Quotes4study

Earnestness is the cause of patience; it gives endurance, overcomes pain, strengthens weakness, braves dangers, sustains hope, makes light of difficulties, and lessens the sense of weariness in overcoming them.

_Bovee._

The more powerful the obstacle, the more glory we have in overcoming it; and the difficulties with which we are met are the maids of honour which set off virtue.

_Moliere._

The courts of law continued to develop on the lines already laid down. The parlement, which had come to be a judicial committee nominated every year, but always consisting in fact of the same persons, changed in the course of the 14th century into a body of magistrates who were permanent but as yet subject to removal. During this period were evolved its organization and definitive features (see PARLEMENT). The provincial parlements had arisen after and in imitation of that of Paris, and had for the most part taken the place of some superior jurisdiction which had formerly existed in the same district when it had been independent (like Provence) or had formed one of the great fiefs (like Normandy or Burgundy). It was during this period also that the parlements acquired the right of opposing the registration, that is to say, the promulgation of laws, of revising them, and of making representations (_remontrances_) to the king when they refused the registration, giving the reasons for such refusal. The other royal jurisdictions were completed (see BAILIFF, CHÂTELET). Besides them arose another of great importance, which was of military origin, but came to include all citizens under its sway. These were the provosts of the marshals of France (_prévôts des maréchaux de France_), who were officers of the _Maréchaussée_ (the gendarmerie of the time); they exercised criminal jurisdiction without appeal in the case of crimes committed by vagabonds and fugitives from justice, this class being called their _gibier_ (game), and of a number of crimes of violence, whatever the rank of the offender. Further, another class of officers was created in connexion with the law courts: the "king's men" (_gens du roi_), the _procureurs_ and _avocats du roi_, who were at first simply those lawyers who represented the king in the law courts, or pleaded for him when he had some interest to follow up or to defend. Later they became officers of the crown. In the case of the _procureurs du roi_ this development took place in the first half of the 14th century. Their duty was not only to represent the king in the law courts, whether as plaintiff or defendant, but also to take care that in each case the law was applied, and to demand its application. From this time on the _procureurs du roi_ had full control over matters concerning the public interest, and especially over public prosecution. In this period, too, appeared what was afterwards called _justice retenue_, that is to say, the justice which the king administered, or was supposed to administer, in person. It was based on the idea that, since all justice and all judicial power reside in the king, he could not deprive himself of them by delegating their exercise to his officers and to the feudal lords. Consequently he could, if he thought fit, take the place of the judges and call up a case before his own council. He could reverse even the decisions of the courts of final appeal, and in some cases used this means of appealing against the decrees of the parlements (_proposition d'erreur, requête civile, pourvoi en révision_). In these cases the king was supposed to judge in person; in reality they were examined by the _maîtres des requêtes_ and submitted to the royal council (_conseil du roi_), at which the king was always supposed to be present and which had in itself no power of giving a decision. For this purpose there was soon formed a special committee of the council, which was called the _conseil privé_ or _de justice_. At the end of the 15th century, Charles VIII., in order to relieve the council of some of its functions, created a new final court, the _grand conseil_, to deal with a number of these cases. But before long it again became the custom to appeal to the _conseil du roi_, so that the _grand conseil_ became almost useless. The king frequently, by means of _lettres de justice_, intervened in the procedure of the courts, by granting _bénéfices_, by which rules which were too severe were modified, and faculties or facilities for overcoming difficulties arising from flaws in contracts or judgments, cases at that time not covered by the common law. By _lettres de grâce_ he granted reprieve or pardon in individual cases. The most extreme form of intervention by the king was made by means of _lettres de cachet_ (q.v.), which ordered a subject to go without trial into a state prison or into exile. Entry: FRENCH

Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 10, Slice 8 "France" to "Francis Joseph I."     1910-1911

4. Without doubt princes become great when they overcome the difficulties and obstacles by which they are confronted, and therefore fortune, especially when she desires to make a new prince great, who has a greater necessity to earn renown than an hereditary one, causes enemies to arise and form designs against him, in order that he may have the opportunity of overcoming them, and by them to mount higher, as by a ladder which his enemies have raised. For this reason many consider that a wise prince, when he has the opportunity, ought with craft to foster some animosity against himself, so that, having crushed it, his renown may rise higher.

Nicolo Machiavelli     The Prince

To a Frenchman, Alph. Beau de Rochas, belongs the credit of proposing, with perfect clearness, the cycle of operations now widely used in compression gas engines. In a pamphlet published in Paris in 1862, he stated that to obtain economy with an explosion engine four conditions are requisite: (1) The greatest possible cylinder volume with the least possible cooling surface; (2) the greatest possible rapidity of explosion; (3) the greatest possible expansion; and (4) the greatest possible pressure at the beginning of the expansion. The sole arrangement capable of satisfying these conditions he stated would be found in an engine operating as follows: (1) Suction during an entire out-stroke of the piston; (2) compression during the following in-stroke; (3) ignition at the dead point, and expansion during the third stroke; (4) forcing out of the burnt gases from the cylinder on the fourth and last return stroke. Beau de Rochas thus exactly contemplated, in theory at least, the engine produced by Dr Otto fourteen years later. He did not, however, put his engine into practice, and probably had no idea of the practical difficulties to be overcome before realizing his conception in iron and steel. To Dr Otto belongs the honour of independently inventing the same cycle, now correctly known as the Otto cycle, and at the same time overcoming all practical difficulties and making the gas engine of world-wide application. This he did in 1876, and his type of engine very rapidly surpassed all others, so that now the Otto-cycle engine is manufactured over the whole world by hundreds of makers. In 1876 Dr Otto used low compression, only about 30 lb. per sq. in. above atmosphere. Year by year compression was increased and greater power and economy were obtained, and at present compressions of more than 100 lb. per sq. in. are commonly used with most satisfactory results. Entry: GAS

Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 11, Slice 4 "G" to "Gaskell, Elizabeth"     1910-1911

DAVIES, SIR JOHN (1569-1626), English philosophical poet, was baptized on the 16th of April 1569, at Tisbury, Wiltshire, where his parents lived at the manor-house of Chicksgrove. He was educated at Winchester College, and became a commoner of Queen's College, Oxford, in 1585. In 1588 he entered the Middle Temple, and was called to the bar in 1595. In his general onslaught on literature in 1599 the archbishop of Canterbury ordered to be burnt the notorious and now excessively rare volume, _All Ovid's Elegies, 3 Bookes, by C. M. Epigrams by J. D._ (Middleburgh, 1598?), which contained posthumous work by Marlowe. The epigrams by Davies, although not devoid of wit, were coarse enough to deserve their fate. It is probable that they were earlier in date of composition than the charming fragment entitled _Orchestra_ (1596), written in praise of dancing. The poet, in the person of Antinoüs, tries to induce Penelope to dance by arguing that all harmonious natural processes partake of the nature of a conscious and well-ordered dance. He closes his argument by foreshadowing in a magic mirror the revels of the court of Cynthia (Elizabeth). _Orchestra_ was dedicated to the author's "very friend, Master Richard Martin," but in the next year the friends quarrelled, and Davies was expelled from the society for having struck Martin with a cudgel in the hall of the Middle Temple. He spent the year after his expulsion at Oxford in the composition of his philosophical poem on the nature of the soul and its immortality--_Nosce teipsum_ (1599). The style of the work was entirely novel; and the stanza in which it was written--the decasyllabic quatrain with alternate rhymes--had never been so effectively handled. Its force, eloquence and ingenuity, the orderly and lucid arrangement of its matter, place it among the finest of English didactic poems. In 1599 he also published a volume of twenty-six graceful acrostics on the words _Elisabetha Regina_, entitled _Hymns to Astraea_. He produced no more poetry except his contributions to Francis Davison's _Poetical Rhapsody_ (1608). These were two dialogues which had been written as entertainments for the queen, and "Yet other Twelve Wonders of the World," satirical epigrams on the courtier, the divine, the maid, &c., and "A Hymn in praise of Music." Ten sonnets to Philomel are signed J. D., and are assigned to Davies (_Poetical Rhapsody_, ed. A. H. Bullen, 1890). In 1601 Davies was restored to his position at the bar, after making his apologies to Martin, and in the same year he sat for Corfe Castle in parliament. James I. received the author of _Nosce teipsum_ with great favour, and sent him (1603) to Ireland as solicitor-general, conferring the honour of knighthood upon him in the same year. In 1606 he was promoted to be attorney-general for Ireland, and created serjeant-at-arms. Of the difficulties in the way of the prosecution of his work, and his untiring industry in overcoming them, there is abundant evidence in his letters to Cecil preserved in the _State Papers on Ireland_. One of his chief aims was to establish the Protestant religion firmly in Ireland, and he took strict measures to enforce the law for attendance at church. With the same end in view he took an active part in the "plantation" of Ulster. In 1612 he published his prose _Discoverie of the true causes why Ireland was never entirely subdued untill the beginning of his Majestie's happie raigne_.[1] In the same year he entered the Irish parliament as member for Fermanagh, and was elected speaker after a scene of disorder in which the Catholic nominee, Sir John Everard, who had been installed, was forcibly ejected. In the capacity of speaker he delivered an excellent address reviewing previous Irish parliaments. He resigned his Irish offices in 1619, and sat in the English parliament of 1621 for Newcastle-under-Lyme. With Sir Robert Cotton he was one of the founders of the Society of Antiquaries. He was appointed lord chief justice in 1626, but died suddenly (December 8th) before he could enter on the office. He had married (1609) Eleanor Touchet, daughter of George, Baron Audley. She developed eccentricity, verging on madness, and wrote several fanatical books on prophecy. Entry: DAVIES

Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 7, Slice 10 "David, St" to "Demidov"     1910-1911

His fundamental theoretic position relates to the antithesis of wealth and value. Carey held that land, as we are concerned with it in industrial life, is really an instrument of production which has been formed as such by man, and that its value is due to the labour expended on it in the past--though measured, not by the sum of that labour, but by the labour necessary under existing conditions to bring new land to the same stage of productiveness. He studied the occupation and reclamation of land with peculiar advantage as an American, for whom the traditions of first settlement were living and fresh, and before whose eyes the process was indeed still going on. The difficulties of adapting a primitive soil to the work of yielding organic products for man's use can be lightly estimated only by an inhabitant of a country long under cultivation. It is, in Carey's view, the overcoming of these difficulties by arduous and continued effort that entitles the first occupier of land to his property in the soil. Its present value forms a very small proportion of the cost expended on it, because it represents only what would be required, with the science and appliances of our time, to bring the land from its primitive into its present state. Property in land is therefore only a form of invested capital--a quantity of labour or the fruits of labour permanently incorporated with the soil; for which, like any other capitalist, the owner is compensated by a share of the produce. He is not rewarded for what is done by the powers of nature, and society is in no sense defrauded by his sole possession. The so-called Ricardian theory of rent is a speculative fancy, contradicted by all experience. Cultivation does not in fact, as that theory supposes, begin with the best, and move downwards to the poorer soils in the order of their inferiority. The light and dry higher lands are first cultivated; and only when population has become dense and capital has accumulated, are the low-lying lands, with their greater fertility, but also with their morasses, inundations, and miasmas, attacked and brought into occupation. Rent, regarded as a proportion of the produce, sinks, like all interest on capital, in process of time, but, as an absolute amount, increases. The share of the labourer increases, both as a proportion and an absolute amount. And thus the interests of these different social classes are in harmony. But, Carey proceeded to say, in order that this harmonious progress may be realized, what is taken from the land must be given back to it. All the articles derived from it are really separated parts of it, which must be restored on pain of its exhaustion. Hence the producer and the consumer must be close to each other; the products must not be exported to a foreign country in exchange for its manufactures, and thus go to enrich as manure a foreign soil. In immediate exchange value the landowner may gain by such exportation, but the productive powers of the land will suffer. Entry: CAREY

Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 5, Slice 3 "Capefigue" to "Carneades"     1910-1911

DUBOIS, JEAN ANTOINE (1765-1848), French Catholic missionary in India, was ordained in the diocese of Viviers in 1792, and sailed for India in the same year under the direction of the Missions Étrangères. He was at first attached to the Pondicherry mission, and worked in the southern districts of the present Madras Presidency. On the fall of Seringapatam in 1799 he went to Mysore to reorganize the Christian community that had been shattered by Tipu Sultan. Among the benefits which he conferred upon his impoverished flock were the founding of agricultural colonies and the introduction of vaccination as a preventive of smallpox. But his great work was his record of _Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies_. Immediately on his arrival in India he saw that the work of a Christian missionary should be based on a thorough acquaintance with the innermost life and character of the native population. Accordingly he abjured European society, adopted the native style of clothing, and made himself in habit and costume as much like a Hindu as he could. He gained an extraordinary welcome amongst people of all castes and conditions, and is still spoken of in many parts of South India with affection and esteem as "the prince's son, the noblest of Europeans." Although Dubois modestly disclaimed the rank of an author, his collections were not so much drawn from the Hindu sacred books as from his own careful and vivid observations, and it is this, united to a remarkable prescience, that makes his work so valuable. It is divided into three parts: (1) a general view of society in India, and especially of the caste system; (2) the four states of Brahminical life; (3) religion--feasts, temples, objects of worship. Not only does the abbé give a shrewd, clear-sighted, candid account of the manners and customs of the Hindus, but he provides a very sound estimate of the British position in India, and makes some eminently just observations on the difficulties of administering the Empire according to Western notions of civilization and progress with the limited resources that are available. Dubois's French MS. was purchased for eight thousand rupees by Lord William Bentinck for the East India Company in 1807; in 1816 an English translation was published, and of this edition about 1864 a curtailed reprint was issued. The abbé, however, largely recast his work, and of this revised text (now in the India Office) an edition with notes was published in 1897 by H.K. Beauchamp. Dubois left India in January 1823, with a special pension conferred on him by the East India Company, and on reaching Paris was appointed director of the Missions Étrangères, of which he afterwards became superior (1836-1839). He translated into French the famous book of Hindu fables called _Panchatantra_, and also a work called _The Exploits of the Guru Paramarta_. Of more interest were his _Letters on the State of Christianity in India_, in which he asserted his opinion that under existing circumstances there was no human possibility of so overcoming the invincible barrier of Brahminical prejudice as to convert the Hindus as a nation to any sect of Christianity. He acknowledged that low castes and outcastes might be converted in large numbers, but of the higher castes he wrote: "Should the intercourse between individuals of both nations, by becoming more intimate and more friendly, produce a change in the religion and usages of the country, it will not be to turn Christians that they will forsake their own religion, but rather ... to become mere atheists." He died in 1848. Entry: DUBOIS

Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 8 "Dubner" to "Dyeing"     1910-1911

The movement when once fully appreciated went ahead very rapidly. In the United States Illinois was the first state to call a distinct children's court into existence, and Judge Richard Tuthill was the pioneer at Chicago, where the court was established in 1899. Many states followed suit, including New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Wisconsin, Kansas, Colorado, Indiana and others, till the number rose to nineteen in 1906. In New York, where juvenile probation is supervised by the Society for the Protection of Children, there is a separate children's court with rooms attached, where the children for detention wait till they are brought in for trial. Brooklyn has also a children's court. In Pennsylvania, where the juvenile court was at first opposed as unconstitutional, the difficulty was met by first bringing the child before the magistrate in the police court, a course which (though followed by his transferring the case to the special court) perpetuated the very evils the children's court was intended to avoid; the work of probation was, however, most effectively carried out, chiefly by female officers. The Chicago Juvenile Court sits twice weekly under an especially appointed judge, and policemen act as probation officers to some extent. The court of Indianapolis, however, gained the reputation of being the most complete and perfect in the United States. It works with a large and highly efficient band of volunteer probation officers under a chief. The juvenile court of Denver, Colorado, attained remarkable results under Judge B. Lindsey, whose magnetic personality, wonderful comprehension of boy nature, and extraordinary influence over them achieved great results. The court meets once a fortnight, when fresh cases are tried and boys already on probation report themselves, often to the number of two hundred at a time. The latter appear before the judge in batches, each hands in his school report in a sealed letter, and according to its purport receives praise or blame, or he may be committed to the Detention House. An efficient court was also constituted at Baltimore, Maryland, with a judge especially chosen to preside, probation being for fixed periods, varying from three months to three years, and children being brought back to the court for parole or discharge, or, if necessary, committal to the house of one of the philanthropic societies. In Washington, D.C., the system of having no distinct court or judge, but holding a separate session, was followed, and it was found that numbers of children came to the court for help and guidance, looking upon the judge for the time being as their friend and counsellor. Probation in this instance offered peculiar difficulties on account of the colour question, two-thirds of the children having negro blood and a white boy being always preferred for a vacant situation. Throughout, the action of juvenile courts in the United States has been to bring each individual into "human touch" with kindly helpful workers striving to lead the young idea aright and train it to follow the straight path. It was the result always of the effort of private persons and not due to government initiative, indeed the advocates and champions of the system only established it by overcoming strong opposition from the authorities. Entry: CHILDREN

Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton"     1910-1911

The successor of Lord Minto was Lord Moira, better known as the marquis of Hastings, who governed India for the long period of nine years, from 1814 to 1823. This period was marked by two wars of the first magnitude, the campaigns against the Gurkhas of Nepal, and the third and last Mahratta War. The Gurkhas, the present ruling race in Nepal, are Hindu immigrants who claim a Rajput origin. Their sovereignty dates only from 1767, in which year they overran the valley of Katmandu, and gradually extended their power over all the hills and valleys of Nepal. Organized upon a sort of military and feudal basis, they soon became a terror to all their neighbours, marching east into Sikkim, west into Kumaon, and south into the Gangetic plains. In the last quarter their victims were British subjects, and at last it became imperatively necessary to check their advance. Sir George Barlow and Lord Minto had remonstrated in vain, and nothing was left to Lord Moira but to take up arms. The campaign of 1814 was little short of disastrous. After overcoming the natural difficulties of a malarious climate and precipitous hills, the sepoys were on several occasions fairly worsted by the unexpected bravery of the little Gurkhas, whose heavy knives or kukris dealt terrible execution. But in 1815 General Ochterlony, who commanded the army operating by way of the Sutlej, stormed one by one the hill forts which still stud the Himalayan states now under the Punjab government, and compelled the Nepal darbar to sue for peace. In the following year the same general advanced from Patna into the valley of Katmandu, and finally dictated the terms which had before been rejected, within a few miles of the capital. By the treaty of Segauli, which defines the English relations with Nepal to the present day, the Gurkhas withdrew on the one hand from Sikkim, and on the other from those lower ranges of the western Himalayas which have supplied the health-giving stations of Naini Tal, Mussoorie and Simla. Entry: HISTORY

Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 14, Slice 4 "Independence, Declaration of" to "Indo-European Languages"     1910-1911

The _strong_ period centres round the name of Euphronius, the author of a really great artistic movement. His capacity for inventing new subjects or new poses--or otherwise overcoming technical and artistic difficulties--marks a great advance on all previous achievements, and he seems to represent the stage of development traditionally associated with the painter Cimon of Cleonae, the inventor of foreshortening and other novelties. Thus figures were no longer represented exclusively in profile, as in the black-figured vases which had made no advance beyond the conventions of Egyptian art. Ten vases signed by him are in existence (though it is not certain that all were actually painted by him), most of them having mythological subjects (fig. 28). Entry: III

Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 5, Slice 6 "Celtes, Konrad" to "Ceramics"     1910-1911

88. _Bessemer and Mushet._--Bessemer had no very wide knowledge of metallurgy, and after overcoming many stupendous difficulties he was greatly embarrassed by the brittleness or "redshortness" of his steel, which he did not know how to cure. But two remedies were quickly offered, one by the skilful Swede, Göransson, who used a pig iron initially rich in manganese and stopped his blow before much oxygen had been taken up; and the other by a British steel maker, Robert Mushet, who proposed the use of the manganiferous cast iron called spiegeleisen, and thereby removed the only remaining serious obstacle to the rapid spread of the process. Entry: 88

Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 14, Slice 7 "Ireland" to "Isabey, Jean Baptiste"     1910-1911

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