MISCELLANEOUS EXTRACTS.

Southland Times, Issue 974, 24 June 1868, Page 3

MISCELLANEOUS EXTRACTS.

Candob. — Candor consists in giving a fair and deliberate hearing to opinions, statements, and arguments, and weighing fairly and honestly their tendency. It is, therefore, opposed to prejudice, blind attachment to preconceived opinions, and that narrow disputatious spirit which delights in captuous criticism, and will hear nothing with coolness that is opposed to its own views ; which distorts or misrepresent the sentiments of its opponents, ascribing them to unworthy motives, deducing from them conclusions which they do not warrant. Candor, accordingly, may be considered as a compound of justice and the love of truth. It leads us to give due attention to the opinions and statements of others — in all cases to be chiefly solicitious to discover truth ; and in statements of a mixed character, containing perhaps much^errbr and fallacy, anxiously to discover and separate what is true. It haß accordingly been remarked, that a tnrn for acute disputation and minute and rigid criticism ia often the characteristic of a contracted and prejudiced mind; and that the most enlarged understandings are alwayß the most indulgent to the statements of others — their leading object being to discover truth. I A Drvxya Bell at "Whitstable. — j There he (M. Esquires) put on the Indiarubber sack, the shoes with leaden soles, the leaden weights and the helmet, and descended to the abode of mermaids and oysters. The water was not very deep, some thirty feet, and he did not stay long, though he brought up a pebble to show that he had been to the bottom. But his sensations, as he describes them, were not pleasant. Although the sea was calm, he was beaten about and made giddy, by the water dancing round his helmet ; his temples seemed screwed in a vice, and a tempest roared in his ears j the atmosphere of the sea was like that of a November fog, a pale, doubtful twilight, and the India-rubber garment stuck as closely as if he had been sewn up in the skin of a marine monster. However, his own clothing was not wetted, and he had attained the end he had in view. Perhaps if he had stayed longer, he too, might have seen "the fish, attracted by the metallic glitter, come and swim round the head of the diver, like a flight of small birds, and even imprint a kiss with their mouths on the outside of the helmet."