Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847. Various
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Vol. x, Nov. 1821, p. 373.
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Béranger has already conveyed this truth through the melody of his delicious verse:—
"Le vois-tu bien, là-bas, là-bas,
Là-bas, là-bas? dit l'Espérance;
Bourgeois, manants, rois et prelats
Lui font de loin la révérence.
C'est le Bonheur, dit l'Espérance.
Courons, courons; doublons le pas,
Pour le trouver là-bas, là-bas,
Là-bas, là-bas."
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"I did not dare to breathe aloud the unhallowed anguish of my mind to the majesty of the unsympathising stars."—See
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"Motus autem siderum," such is the reverent and sententious remark of Grotius, "qui eccentrici, quique epicyclici dicuntur, manifeste ostendunt
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"Now, there was a word spoken to me in private, and my ears, by stealth as it were, received the veins of its whisper."—
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Such are the majestic syllables which preface the speech of Saturn in
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Thus writes Suetonius—"prægrandibus oculis, qui, quod mirum esset, noctu etiam et in tenebris, viderent, sed ad breve, et quum primum a somno patuissent; deinde rursum hebescebant."—
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Those who are familiar with the classic historians, will see in this description no exaggeration whatever. Instruments for the destruction of life yet more awful and mysterious, were employed by many of the predecessors, and many of the successors of Tiberius, as well as by Tiberius himself: and modern science has shown that these devices, instead of being, as was originally conjectured, the result of black-magic, were, in reality, the effect of hydraulic, pneumatic, and mechanical contrivances. Even the most marvellous feats of the Egyptian sorcerers have been latterly explained by the revelations of natural philosophy, and a multitude of these explanations may be found by the reader in the learned work "Des Sciences Occultes," &c. written by M. Eusebe Salverte, and published in Paris as recently as 1843. In that remarkable volume, M. Salverte proves that natural phenomena are more startling than necromantic tricks, and that, in the words of Roger Bacon, "
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Suetonius assures us (cap. lxviii.), that the muscular strength of Tiberius Claudius Nero was, in the prime of his manhood, almost as supernatural as his crimes; that he could with his outstretched finger bore a hole through a sound apple (
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His garb, writes Josephus, "was so resplendent as to spread a horror over those that looked intently upon Him."—
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"An owl," says Josephus (xix. 8); "an angel of the Lord," αγγελος Κυριου, say the scriptures, (Acts. xii. 23,)—in either case a spectral illusion.
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It is impossible for anyone devoted to the study of "Paradise Lost," of "Comus," even of "Sampson Agonistes," and especially of "Il Pensoroso" and "L'Allegro," to doubt that their writer was carried away at times by the