Views of Society and Manners in America: In a Series of Letters from that Country to a Friend in England, During the Years 1818, 1819, and 1820

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Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, Paternoster-Row, 1821 - 523 pages

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Page 425 - Nor is the equinoctial heat more discouraging to them, than the accumulated winter of both the poles. We know that whilst some of them draw the line and strike the harpoon on the coast of Africa, others run the longitude, and pursue their gigantic game along the coast of Brazil.
Page 425 - Whilst we follow them among the tumbling mountains of ice, and behold them penetrating into the deepest frozen recesses of Hudson's Bay, and Davis' Straits, whilst we are looking for them beneath the arctic circle, we hear that they have pierced into the opposite region of polar cold, that they are at the antipodes, and engaged under the frozen serpent of the South...
Page 425 - No sea but what is vexed by their fisheries. No climate that is not witness to their toils. Neither the perseverance of Holland, nor the activity of France, nor the dexterous and firm sagacity of English enterprise, ever carried this most perilous mode of hardy industry to the extent to which it has been pushed by this recent people...
Page 403 - ... whatsoever its licentiousness could devise or dare. These abuses of an institution so important to freedom and science are deeply to be regretted, inasmuch as they tend to lessen its usefulness and to sap its safety. They might, indeed, have been corrected by the wholesome punishments reserved to and provided by the laws of the several States against falsehood and defamation ; but public duties more urgent press on the time of public servants, and the offenders have therefore been left to find...
Page 244 - Tremò si forte, che dello spavento La mente di sudore ancor mi bagna. La terra lagrimosa diede vento, Che balenò una luce vermiglia, La qual mi vinse ciascun sentimento : 135 CANTO IV.
Page 305 - And whose duty it shall be to enquire whether the constitution has been preserved inviolate in every part; and whether the legislative and executive branches of government have performed their duty as guardians of the people, or assumed to themselves, or exercised other or greater powers than they are entitled to by the constitution...
Page 403 - During this course of administration, and in order to disturb it, the artillery of the press has been levelled against us, charged with whatsoever its licentiousness could devise or dare. These abuses of an institution so important to freedom and science are deeply to be regretted, inasmuch as they tend to lessen its usefulness and to sap its safety.
Page 403 - Nor was it uninteresting to the world, that an experiment should be fairly and fully made, whether freedom of discussion, unaided by power, is not sufficient for the propagation and protection of truth — whether a government, conducting itself in the true spirit of its constitution, with zeal and purity, and doing no act which it would be unwilling the whole world should wit'ness, can be written down by falsehood and defamation.
Page 127 - And laugh beneath the rainbow of her wings. Oh ! time of Promise, Hope, and Innocence, Of Trust, and Love, and happy Ignorance ! Whose every dream is Heaven, in whose fair joy Experience yet has thrown no black alloy ; Whose Pain, when fiercest, lacks the venom' d pang Which to maturer ill doth oft belong, When, mute and cold, we weep departed bliss, And Hope expires on broken Happiness.
Page 428 - Religion is like the fashion; one man wears his doublet slashed, another laced, another plain ; but every man has a doublet : so every man has his religion. We differ about trimming. 4. Men say they are of the same religion for quietness...

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