The Literary and Scientific Class Book: Embracing the Leading Facts and Principles of Science with Many Difficult Words Explained at the Heads of the Lessons, and Questions Annexed for Examination. Selected from the Rev. John Platts' Literary and Scientific Class Book, and from Various Other Sources

Front Cover
John Prentiss, 1828 - 318 pages
 

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

Popular passages

Page 266 - TO him who in the love of nature holds Communion with her visible forms, she speaks A various language; for his gayer hours She has a voice of gladness, and a smile And eloquence of beauty, and she glides Into his darker musings, with a mild And healing sympathy, that steals away Their sharpness, ere he is aware.
Page 266 - A man of a polite imagination is let into a great many pleasures that the vulgar are not capable of receiving. He can converse with a picture, and find an agreeable companion in a statue. He meets with a secret refreshment in a description, and often feels a greater satisfaction in the prospect of fields and meadows, than another does in the possession.
Page 72 - O'er mountains yet untrod, Each mother held aloft her child To bless the bow of God. Methinks thy jubilee to keep, The first-made anthem rang On earth delivered from the deep, And the first poet sang. Nor ever shall the Muse's...
Page 71 - TRIUMPHAL arch, that fill'st the sky When storms prepare to part, I ask not proud Philosophy To teach me what thou art — Still seem as to my childhood's sight, A midway station given For happy spirits to alight Betwixt the earth and heaven.
Page 18 - The world is full of poetry — the air Is living with its spirit ; and the waves Dance to the music of its melodies, And sparkle in its brightness. Earth is veiled, And mantled with its beauty; and the walls That close the universe with crystal in, Are eloquent with voices, that proclaim The unseen glories of immensity, In harmonies, too perfect, and too high, For aught but beings of celestial mould, And speak to man in one eternal hymn, Unfading beauty, and unyielding power.
Page 89 - As home he goes beneath the joyous moon. Ye that keep watch in heaven, as earth asleep Unconscious lies, effuse your mildest beams, Ye constellations, while your angels strike, Amid the spangled sky, the silver lyre. Great source of day ! best image here below Of thy Creator, ever pouring wide, From world to world, the vital ocean round, On nature write with every beam His praise.
Page 245 - As beasts excel cold rocks and brambles rude ; Men, who their duties know, But know their rights, and, knowing, dare maintain...
Page 52 - It has increased indefinitely the mass of human comforts and enjoyments, and rendered cheap and accessible, all over the world, the materials of wealth and prosperity. It has armed the feeble hand of man, in short, with a power to which no limits can be assigned; completed the dominion of mind over the most refractory qualities of matter; and laid a sure foundation for all those future miracles of mechanic power which are to aid and reward the labours of after generations.
Page 98 - Horrid with frost and turbulent with storm, Blows autumn, and his golden fruits, away : Then melts into the spring : soft spring, with breath Favonian, from warm chambers of the south, Recalls the first.
Page 242 - A strong sense of the value and blessings of union induced the people at a very early period to institute a federal government to preserve and perpetuate it. They formed it almost as soon as they had a political existence; nay, at a time when their habitations were in flames, when many of...

Bibliographic information