Works, Volume 1

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Adam and Charles Black, 1872
 

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Page 54 - THOSE WHO BEST DESERVE THEIR GRATITUDE THE KING HIS MINISTERS, AND MANY OF THE NOBLES AND COMMONERS OF THE REALM RAISED THIS MONUMENT TO JAMES WATT WHO DIRECTING THE FORCE OF AN ORIGINAL GENIUS EARLY EXERCISED IN PHILOSOPHIC RESEARCH TO THE IMPROVEMENT OF THE...
Page 58 - Cavendish's), last summer (that is, 1783), gave some account of them to M. Lavoisier, as well as of the conclusion drawn from them, that dephlogisticated air is only water deprived of its phlogiston ; but, at that time, so far was M. Lavoisier from thinking any such opinion warranted, that till he was prevailed upon to repeat the experiment himself, he found some difficulty in believing that nearly the whole of the two airs could be converted into water.
Page 262 - I am on the point of proposing to you a scheme for a representation of the Colonies in Parliament. Perhaps I might be inclined to entertain some such thought; but a great flood stops me in my course. Opposuit natura — I cannot remove the eternal barriers of the creation.
Page 283 - The life which I led at Glasgow was a pleasurable dissipated life in comparison of that which I lead here at Present. I have begun to write a book in order to pass away the time.
Page 228 - ... that insidious and crafty animal, vulgarly called a statesman or politician, whose councils are directed by the momentary fluctuations of affairs.
Page 52 - ... and encouragement to all young persons who showed any indications of talent, or applied to him for patronage or advice. His health, which was delicate from his youth upwards, seemed to become firmer as he advanced in years, and he preserved up almost to the last moment of his existence, not only the full command of his extraordinary intellect, but all the alacrity of spirit, and the social gaiety which had illumined his happiest days.
Page 203 - ... seems to imagine that he can arrange the different members of a great society, with as much ease as the hand arranges the different pieces upon a chess-board: he does not consider that the pieces upon the chessboard have no other principle of motion besides that which the hand impresses upon them; but that, in the great chess-board of human society, every single piece has a principle of motion of its own, altogether different from that which the legislature might choose to impress upon it.
Page 204 - Those leaders themselves, though they originally may have meant nothing but their own aggrandisement, become many of them in time the dupes of their own sophistry, and are as eager for this great reformation as the weakest and foolishest of their followers. Even though the leaders should have preserved their own heads, as indeed they commonly do, free from this fanaticism, yet they dare not always disappoint the expectation of their followers; but are often obliged, though contrary to their principle...
Page 107 - Penzance, where, disliking the profession to which he had been destined, he occupied himself with chemical experiments, ingeniously contriving to make the utensils of the shop and the kitchen serve for apparatus ; and it is remembered of him that he frequently alarmed the household by his explosions. The result of his dislike to the shop was a disagreement with his master, and he went to another in the same place ; but here he continued in the same course. Pursuing a plan of study which he had laid...
Page 430 - It is to be considered that the abundance of income which he thus speaks of was not much above one hundred a year ; for we know from himself that a short time before he had but...

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