant; that of Essex by William Capel, the draper; and that of Craven by William Craven,

PEERAGES.

PENETRATION-Characteristics of.

I

The balls of sight are so formed, that one man's eyes are spectacles to another, to read his heart with. Ibid.

I

the merchant tailor. The modern Earl of Warwick is not descended from "the Kingmaker," but from William Greville, the woolstapler; whilst the modern Earls of Northumberland find their head, not in the Percies, but in Hugh Smithson, a respectable Loudon apothecary. The founders of the families of Dartmouth, Radnor, Ducie, and Pomfret, were respectively a skinner, a silk manufacturer, a merchant tailor, and a Calais merchant; whilst the founders of the peerages of Tankerville, Dormer, and Coventry, were mercers. The ancestors of Earl Romney, and Lord Dudley and Ward, were goldsmiths and jewellers; and Lord Dacres was a banker in the reign of Charles I., as Lord Overstone is in that of Queen Victoria. Edward Osborne, the founder of the Dukedom of Leeds, was apprentice to William Hewet, a rich clothworker on Londonbridge, whose only daughter he courageously rescued from drowning, by leaping into the Thames after her, and eventually married. Among other peerages founded by trade, are those of Fitzwilliam, Leigh, Petre, Cowper, Darnley, Hill, and Carrington. The founders of the houses of Foley and Normanby were remarkable men in many respects, and, as furDishing striking examples of energy of character, the story of their lives is especially worthy of preservation.

Smiles. PEEVISHNESS-the Canker of Life.

Peevishness may be considered the canker of life, that destroys its vigour, and checks its improvement; that creeps on with hourly depredations, and taints and vitiates what it Johnson.

cannot consume.

PENSION-as a State Reward.

A pension, given as a reward for service to the state, is surely as good a ground of property as any security for money advanced to the state. It is a better; for money is paid, and well paid, to obtain that service. Burke.

PENSIVENESS-Pleasures of.

Resplendent halls and fashion's proud array, The smiles of flattery and the pomp of art, Music, and mirth, and dancing, to the heart Of him whose every hope hath waned away, Are but as mockeries. Him it pleases more, When sunlight fades from the grey western sky, To listen to the sere leaves whirling dry Around his path, and to the torrent's roar ;

PERFECTION.

There, resting on some mossy pediment,
Contemplative, beneath a blasted tree,
Deeply he feels earth's futile vanity;
That life is but a tower by lightning rent;
Mirth madness, hope illusion: he can see
Nought but the shadows of despair unblent.
Milton.

PENURY-Evils of.

Chill penury weighs down the heart itself; and though it sometimes be endured with calmness, it is but the calmness of despair. Mrs. Jameson.

PEOPLE-Different Kinds of.

The world may be divided into people that read, people that write, people that think, and

fox hunters.

Shenstone.

PEOPLE-Knowing the.

I confess myself to be one of those who believe, that it is not always in the capital, or among the busy haunts of a large town, that a traveller has the best opportunities of making himself acquainted with the character, and habits, and dispositions of a strange people. To the capital you doubtless turn, if your object be to examine into the machinery of the general government, or to hold converse with the great and distinguished members of the community, whether they deserve to be so

accounted because of any merit attaching to themselves, or owe their greatness to circumstances not of their own creating. But of the people, properly so called, a foreigner can see in the capital very little. He may join them in their public amusements; he may observe their modes of buying and selling; he may listen to their conversation in the streets, or at a table d'hôte, and form a correct enough judgment of their skill as artisans; but of their character properly so called, that is to say, of the temper of their minds, and of the causes which produce it, he can know nothing. The state of society in one large town resembles, in all essential points, so closely the state of society in another, that the traveller becomes bewildered, and is not unapt to treat as peculiarities in one place, habits which, in point of fact, extend far beyond it. Gleig.

PERFECTION-Acquisition of.

Perfection is attained by slow degrees; she requires the hand of time. Voltaire.

PERFECTION-Advancing.

Methinks this single consideration of the progress of a finite spirit to perfection, will be sufficient to extinguish all envy in inferior natures, and all contempt in superior. That cherubim, which now appears as a God to a human soul, knows very well that the period

PERSECUTION.

PERSECUTION-Reward of.

Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. St. Matthew.

PERSEVERANCE.

Yet I argue not, Against Heaven's hand or will, nor bate a jot Of heart or hope, but still bear up and steer Right onward.

Milton.

PERSEVERANCE-to be Admired.

If there be one thing on earth which is truly admirable, it is to see God's wisdom blessing an inferiority of natural powers, where they have been honestly, truly, and zealously cultivated.

Dr. Arnold.

PERSEVERANCE-to the End.

When I take the humour of a thing once, I am like your tailor's needle,-I go through. Ben Jonson.

He that shall endure unto the end the same shall be saved. St. Luke.

All the performances of human art, at which we look with praise or wonder, are instances of the resistless force of perseverance; it is by this that the quarry becomes a pyramid, and that distant countries are united by canals. If a man was to compare the effect of a single stroke of a pickaxe, or of one impression of the spade, with the general design and last result, he would be overwhelmed by the sense of their disproportion; yet those petty operations incessantly continued, in time surmount the greatest difficulties, and mountains are levelled, and oceans bounded, by the slender force of

human beings.

Ibid.

PERSEVERANCE-Success of.

A falling drop at last will cave a stone.
PERSEVERANCE-a Virtue.

Perseverance is a Roman virtue,
That wins each god-like act, and plucks success
Even from the spear-proof crest of rugged
Havard.

danger.

PERSUASION.

Lucretius.

Perseverance, dear my lord, Keeps honour bright. To have none, is to hang Quite out of fashion, like a rusty nail In monumental mockery.

Shakspeare.

PERSPECTIVE-Attack on.

No great painters ever trouble themselves about perspective, and very few of them know its laws; they draw everything by the eye, and, naturally enough, disdain, in the easy parts of their work, rules which cannot help them in difficult ones. It would take about a month's labour to draw imperfectly, by laws of perspective, what any great Venetian will draw perfectly in five minutes, when he is throwing a wreath of leaves round a head, or bending the curves of a pattern in and out among the folds of drapery. In modern days, I doubt if any artist among us, except, David Roberts, knows so much perspective as would

enable him to draw a Gothic arch to scale at a given angle and distance. Turner, though he was professor of perspective to the Royal Academy, did not know what he professed, and never, as far as I remember, drew a single building in true perspective in his life; he drew them only with as much perspective as suited him. Prout also knew nothing of perspective, and twisted his buildings, as Turner did, into whatever shapes he liked. I do not justify this; and would recommend the student at least to treat perspective with common Ruskin.

PERSPICUITY-Advantage of.

by the understanding of a people. A proposition must be plain, to be adopted A false notion, which is clear and precise, will always meet with a greater number of adherents in the world, than a true principle which is obscure or involved. Hence it arises that

parties, which are like small communities in the heart of the nation, invariably adopt some principle or some name as a symbol, which very inadequately represents the end they have in view, and the means which are at their disposal, but without which they could neither act nor subsist. The governments which are founded upon a single principle or a single feeling which is easily defined, are perhaps not the best, but they are unquestionably the strongest and the most durable in the world. De Tocqueville.

PERSUASION-Virtue of.
There is a way of winning, more by love,
And urging of the modesty, than fear;
Force works on servile natures, not the free.
He that's compell'd to goodness, may be good;