THOUGHTS AND FANCIES. (From the Note Book of a Thinker.)

North Otago Times, Volume 1, Issue 1, 25 February 1864, Page 8

THOUGHTS AND FANCIES. (From the Note Book of a Thinker.)

I. Professor Kingsley's delightful fairy story of the " Water Babies," is an exquisite illustration of that power of pervading external nature with the individual being, which John Foster rightly designated " Physiopathy." Schiller, in his beautiful poem of the " Ideals," embodies the same sentiment : — " All In etl to me, the bee, the flow er ; To me- the niunmi''ing fountain sung What ioelb not, felt , — so s-trong a power Oi hie, my life o'er till had Hung." 11. Or, take it in another translation :> — " M\ life g:i\e life to flowers, and woods. My tense nuule btrains in mubie tvwne 5 And all that teemed the lcnely moods Of things, were echoes but of mine." 111. For the true thinker, the really difficult task ip, not to learn but to unlearn. IV. The light which Philosophy flings on the duiker aspects of human life is but "Like moonlight on a troubled Bea, Erightening the storm it cannot calm." Y. Of Balzac, Goethe said, " That each of his tales was dug out of a woman's heart." I suspect Goethe had just read that unsurpassable short tale of "La Grande Breteche," when he made this acute remark . Was there ever anything like that tale for condensed force and thrilling pathos ? But, then, it is French all over, and untranslatable. VI. Has any writer ever pointed out the extent to which Thackeray is indebted to Balzac ? Thackeray, like Tom Moore, is evidently better acquainted with French literature than he cares to confess : •-id. like Moore, he is a perfec 1 '' art of borrowing. ' VIT " The bread of lifets love; bU Salt oi

s, life is work ; the sweetness of life i h 3 poetry ; and the water of life is faith."— t From Mrs Jameson. { VIII. '» Buhver, in his " Lady of Lyons," faik signally in the anatomy of the passion-,. f He depicts in Pauline the struggle between 1 love and pride. But love and pride never 00-existed, simply and definitively, in r Pauline's breast. For, granting her love for Melnotte to be genuine, there would he 1 another and far less manageable feeling at work within her breast — namely, suspicion of his truth. If he really loved her (the | would have argued to herself), would lie have lent himself to be the agent of a vile ! plot against her? A real lover would ; have proved his devotion by saving her ' from such a plot, at any hazard to him- ' self— even that of losingVw for evoi. By just so much, therefore, as her love overcame her pride, would her suspicion grow. Love, by its very nature, demands a full ' return; and in her case the return was everything, — security for herself, pardon for him, and complete reconciliation for both of them. How could she be assured of his truth until he had expiated tiij guilt of selfishly betraying her? Yet Bulwer makes the triumph of lo\tj iv Pauline's breast precede the expiation He has paid but a poor compliment to the discernment of the sex in doing so. Shakspeare would have given a very different version of the old story of Perouiou the Bellows- maker. IX. The dogs of New Orleans have much of the Yankee shrewdness in them When they wish to cross the Mississippi, they bark at the edge of the river tv attract the alligators, and when the latter are concentrated at one spot, the cunning dogs set off at full speed, and cross the nver higher up the stream. X. From canis come the French i ognard and canaille. And from the Gre« U <>quivalent for canis comes the Free; iusou's '' Cowan," or " Kowan." As it is said in the Apocalypse, " Without are dogs " XI. In the majority of men the element of individualism overlays and paralyses every other faculty of the "mind. Only inteleets of the highest class — conspicuously Shakspeare — are able to transcend this despotism of eelf.

An American steamer was delayed on a river by a dense fog, and was compelled to "h» to" for several hours. An impatient passenger appi cached the captain with the inquiry, " 1 saj ilr Pilot, ain't aou going to start soon '•>" "As soon lib the fog clears up," blandly replied the captain " Well, but it's starlight ov<-r head now," urged the passenger "Oh; les. replied the captain, with a mischievous twinkle in tho left i\e, "but we are not going that wa> " Laura, who was born at A-ugnon of a Provencal i'amih, had been for two _)ears a young wife when Petrtuth, at the age of twenty -three, fn-<t muv litfr She had, m addition to her cross husband, ten children before Petrarch had bi ought <o an end his ideal celebration of her excellence ; and it is not probable that her husband, H u»li de Sade, troubled himself a rush for all the bonnets A gentleman the other evening objected to placing cards with a lady, because, he -aid, sho | had such a " winning wa>" with her. A young lady says the reason she cimi a u. parasol is, that the sun is of the masculine gender, iind she cannot withstand his arden, A lad) writes from Paris to say that the heat during Hie pa^c week lias been so intent that n I^. impossible to keep a secret for more rhan h.ilf an hour ! "Welcome, httle stranger'" as the man raid when he found a half-sovereign within the lining of an old waistcoat. Folks with httle souls should be watchful of their tempers. Small kettles bod over quickh A Scotsman asked an Irishman, ivhj wen* halffarthings made m England? The reph «as, " To gne the Scotsmen an opportunity to to charitable institutions."