Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge in Virginia

Photo Credit: Photo © 2009 by Stephanie Bart-Horvath
Location: Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge in Virginia

And now here is my secret, a very simple secret; it is only with the heart that one can see rightly, what is essential is invisible to the eye.

-- Antoine de Saint-Exupery

delectation \dee-lek-TAY-shun\, noun:

delectation \dee-lek-TAY-shun\, noun:

Great pleasure; delight, enjoyment.

Example Quotes:
Even after the buffet had evolved into the more functional sideboard in the 18th century, lavish arrangements of silver and porcelain continued to be laid out for the delectation of guests at large dinners.
-- Pilar Viladas, "That's Entertaining!", New York Times, March 24, 2002
At other times she'll get so worked up by some pet poeticism that she forgets she's not writing just for her own delectation.
-- David Klinghoffer, "Black madonna", National Review, February 9, 1998
Example Sentences:
The smooth, quiet ride of his Prius made driving it a source of great delectation.
-- Brought to you by the 3rd Generation Prius
Delectation derives from Latin delectatio, from the past participle of delectare, "to please."

Neckwear

Neckwear is a collective term for items worn around the neck. The earliest known version of the necktie was found in the massive mausoleum of China's first emperor, Shih Huang Ti, who was buried in 210 BC. The tie as we know it was first worn by men in the 18th and 19th centuries and evolved in the late 19th century to become an essential item of menswear.

Fun Facts

Smiles and Giggles
Stewardesses' is the longest word typed with only the left hand.
And 'lollipop' is the longest word typed with your right hand.
(Bet you tried this out mentally, didn't you?)
No word in the English language rhymes withmonth, orange, silver, or purple.
'Dreamt' is the only English word that ends in the letters 'mt'.
(Are you doubting this?)
Our eyes are always the same size from birth, but our nose and ears never stop growing.
The sentence: 'The quick brown fox jumps over the
lazy dog' uses every letter of the alphabet.
(Now, you KNOW you're going to try this out for accuracy, right?)
The words 'racecar,' 'kayak' and 'level' are the same whether they are read left to right or right to left (palindromes).
(Yep, I knew yo u were going to 'do' this one.)
There are only four words in the English language which end in 'dous': tremendous, horrendous, stupendous, and hazardous. (You're not possibly doubting this, are you ?)
There are two words in the English language that have all five vowels in order: 'abstemious' and 'facetious.'
(Yes, admit it, you are going to say, a e i o u)
TYPEWRITER is the longest word that can be made using the letters only on one row of the keyboard.
(All you typists are going to test this out)
A cat has 32 muscles in each ear.
A goldfish has a memory span of three seconds .
(Some days that's about what my memory span is.)
A 'jiffy' is an actual unit of time for 1/100th of a second.
A shark is the only fish that can blink with both eyes.
A snail can sleep for three years.
(I know some people that could do this too.!)
Almonds are a member of the peach family.
An ostrich's eye is bigger than its brain.
(I know some people like that also . Actually I know A LOT of people like this!)
Babies are born without kneecaps. They don't appear until the child reaches 2 to 6 years of age.
February 1865 is the only month in recorded history not to have a full moon.
In the last 4,000 years, no new animals have been domesticated.
If the population of China walked past you, 8 abreast, the line would never end because of the rate of reproduction.
Leonardo Da Vinci invented the scissors
Peanuts are one of the ingredients of dynamite!
Rubber bands last longer when refrigerated.
The average person's left hand does 56% of the typing.
The cruise liner, QE 2, moves only six inches for each gallon of diesel that it burns.
The microwave was invented after a researcher walked by a radar tube and a chocolate bar melted in his pocket. (Good thing he did that.)
The winter of 1932 was so cold that Niagara Falls froze completely solid .
There are more chickens than people in the world.
Winston Churchill was born in a ladies' room during a dance.
Women blink nearly twice as much as men.

Turkey Run State Park, Indiana

Photo Credit: Jessica Reeder
Location: Turkey Run State Park, Indiana

Do not hurry. Do not rest.

-- Goethe

Muses

In Greek and Roman mythology, the muses were a group of sister goddesses whose cult was based on Mount Helicon in Greece. They were probably originally the patron goddesses of poets, who in ancient times were also musicians. However, they later influenced all liberal arts and sciences, hence their connection with such institutions as the "museum."

rictus \RIK-tuhs\, noun:

rictus \RIK-tuhs\, noun:

1. The gape of the mouth, as of birds.
2. A gaping grin or grimace.

A rictus of cruel malignity lit up greyly their old bony faces.
-- James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
His belly swelled grotesquely, his hands curled, his cheeks puffed out, his mouth contorted in a rictus of pain and astonishment.
-- Tony Horwitz, Confederates in the Attic
Then, as the sympathy and praise engulfed him, Hector would invariably roll over onto his back, legs in the air, his mouth twisted into an otherworldly rictus.
-- Bruce McCall, "Writers Who Were Really Dogs", New York Times, June 5, 1994
Rictus is from Latin rictus, "the open mouth," from ringi, "to show the teeth."

saturnine \SAT-uhr-nyn\, adjective:

saturnine \SAT-uhr-nyn\, adjective:

1. Born under or being under the astrological influence of the planet Saturn.
2. Gloomy or sullen in disposition.
3. Having a sardonic or bitter aspect.

His saturnine spirit appealed to younger bohemians who were anxious to make idols of an earlier generation's tormented souls, but even so, it cannot have been easy for Rothko always to be the pessimist among the optimists.
-- Jed Perl, review of Mark Rothko: A Biography by James E.B. Breslin, New Republic, January 24, 1994
A saturnine prison guard sits and broods -- and every now and then, gets up and shoots an unseen prisoner.
-- John Walsh, review of The Silence Between Two Thoughts, Independent, June 11, 2004
This captures perfectly the tone of his writing: saturnine, droll, with a fascinating, deliberate bureaucratic dowdiness.
-- Andrew Martin, "Class conscious", New Statesman, November 13, 2000
Saturnine comes from Saturn, in Medieval times believed to be the most remote planet from the Sun and thus coldest and slowest in its revolution.

Spices

spices
A spice is any of the many aromatic, plant-derived substances that have a fragrant or sharp flavor and are used to season food. Most spices come from the East; the first to be introduced to Europe was pepper (from India), which long remained a rare and expensive commodity. The use of spices in cooking started with the Byzantines, probably to hide the fact that meat was spoiled or unflavorful. The "spice route" was important during the Crusades as well as later on when British and Dutch trading companies worked hard to make money by buying and selling spices. There are four basic kinds: fresh spices, ground spices, spice pastes, and whole dried spices.

Capistrano Beach California

Photo Credit: Jim Schick
Location: Capistrano Beach California

If you obey all the rules, you miss all the fun…

-- Katherine Hepburn

Stockholm Syndrome

Stockholm Syndrome is the phenomenon in which a hostage begins to identify and sympathize with his or her captor. The word was coined by Nils Bejerot after a botched bank robbery in Stockholm, Sweden in 1973, in which it emerged that the hostages were more afraid of the police than of their captors.

reticent \RET-ih-suhnt\, adjective:

reticent \RET-ih-suhnt\, adjective:

1. Inclined to keep silent; reserved; uncommunicative.
2. Restrained or reserved in style.
3. Reluctant; unwilling.

His wispy eyebrows sit above eyes undimmed by more than forty years of serious scholarship; a tight-lipped smile suggests that there are many things he will not say about himself or his accomplishments. Indeed, he is almost painfully reticent about what most scholars now consider to be a monumental achievement in the field.
-- Marc K. Stengel, "The Diffusionists Have Landed", The Atlantic, January 2000
Within a circle of intimate friends, he's a very sociable person, says Russell Banks, another novelist, who has known Auster since 1977. "Outside of that circle, he's fairly shy and reticent."
-- "Case of the Brooklyn Symbolist", New York Times, August 30, 1992
People might be reticent to put a more sizable amount into their 401(k) because they're worried it will affect their lifestyle.
-- Alexandra Zendrian, "Feel The Retirement Burn", Forbes, July 29, 2009
Reticent comes from the present participle of Latin reticere, "to keep silent," from re- + tacere, "to be silent."

Oeans

From space, our planet appears blue because the majority of its surface is covered by oceans and seas. There are five "great" oceans: the Atlantic, the Pacific, and the Indian, which all merge into the Southern Ocean around Antarctica, and the Arctic Ocean which comprises the northern parts of the Atlantic and Pacific. The deepest places on Earth are ocean trenches, where the ocean floor plunges so steeply that the waters above could easily swallow Mount Everest.

flout \FLOWT\, transitive verb:

flout \FLOWT\, transitive verb:

1. To treat with contempt and disregard; to show contempt for.
2. To mock, to scoff.
3. Mockery, scoffing.

The thorough training in the fine points of lyric writing that he has received from Hammerstein has made Sondheim highly critical of those lyricists who flout the basic techniques of the craft.
-- "Sondheim: Lyricist and Composer", New York Times, March 6, 1966
Seth and Dorothy were completely mystified by Janis's determination to flout as many social conventions as she could.
-- Alice Echols, Scars of Sweet Paradise
Who put your beauty to this flout and scorn
By dressing it in rags.
-- Tennyson, Idylls of the King
Flout comes from Middle English flouten, "to play the flute."

Yosemite Valley

Photo Credit: David 'Art' Wooten of Kandidz
Location: Yosemite Valley

The mirror of nature reflects my inner world, the essence of humanity, and the great, all-embracing expanse of life itself. Only when we connect to nature, engaged with nature, are we truly alive and vigorous. To really be alive, one must be under the sun, the moon, the shining stars and surrounded by the beautiful greenery and pure waters of the natural world.

-- Daisaku Ikeda

Poisonous plants for pets

poisonous plants for pets
While plants add a touch of color and fragrance to our daily lives, they also inject an element of danger into the lives of our pets. More than 700 plants have been identified as producing physiologically active or toxic substances in sufficient amounts to cause harmful effects in animals. Poisonous plants produce a variety of toxic substances and cause reactions ranging from mild nausea to death. Certain animal species may have a peculiar vulnerability to a potentially poisonous plant.

vet \VET\, transitive verb:

vet \VET\, transitive verb:

1. To provide veterinary care for (an animal).
2. To provide (a person) with medical care.
3. To examine carefully; to subject to thorough appraisal; to evaluate.
4. To practice as a veterinarian.

She was the right age (in her fifties), and her personal background had been vetted during the Senate confirmation hearings.
-- Eleanor Clift and Tom Brazaitis, Madam President
The "Stasi files law," as it is popularly known, also made it possible to vet parliamentarians for Stasi connections.
-- John O. Koehler, Stasi: The Untold Story of the East German Secret Police
Unlike, say, Bob Rubin (the Wall Street investment banker and incoming head of the National Economic Council), who probably needed half a law firm to vet his portfolio, I had no stocks or bonds.
-- George Stephanopoulos, All Too Human
Vet is short for veterinary or veterinarian, which comes from Latin veterinarius, "of or belonging to beasts of burden and draught," from veterinus, "of draught, of beasts of burden." The earlier sense was "to submit to examination or treatment by a veterinary surgeon," hence "to subject to thorough appraisal."

truckle \TRUHK-uhl\, intransitive verb:

truckle \TRUHK-uhl\, intransitive verb:

1. To yield or bend obsequiously to the will of another; to act in a subservient manner.
2. A small wheel or roller; a caster.

Only where there was a "defiance," a "refusal to truckle," a "distrust of all authority," they believed, would institutions "express human aspirations, not crush them."
-- Pauline Maier, "A More Perfect Union", New York Times, October 31, 1999
The son struggled to be obedient to the conventional, commercial values of the father and, at the same time, to maintain his own playful, creative innocence. This conflict could make him truckle in the face of power.
-- Dr. Margaret Brenman-Gibson, quoted in "Theater Friends Recall Life and Works of Odets," by Herbert Mitgang, New York Times, October 30, 1981
I am convinced that, broadly speaking, the audience must accept the piece on my own terms; that it is fatal to truckle to what one conceives to be popular taste.
-- Sidney Joseph Perelman, quoted in "The Perelman Papers," by Herbert Mitgang, New York Times, March 15, 1981
Truckle is from truckle in truckle bed (a low bed on wheels that may be pushed under another bed; also called a trundle bed), in reference to the fact that the truckle bed on which the pupil slept was rolled under the large bed of the master. The ultimate source of the word is Greek trokhos, "a wheel."

New England

New England is in the northeastern region of the United States. The six states that make up New England are Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut. The region was named by Captain John Smith, who explored its shores in 1614 on behalf of some London merchants. New England was soon settled by English Puritans who believed in hard work and were happy to spend their time building new communities.

Lake Washington, Seattle

Photo Credit: Jeremy Garrett
Location: Lake Washington, Seattle

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions.

-- Rainer Maria Rilke

Poetry

Poetry is an intense form of literature, appealing directly to the emotions. In poetry, meaning is condensed to produce strong images, and words are arranged according to the pattern of their sounds, much like music. Children are attracted to such rhythms when they learn nursery rhymes. There are three main types of poetry, the oldest being epic - long narratives with a heroic or profound subject. Dramatic poetry is written for characters and can be performed on stage. Lyric poetry is the closest to songs, and these poems tend to be short and emotionally expressive.

stultify \STUHL-tuh-fahy\, verb:

stultify \STUHL-tuh-fahy\, verb:

1. To render useless or ineffectual; cripple.
2. To cause to appear stupid, inconsistent, or ridiculous.
3. Law To allege or prove insane and so not legally responsible.

The word "civilization" to my mind is coupled with death. When I use the word, I see civilization as a crippling, thwarting thing, a stultifying thing. For me it was always so. I don't believe in the golden ages, you see... civilization is the arteriosclerosis of culture.
-- Henry Miller
It's different play… they're so busy building, they don't realize," says Kling. Although she notes that companies like Lego produce praiseworthy technological games, some technology can "stultify" children, but then, she adds, so can some board games.
-- Mel Bezalel, "Fun and games - and more", Jerusalem Post, July 27, 2009
Stultify is from Late Latin stultificāre, "to make foolish."

Iowa

Photo Credit: Glenda Dykstra
Location: Iowa

It is neither wealth nor splendor, but tranquility and occupation, which give happiness.
-- Thomas Jefferson

Bamboo

bamboo
Bamboo is a grass with more than 1,000 species. These vary in size, some plants being as small as one foot tall while others can grow up to 130 feet tall. Some species can grow one foot per day! Bamboo can be useful or decorative. It can be used for food and medicine as well as building material and furniture. Thomas Edison experimented with more than 100 varieties of bamboo when trying to come up with a filament for the first electric light bulb.

perorate \PUR-uh-rayt\, intransitive verb:

perorate \PUR-uh-rayt\, intransitive verb:

1. To conclude or sum up a long discourse.
2. To speak or expound at length; to declaim.

These people don't talk, they perorate, pontificate, bombast.
-- Jean Charbonneau, "Biographer's quest becomes self-searching journey", Denver Post, January 28, 2001
Our mother favored a staccato, stand-up style; if our father could perorate, she could condense.
-- Annie Dillard, "The Leg In The Christmas Stocking: What We Learned From Jokes", New York Times, December 7, 1986
You may perorate endlessly.
-- Richard Elman, "A Rap on Race", New York Times, June 27, 1971
Perorate comes from Latin perorare "to speak at length or to the end," from per-, "through, throughout," + orare, "to speak."

Echo Park Lake, Los Angeles, California

Photo Credit: KK Condon
Location: Echo Park Lake, Los Angeles, California

Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.

-- T.S. Eliot

Magazine

The word magazine also means "storehouse," and all magazines are collections of articles (and advertisements!) published at regular intervals. Often, the content of magazines does not date as quickly as that of newspapers. Magazines are printed on longer-lasting paper and cover every imaginable topic, ranging from very specialized scientific journals to more general lifestyle and fashion magazines. Features are the staple of magazines and vary according to the type of magazine. These articles look at a particular subject in depth, often accompanied by photographs or illustrations. The first magazine published in America was "The American Magazine, or a Monthly View of the Political State of the British Colonies," edited by John Webbe and published in Philadelphia in 1741. It appeared just three days before Benjamin Franklin's "General Magazine and Historical Chronicle for All the British Plantations in America."

furbelow \FUR-buh-low\, noun:

furbelow \FUR-buh-low\, noun:

1. A pleated or gathered flounce on a woman's garment; a ruffle.
2. Something showy or superfluous; a bit of showy ornamentation.

In a season of ruffles, frills and furbelows, simple cuts in neutral shades stand out.
-- "Designers Head for Neutral Territory", St. Louis Post-Dispatch, February 27, 1997
Patience is required to get past some of the director's more baroque cinematic touches, decorating the story's dark center with visual furbelows . . . and aural gimmicks.
-- Lisa Schwarzbaum, "Movies: The Evil That Men Do", Entertainment Weekly, October 23, 1998
It is a story that, for all its hyper-animatedness, all its flips and furbelows of style, is confusing and wearisome.
-- Christine Stansell, "Details, Details", New Republic, December 10, 2001
Furbelow is perhaps an alteration of Italian faldella.

Torrance Beach, California

Photo Credit: Cathy Stancliffe
Location: Torrance Beach, California

All meaningful and lasting change starts first in your imagination and then works its way out. Imagination is more important than knowledge.

-- Albert Einstein

Birth Control Pill

The first commercially produced female oral contraceptive was introduced on August 18, 1960. The birth control pill was a major medical achievement: for the first time in history, women could safely and effectively control childbearing by taking a pill. Birth control pills are synthetic hormones that mimic the way real estrogen and progestin work in a woman's body. Since no new eggs are released by a woman on the pill, her body is tricked into believing she is already pregnant. The birth control pill had a major social impact on society. Its popularity also heightened the debate about the moral and health consequences of sex and promiscuity. Since the pill's introduction, it has been used by millions of women around the world. Male oral contraceptives are in the developmental stage.

propitious \pruh-PISH-uhs\, adjective:

propitious \pruh-PISH-uhs\, adjective:

1. Presenting favorable circumstances or conditions.
2. Favorably inclined; gracious; benevolent.

Example Quotes:
By the early 1500s rice was being planted on the Cape Verde island most propitious for agriculture, Santiago.
-- Judith A. Carney, Black Rice
It is hard to imagine a less propitious start to a marriage: in a single blow Vincent forfeited the trust of his wife, the respect of her family, and the means of his own support.
-- Matthew Sturgis, Aubrey Beardsley: A Biography
Example Sentences:
Though he didn't believe in luck, he considered the birth of the child propitious for the expedition's success.
-- Brought to you by the 3rd Generation Prius
Propitious derives from Latin propitius, "favorable."

Sierra Nevada, California

Photo Credit: Tioga Jenny
Location: Taken from the shore of Mono Lake on the east side of the Sierra Nevada, California

Ever tried? Ever failed? No matter, try again, fail again, fail better.

-- Samuel Beckett

dalliance \DAL-ee-uhns, DAL-yuhns\, noun:

dalliance \DAL-ee-uhns, DAL-yuhns\, noun:

1. Frivolous spending of time; dawdling.
2. Playful flirtation.

Do not, as some ungracious pastors do,
Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven;
Whiles, like a puff’d and reckless libertine,
Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads,
And recks not his own rede.
-- William Shakespeare, Hamlet
The acceptance of the role as artistic directors of the company is not a dalliance, she said yesterday. "It is an absolute, firm commitment."
-- Angela Bennie, "Blanchett: theatre job 'no dalliance'", Sydney Morning Herald, November 11, 2006
Dalliance comes from Middle English daliaunce, which is probably from Old French or Anglo-French.

baseball pitcher

baseball pitcher
The pitcher is vital to the game of baseball. Until a batter hits the ball, the game is a duel between the pitcher (and catcher) and the batter, which is repeated with each at bat. Until about 1870, the pitcher was merely a player assigned to put the ball in play by pitching it to the batter to hit. Now, of the 25 players on a major league club's normal active roster, eleven or twelve are pitchers, five of these being starting pitchers and the remainder constituting the bullpen or relief pitchers. Pitching demands more exact coordination of mental and muscular faculties and more continuous physical exertion than any other position in the game. On each pitch the pitcher is aiming at the strike zone, or a small part of it, 60 feet 6 inches away from the rubber on which his foot pivots in the act of pitching the ball. Pitchers use changes of speed, control (the ability to pitch to specific points in the strike zone), and different grips that affect the flight of the pitch in ord er to confound batters.

bowdlerize \BODE-luh-rise; BOWD-\, transitive verb:

bowdlerize \BODE-luh-rise; BOWD-\, transitive verb:

1. To remove or modify the parts (of a book, for example) considered offensive.
2. To modify, as by shortening, simplifying, or distorting in style or content.

The president did not call for bowdlerizing all entertainment, but stressed keeping unsuitable material away from the eyes of children.
-- "Conference a start toward loosening grip of violence", Atlanta Journal, May 12, 1999
His tempestuous high school years are touched upon in a delightful scene where the precocious Roy infuriates his English teacher by trying to restore some of Shakespeare's saucier lines to that classroom's bowdlerized study of Hamlet.
-- Herman Goodden, "A Few Scenes in the Life of Roy McDonald", London Free Press, December 7, 2000
Gershwin bowdlerized his original operatic vision of "Porgy," simplifying it for Broadway. In 1976, the Houston Grand Opera, led by David Gockley, revived the original vision.
-- Richard Scheinin, "Gershwin's genius vividly displayed in 'Porgy' at S.F. Opera", Mercury News, June 10, 2009
Bowdlerize derives from the name Thomas Bowdler, an editor in Victorian times who rewrote Shakespeare, removing all profanity and sexual references so as not to offend the sensibilities of the audiences of his day.

Steamboat

steamboat
On August 17, 1807, the first American steamboat trip took place on the Hudson River in New York. With about 40 people on board, Robert Fulton and Robert Livingston launched the "North River Steamboat" from New York City up the Hudson River to Albany, New York. The boat covered 150 miles in 32 hours (with an overnight stop) at an average speed of five miles per hour. Nicknamed "Fulton's Folly," it was in fact a total success.

undulation \uhn-juh-LEY-shuhn, uhn-dyuh-, -duh-\, noun

undulation \uhn-juh-LEY-shuhn, uhn-dyuh-, -duh-\, noun:

1. A regular rising and falling or movement to alternating sides; movement in waves.
2. A wavelike form, outline, or appearance.
3. One of a series of waves or wavelike segments.

Considering the difficulty of the golf course, the severe undulation of the greens, the magnitude of the event and the quality of the competition, Inkster ranked it as her greatest victory, particularly because she turned 42 last month.
-- Clifton Brown, "GOLF; One for the Ages, As Inkster Wins U.S. Open at 42", New York Times, July 8, 2004
Both works suggest depth; "Greenscreen" feels as if you could tumble into it, whereas "Mt. Shasta" depicts it via landscape. Even the hint at undulation achieved with subtle shifts in shadow echoes the mountain's shape.
-- Cate McQuaid, "An artist with breathtaking scope: Painter races from concept to caress", Boston Globe, January 17, 2008
Undulation is from Late Latin undula, "a small wave," diminutive of Latin unda, "wave."

Los Osos, CA

Location: Los Osos, CA

Live in the sunshine, swim the sea, drink the wild air…

-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

celerity \suh-LAIR-uh-tee\, noun:

celerity \suh-LAIR-uh-tee\, noun:

Rapidity of motion or action; quickness; swiftness.

Though not in the best of physical form, he was capable of moving with celerity.
-- Malachy McCourt, A Monk Swimming: A Memoir
Furthermore, as is well known, computer technology grows obsolete with amazing celerity.
-- Alan S. Blinder and Richard E. Quandt, "The Computer and the Economy", The Atlantic, December 1997
The lightning celerity of his thought processes took you on a kind of helter-skelter ride of surreal non-sequiturs, sudden accesses of emotion and ribald asides, made all the more bizarre for being uttered in those honeyed tones by the impeccably elegant gent before you.
-- "A life full of frolics", The Guardian, May 19, 2001
Celerity is from Latin celeritas, from celer, "swift." It is related to accelerate.

Great Lakes

Lying between Canada and the U.S., the five Great Lakes cover a total of 95,096 square miles and contain one-fifth of the world's fresh water. Lake Superior is the world's largest freshwater lake. These lakes are linked to the Atlantic Ocean by the St. Lawrence Seaway, which enables ocean-going ships to use inland ports.

Madison Square Park in Manhattan

Photo Credit: Joana L
Location: Madison Square Park in Manhattan

Time you enjoyed wasting was not wasted.

-- John Lennon

furtive \FUR-tiv\, adjective:

furtive \FUR-tiv\, adjective:

1. Done by stealth; surreptitious; secret; as, a furtive look.
2. Expressive of stealth; sly; shifty; sneaky.
3. Stolen; obtained by stealth.
4. Given to stealing; thievish; pilfering.

He had always been more than willing to show me parts of [his notebook], whenever I asked him to; and naturally I had taken many furtive looks at its innermost pages when he wasn't around.
-- Michael Chabon, Werewolves in Their Youth
Exchanging furtive glances, they oozed a nervousness, perhaps in fear that some prewritten script would go awry.
-- Michael Bloomberg, Bloomberg by Bloomberg
Why did he keep looking around at all the other tables like that? It made him seem furtive, as if he didn't belong here, as if he were an intruder in so fine a place as this.
-- Mary McGarry Morris, Fiona Range
Furtive is from Latin furtivus, from furtum, "theft," from fur, "thief."

8 Ways to Help Your Health Naturally

By Lucy Danziger, SELF Editor-in-Chief - Posted on Thu, Aug 06, 2009, 6:30 pm PDT
Happier, Healthier You
by Lucy Danziger, SELF Editor-in-Chief a Yahoo! Health Expert for Women's Health
Visit Women's Health Home »


I've always been a little squeamish about taking medicine. Blame my dislike of forced medicine as a kid, but if there's a way to treat an ailment without drugs, sign me up. I usually opt for an ice pack to treat postworkout soreness instead of a painkiller, and I try to get all my vitamins and nutrients from whole fresh foods (fruits, veggies, nuts and lean meats) rather than popping a pill. Maybe that's why I love these all-natural ways to help your health. Salud!

Soothe sinus trouble
If you're congested, headachy or feverish, it could be the start of a sinus infection. Boil a few white onions. Breathing in the stinky steam with your head under a towel for several minutes can help open stuffed-up nasal passages, plus onions have proven antiviral properties.

Strengthen your heart

A handful of nuts (particularly almonds or walnuts) can lower cholesterol and blood pressure. The snacks are high in heart-healthy monounsaturated fat and omega-3 fatty acids, which help reduce LDL ("bad") cholesterol and keep the walls of the arteries healthy and elastic. Nuts also naturally curb cravings: People who eat 2 ounces of almonds a day consumed less food at subsequent meals, researchers from Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, report. They seem to curb my desire for sweets--the fatty-sugary treats like brownies or cookies I usually reach for when I'm in need of a sweet fix.

Stabilize your blood sugar

Sprinkle cinnamon on your latte: Consuming as little as 1/4 teaspoon daily helps reduce blood sugar levels in people with type 2 diabetes. The spice, which has insulin-enhancing compounds, also lowers triglycerides, LDL and total cholesterol.

Heal wounds
Honey can disinfect cuts and help them heal faster. The syrup contains an enzyme that produces hydrogen peroxide, which kills germs, as well as antioxidants that may reduce inflammation. Raw honey is the most effective, but even the variety in packets will work. Warm it in the microwave, apply a tablespoon to a gauze pad and secure with medical tape. Reapply daily.

Banish bad breath

Cinnamon-flavored chewing gum has been shown to reduce bad-breath-inducing bacteria by more than 50 percent, according to researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Prevent tummy trouble
Love sushi? Don't ignore the wasabi on your plate. Yes, it looks like Play-Doh, but the green paste, which is the Japanese version of horseradish, has antibacterial properties that can help stave off food poisoning. Swirl it into soy sauce (low sodium is best!) for a kick of flavor and tummy protection.

Avoid falling asleep at the wheel!
Put a drop of peppermint essential oil in a tissue, and inhale the scent while you're delayed in traffic or on a long, leisurely drive. Catching a whiff can help make you more alert as well as lessen frustration of being stuck at the wheel.

San Jose, CA, at Penitencia Creek Park

Photo Credit: Denise D. Greaves
Location: San Jose, CA, at Penitencia Creek Park

There are moments when one feels free from one's own identification with human limitations and inadequacies. At such moments one imagines that one stands on some spot of a small planet, gazing in amazement at the cold yet profoundly moving beauty of the eternal, the unfathomable; life and death flow into one, and there is neither evolution nor destiny; only Being.

-- Albert Einstein

Sewing stitches

sewing stitches
Sewing is an ancient process involving the stitching of cloth, animal skins, furs, or other materials using needle and thread. Its use is nearly universal among human populations and dates back to Paleolithic times (30,000 BC), predating the weaving of cloth. The first hand-powered sewing machines in the 19th century sewed 20 stitches per minute; now sewing machines can sew 1000-4000 stitches per minute!

luminary \LOO-muh-nair-ee\, noun:

luminary \LOO-muh-nair-ee\, noun:

1. Any body that gives light, especially one of the heavenly bodies.
2. A person of eminence or brilliant achievement.

Example Quotes:
There's something comforting in those occasional lapses when a luminary lurches and trips over the humble stone his powerful torch somehow failed to reveal.
-- Brad Leithauser, "You Haven't Heard the Last of This", New York Times, August 30, 1998
. . .such jazz luminaries as Cab Calloway, Duke Ellington, Jimmie Lunceford, Louis Armstrong, and Earl Hines.
-- Daniel Mark Epstein, Nat King Cole
Example Sentences:
Before winning the famous prize, she wasn't a luminary outside the scientific community.
-- Brought to you by the 3rd Generation Prius
Luminary derives from Latin luminare, "a window," from lumin-, lumen, "light."

Provincetown , MA

Photo Credit: mbcomet
Location: Provincetown , MA

If you want to build a ship, don't drum up the people to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.

-- Antoine de Saint-Exupery

cynosure \SY-nuh-shoor; SIN-uh-shoor\, noun:

cynosure \SY-nuh-shoor; SIN-uh-shoor\, noun:

1. An object that serves as a focal point of attention and admiration.
2. That which serves to guide or direct.
3. [Capitalized]. The northern constellation Ursa Minor, which contains the North Star; also, the North Star itself.

The monarch, at the apex of court power and centre of its ritual, and the greatest patron of the arts, was the cynosure of this culture, standing (or, more usually, sitting) at the centre of a system of artistic practice intended to represent his or her sacred omnipotence and monopoly of power.
-- John Brewer, The Pleasures of the Imagination
Lucy is very pretty and becomes the cynosure not only of the aforementioned characters, but also of several faceless and epicene young men who also loiter about.
-- John Simon, "Stealing Beauty", National Review, July 15, 1996
Then, feeling himself the cynosure of every eye in the library, he extemporized a brief speech on his "lucky day."
-- Peter Schneider, Eduard's Homecoming
Cynosure derives from Latin cynosura, from Greek kunosoura, "dog's tail, the constellation Ursa Minor," from kuon, kun-, "dog" + oura, "tail."

métier \met-YAY; MET-yay\, noun:

métier \met-YAY; MET-yay\, noun:

1. An occupation; a profession.
2. An area in which one excels; an occupation for which one is especially well suited.

The pairing of Maynard and Salinger -- the writer whose métier is autobiography and the writer who's so private he won't even publish -- was an unlikely one.
-- Larissa MacFarquhar, "The Cult of Joyce Maynard", New York Times Magazine, September 6, 1998
In Congress, I really found my métier. . . . I love to legislate.
-- Charles Schumer, quoted in "Upbeat Schumer Battles Poor Polls and Turnouts and His Own Image", New York Times, May 16, 1998
He is in the position of a good production engineer suddenly shunted into salesmanship. It is not his métier.
-- James R. Mursell, "The Reform of the Schools", The Atlantic, December 1939
Métier is from the French, ultimately from Latin ministerium, "service, ministry, employment," from minister, "a servant, a subordinate."

Rabbits and Hares

Rabbits and hares belong to the order Lagomorpha and are ground-dwelling herbivores. The European rabbit lives in large groups, but cottontails and hares are mostly solitary animals. Generally, rabbits are smaller than hares, with smaller ears and shorter hind legs. To warn of danger, they thump the ground with a hind leg and then rely on speed to escape.

Why, Skid Mark, Why?

After recent events, Question Mark is annoyed with his brother, Skid Mark. Skid thought it would be funny to hide Question's wallet. He told Question that he would get it back if he finds it. So, first off, Skid laid five colored keys in a row. One of them is a key to a room where Skid is hiding Question's wallet. Using the clues, can you determine the order of the keys and which is the right key?

Red: This key is somewhere to the left of the key to the door.
Blue: This key is not at one of the ends
Green: This key is three spaces away from the key to the door (2 between)
Yellow: This key is next to the key to the door.
Orange: This key is in the middle.



Answer
The order (from left to right) is Green, Red, Orange, Blue, Yellow.

The blue key is the key to the door.

Dedham, MA

Photo Credit: Kerry Hawkins
Location: Dedham, MA

Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark in the hopeless swamps of the not quite, the not yet, and the not at all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish in lonely frustration for the life you deserved and have never been able to reach. The world you desire can be won. It exists. It is real. It is possible. It is yours.

-- Ayn Rand

The Spectator. Nos. 421 PAPER XI

PAPER XI.

How those please the imagination who treat of subjects abstracted from matter, by allusions taken from it.
What allusions most pleasing to the imagination.
Great writers how faulty in this respect.
Of the art of imagining in general.
The imagination capable of pain as well as pleasure.
In what degree the imagination is capable either of pain or pleasure.



The Spectator No 421. Thursday, July 3, 1712
Ignotis errare locis, ignota videre
Fumina gaudebat; studio minuente laborem. OV.

[Ovid, Metamorphoses, 4. 294-95: He loved to roam through unimagined places, by the banks of undiscovered rivers; and the joy of finding wonders made his labour light. (Golding translation])

The pleasures of the imagination are not wholly confined to such particular authors as are conversant in material objects, but are often to be met with among the polite masters of morality, criticism, and other speculations abstracted from matter, who, though they do not directly treat of the visible parts of Nature, often draw from them their similitudes, metaphors, and allegories. By these allusions a truth in the understanding is as it were reflected by the imagination; we are able to see something like colour and shape in a notion, and to discover a scheme of thoughts traced out upon matter. And here the mind receives a great deal of satisfaction, and has two of its faculties gratified at the same time, while the fancy is busy in copying after the understanding, and transcribing ideas out of the intellectual world into the material.

The great art of a writer shows itself in the choice of pleasing allusions, which are generally to be taken from the great or beautiful works of art or Nature for though whatever is new or uncommon is apt to delight the imagination, the chief design of an allusion being to illustrate and explain the passages of an author, it should be always borrowed from what is more known and common, than the passages which are to be explained.

Allegories, when well chosen, are like so many tracks of light in a discourse, that make everything about them clear and beautiful. A noble metaphor, when it is placed to an advantage, casts a kind of glory round it, and darts a luster through a whole sentence. These different kinds of allusion are but so many different manners of similitude, and, that they may please the imagination, the likeness ought to be very exact, or very agreeable, as we love to see a picture where the resemblance is just, or the posture and air graceful. But we often find eminent writers very faulty in this respect; great scholars are apt to fetch their comparisons and allusions from the sciences in which they are most conversant, so that a man may see the compass of their learning in a treatise on the most indifferent subject. I have read a discourse upon love, which none but a profound chemist could understand, and have heard many a sermon that should only have been preached before a congregation of Cartesians. On the contrary, your men of business usually have recourse to such instances as are too mean and familiar. They are for drawing the reader into a game of chess or tennis, or for leading him from shop to shop, in the cant of particular trades and employments. It is certain, there may be found an infinite variety of very agreeable allusions in both these kinds, but, for the generality, the most entertaining ones lie in the works of Nature, which are obvious to all capacities, and more delightful than what is to be found in arts and sciences.

It is this talent of affecting the imagination, that gives an embellishment to good sense, and makes one man's compositions more agreeable than another's. It sets off all writings in general, but is the very life and highest perfection of poetry. Where it shines in an eminent degree, it has preserved several poems for many ages, that have nothing else to recommend them; and where all the other beauties are present, the work appears dry and insipid, if this single one be wanting. It has something in it like creation; it bestows a kind of existence, and draws up to the readers view several objects which are not to be found in being. It makes additions to nature, and gives a greater variety to God's works. In a word, it is able to beautify and adorn the most illustrious scenes in the universe, or to fill the mind with more glorious shows and apparitions, than can be found in any part of it.

We have now discovered the several originals of those pleasures that gratify the fancy; and here, perhaps, it would not be very difficult to cast under their proper heads those contrary objects, which are apt to fill it with distaste and terror; for the imagination is as liable to pain as pleasure. When the brain is hurt by any accident, or the mind disordered by dreams or sickness, the fancy is overrun with wild dismal ideas, and terrified with a thousand hideous monsters of its own framing.

Eumenidum veluti demens videt agmina Pentheus,
Et solem geminum, & duplices se ostendere Thebas.
Aut Agamemnonius scenis agitatus Orestes,
Armatam facibus matrem & serpentibus atris
Quum videt, ultricesque sedent in limine Dirae. Vir.

Like Pentheus, when, distracted with his fear,
He saw two suns, and double Thebes, appear;
Or mad Orestes, when his mother's ghost
Full in his face infernal torches toss'd,
And shook her snaky locks: he shuns the sight,
Flies o'er the stage, surpris'd with mortal fright;
The Furies guard the door and intercept his flight.
[trans. Dryden] [Virgil, Aeneid, 4. 469-73]

There is not a sight in Nature so mortifying as that of a distracted person, when his imagination is troubled, and his whole soul disordered and confused. Babylon in ruins is not so melancholy a spectacle. But to quit so disagreeable a subject, I shall only consider, by way of conclusion, what an infinite advantage this faculty gives an Almighty Being over the soul of man, and how great a measure of happiness or misery we are capable of receiving from the imagination only.

We have already seen the influence that one man has over the fancy of another, and with what ease he conveys into it a variety of imagery; how great a power then may we suppose lodged in Him, who knows all the ways of affecting the imagination, who can infuse what ideas He pleases, and fill those ideas with terror and delight to what degree He thinks fit? He can excite images in the mind, without the help of words, and make scenes rise up before us and seem present to the eye, without the assistance of bodies or exterior objects. He can transport the imagination with such beautiful and glorious visions as cannot possibly enter into our present conceptions, or haunt it with such ghastly spectres and apparitions as would make us hope for annihilation, and think existence no better than a curse. In short, he can so exquisitely ravish or torture the soul through this single faculty, as might suffice to make up the whole heaven or hell of any finite being.

This essay on the Pleasures of the Imagination having been published in separate papers, I shall conclude it with a Table of the principal Contents in each paper.

The Spectator. Nos. 420 PAPER X

PAPER X.

What authors please the imagination who have nothing to do with fiction.
How history pleases the imagination.
How the authors of the new philosophy please the imagination.
The bounds and defects of the imagination.
Whether these defects are essential to the imagination.

The Spectator No 420. Wednesday, July 2, 1712
. . . Quocunque volent animum auditoris agunto. HOR.

[Horace, Ars Poetica. 1OO: And take men's spirits where they will. ]

As the writers in poetry and fiction borrow their several materials from outward objects, and join them together at their own pleasure, there are others who are obliged to follow Nature more closely, and to take entire scenes out of her. Such are historians, natural philosophers, travelers, geographers, and, in a word, all who describe visible objects of a real existence.

It is the most agreeable talent of an historian, to be able to draw up his armies and fight his battles in proper expressions, to set before our eyes the divisions, cabals, and jealousies of great men, and to lead us step by step into the several actions and events of his history. We love to see the subject unfolding itself by just degrees, and breaking upon us insensibly, that so we may be kept in a pleasing suspense, and have time given us to raise our expectations, and to side with one of the parties concerned in the relation. I confess this shows more the art than the veracity of the historian, but I am only to speak of him as he is qualified to please the imagination. And in this respect Livy has perhaps excelled all who went before him, or have written since his time. He describes everything in so lively a manner, that his whole history is an admirable picture, and touches on such proper circumstances in every story, that this reader becomes a kind of spectator, and feels in himself all the variety of passions which are correspondent to the several parts of the relation.

But among this set of writers there are none who more gratify and enlarge the imagination than the authors of the new philosophy, whether we consider their theories of the earth or heavens, the discoveries they have made by glasses, or any other of their contemplations on nature. We are not a little pleased to find every green leaf swarm with millions of animals that at their largest growth are not visible to the naked eye. There is something very engaging to the fancy, as well as to our reason, in the treatises of metals, minerals, plants, and meteors; but when we survey the whole earth at once, and the several planets that lie within its neighborhood, we are filled with a pleasing astonishment, to see so many worlds hanging one above another, and sliding round their axles in such an amazing pomp and solemnity. If after this we contemplate those wide fields of ether, that reach in height as far as from Saturn to the fixed stars, and run abroad almost to an infinitude, our imagination finds its capacity filled with so immense a prospect, and puts itself upon the stretch to comprehend it. But if we yet rise higher, and consider the fixed stars as so many vast oceans of flame, that are each of them attended with a different set of planets, and still discover new firmaments and new lights, that are sunk farther in those unfathomable depths of ether, so as not to be seen by the strongest of our telescopes, we are lost in such a labyrinth of suns and worlds, and confounded with the immensity and magnificence of Nature.

Nothing is more pleasant to the fancy, than to enlarge itself, by degrees, in its contemplation of the various proportions which its several objects bear to each other, when it compares the body of man to the bulk of the whole earth, the earth to the circle it describes round the sun, that circle to the sphere of the fixed stars, the sphere of the fixed stars to the circuit of the whole creation, the whole creation itself to the infinite space that is everywhere diffused about it; or when the imagination works downward, and considers the bulk of a human body, in respect of an animal a hundred times less than a mite, the particular limbs of such an animal, the different springs which actuate the limbs, the spirits which set these springs a-going, and the proportionable minuteness of these several parts, before they have arrived at their full growth and perfection. But if, after all this, we take the least particle of these animal spirits, and consider its capacity of being wrought into a world, that shall contain within those narrow dimensions a heaven and earth, stars and planets, and every different species of living creatures, in the same analogy and proportion they bear to each other in our own universe; such a speculation, by reason of its nicety, appears ridiculous to those who have not turned their thoughts that way, though, at the same time, it is founded on no less than the evidence of a demonstration. Nay, we might yet carry it farther, and discover in the smallest particle of this little world, a new inexhausted fund of matter, capable of being spun out into another universe.

I have dwelt the longer on this subject, because I think it may show us the proper limits, as well as the defectiveness, of our imagination; how it is confined to a very small quantity of space, and immediately stopped in its operations, when it endeavors to take in anything that is very great, or very little. Let a man try to conceive the different bulk of an animal which is twenty, from another which is a hundred times less than a mite, or to compare, in his thoughts, a length of a thousand diameters of the earth with that of a million, and he will quickly find that he has no different measures in his mind, adjusted to such extraordinary degrees of grandeur or minuteness. The understanding, indeed, opens an infinite space on every side of us, but the imagination, after a few faint efforts, is immediately at a stand, and finds herself swallowed up in the immensity of the void that surrounds it. Our reason can pursue a particle of matter through an infinite variety of divisions, but the fancy soon loses sight of it, and feels in itself a kind of chasm, that wants to be filled with matter of a more sensible bulk. We can neither widen nor contract the faculty to the dimensions of either extreme. The object is too big for our capacity, when we would comprehend the circumference of a world, and dwindles into nothing, when we endeavor after the idea of an atom.

It is possible this defect of imagination may not be in the soul itself, but as it acts in conjunction with the body. Perhaps there may not be room in the brain for such a variety of impressions, or the animal spirits may be incapable of figuring them in such a manner, as is necessary to excite so very large or very minute ideas. However it be, we may well suppose that beings of a higher nature very much excel us in this respect, as it is probable the soul of man will be infinitely more perfect hereafter in this faculty, as well as in all the rest; insomuch that, perhaps, the imagination will be able to keep pace with the understanding, and to form in itself distinct ideas of all the different modes and quantities of space.

The Spectator. Nos. 419 PAPER IX

PAPER IX.
Of that kind of poetry which Mr. Dryden calls the fairy-way of writing.
How a poet should be qualified for it.
The pleasures of the imagination that arise from it.
In this respect, why the moderns excel the ancients.
Why the English excel the moderns.
Who the best among the English.
Of emblematical persons.

The Spectator No. 419, Tuesday, July 1, 1712
. . . mentis gratissimus error. HOR.

[Horace, Epistles, 2, 2, 140: a most gratifying delusion.]

There is a kind of writing wherein the poet quite loses sight of Nature, and entertains his reader's imagination with the characters and actions of such persons as have many of them no existence but what he bestows on them; such are fairies, witches, magicians, demons, and departed spirits. This Mr. Dryden calls the fairy way of writing, which is, indeed, more difficult than any other that depends on the poet's fancy, because he has no pattern to follow in it, and must work altogether out of his own invention.

There is a very odd turn of thought required for this kind of writing, and it is impossible for a poet to succeed in it, who has not a particular cast of fancy, and an imagination naturally fruitful and superstitious. Besides this, he ought to be very well versed in legends and fables, antiquated romances, and the traditions of nurses and old women, that he may fall in with our natural prejudices, and humour those notions which we have imbibed in our infancy. For, otherwise, he will be apt to make his fairies talk like people of his own species, and not like other sets of beings, who converse with different objects, and think in a different manner from that of mankind.

Sylvis deducti caveant, me judice, Fauni,
Ne velut innati triviis ac paene forenses,
Aut nimium teneris juvenentur versibus . . . HOR.

In my judgment the Fauns, that are brought out of the woods, should not be too gamesome with their tender strains, as if they were educated in the city, and almost at the bar; nor, on the other hand, should blunder out their obscene and scandalous speeches.
[trans. Buckley] [Horace, Ars poetica, 244-6]

I do not say with Mr. Bayes, in the Rehearsal, that spirits must not be confined to speak sense, but it is certain their sense ought to be a little discoloured, that it may seem particular, and proper to the person and the condition of the speaker.

These descriptions raise a pleasing kind of horror in the mind of the reader, and amuse his imagination with the strangeness and novelty of the persons who are represented in them. They bring up into our memory the stories we have heard in our childhood, and favour those secret terrors and apprehensions to which the mind of man is naturally subject. We are pleased with surveying the different habits and behaviours of foreign countries, how much more must we be delighted and surprised when we are led, as it were, into a new creation, and see the persons and manners of another species? Men of cold fancies, and philosophical dispositions, object to this kind of poetry, that it has not probability enough to affect the imagination. But to this it may be answered, that we are sure, in general, there are many intellectual beings in the world besides ourselves, and several species of spirits, who are subject to different laws and economies from those of mankind; when we see, therefore, any of these represented naturally, we cannot look upon the representation as altogether impossible; nay, many are prepossessed with such false opinions, as dispose them to believe these particular delusions; at least, we have all heard so many pleasing relations in favour of them, that we do not care for seeing through the falsehood and willingly give ourselves up to so agreeable an imposture. The ancients have not much of this poetry among them, for, indeed, almost the whole substance of it owes its original to the darkness and superstition of later ages, when pious frauds were made use of to amuse mankind, and frighten them into a sense of their duty. Our forefathers looked upon nature with more reverence and horror, before the world was enlightened by learning and philosophy, and loved to astonish themselves with the apprehensions of witchcraft, prodigies, charms, and enchantments. There was not a village in England that had not a ghost in it, the churchyards were all haunted, every large common had a circle of fairies belonging to it, and there was scarce a shepherd to be met with who had not seen a spirit. Among all the poets of this kind our English are much the best, by what I have yet seen, whether it be that we abound with more stories of this nature, or that the genius of our country is fitter for this sort of poetry. For the English are naturally fanciful, and very often disposed by that gloominess and melancholy of temper, which is so frequent in our nation, to many wild notions and visions, to which others are not so liable. Among the English, Shakespeare has incomparably excelled all others. That noble extravagance of fancy, which he had in so great perfection, thoroughly qualified him to touch this weak superstitious part of his reader's imagination, and made him capable of succeeding, where he had nothing to support him besides the strength of his own genius. There is something so wild and yet so solemn in the speeches of his ghosts, fairies, witches, and the like imaginary persons, that we cannot forbear thinking them natural, though we have no rule by which to judge of them, and must confess, if there are such beings in the world, it looks highly probable they should talk and act as he has represented them. There is another sort of imaginary beings that we sometimes meet with among the poets, when the author represents any passion, appetite, virtue, or vice, under a visible shape, and makes it a person or an actor in his poem. Of this nature are the descriptions of Hunger and Envy in Ovid, of Fame in Virgil, and of Sin and Death in Milton. We find a whole creation of the like shadowy persons in Spenser, who had an admirable talent in representations of this kind. I have discoursed of these emblematical persons in former papers, and shall therefore only mention them in this place. Thus we see how many ways poetry addresses itself to the imagination, as it has not only the whole circle of nature for its province, but makes new worlds of its own, shows us persons who are not to be found in being, and represents even the faculties of the soul, with her several virtues and vices, in a sensible shape and character. I shall, in my two following papers, consider in general how other kinds of writing are qualified to please the imagination, with which I intend to conclude this essay.

The Spectator. Nos. 418 PAPER VIII

PAPER VIII.

Why anything that is unpleasant to behold pleases the imagination when well described.
Why the imagination receives a more exquisite pleasure from the description of what is great, new, or beautiful.
The pleasure still heightened, if what is described raises passion in the mind.
Disagreeable passions pleasing when raised by apt descriptions.
Why terror and grief are pleasing to the mind, when excited by descriptions.
A particular advantage the writers in poetry and fiction have to please the imagination. What liberties are allowed them.

Spectator. No 418. Monday, June 30, 1712
. . . ferat & rubus asper amomum. VIRG.

[Virgil: Eclogues, 3. 89: And myrrh instead of thorns shall grow.]

The pleasures of these secondary views of the imagination, are of a wider and more universal nature than those it has when joined with sight; for not only what is great, strange, or beautiful, but anything that is disagreeable when looked upon, pleases us in an apt description. Here, therefore, we must inquire after a new principle of pleasure, which is nothing else but the action of the mind, which compares the ideas that arise from words, with the ideas that arise from the objects themselves; and why this operation of the mind is attended with so much pleasure, we have before considered. For this reason, therefore, the description of a dunghill is pleasing to the imagination, if the image be represented to our minds by suitable expressions; though, perhaps, this may be more properly called the pleasure of the understanding than of the fancy, because we are not so much delighted with the image that is contained in the description, as with the aptness of the description to excite the image.

But if the description of what is little, common or deformed, be acceptable to the imagination, the description of what is great, surprising, or beautiful, is much more so; because here we are not only delighted with comparing the representation with the original, but are highly pleased with the original itself. Most readers, I believe, are more charmed with Milton's description of paradise, than of hell; they are both, perhaps, equally perfect in their kind, but in the one the brimstone and sulphur are not so refreshing to the imagination, as the beds of flowers and the wilderness of sweets in the other.

There is yet another circumstance which recommends a description more than all the rest, and that is, if it represents to us such objects as are apt to raise a secret ferment in the mind of the reader, and to work with violence upon his passions. For, in this case, we are at once warmed and enlightened so that the pleasure becomes more universal, and is several ways qualified to entertain us. Thus, in painting, it is pleasant to look on the picture of any face, where the resemblance is hit, but the pleasure increases, if it be the picture of a face that is beautiful, and is still greater, if the beauty be softened with an air of melancholy or sorrow. The two leading passions which the more serious parts of poetry endeavour to stir up in us, are terror and pity. And here, by the way, one would wonder how it comes to pass, that such passions as are very unpleasant at all other times, are very agreeable when excited by proper descriptions. It is not strange that we should take delight in such passages as are apt to produce hope, joy, admiration, love, or the like emotions in us, because they never rise in the mind without an inward pleasure which attends them. But how comes it to pass, that we should take delight in being terrified or dejected by a description, when we find so much uneasiness in the fear or grief which we receive from any other occasion?

If we consider, therefore, the nature of this pleasure, we shall find that it does not arise so properly from the description of what is terrible, as from the reflection we make on ourselves at the time of reading it. When we look on such hideous objects, we are not a little pleased to think we are in no danger of them. We consider them, at the same time, as dreadful and harmless; so that the more frightful appearance they make, the greater is the pleasure we receive from the sense of our own safety. In short, we look upon the terrors of a description, with the same curiosity and satisfaction that we survey a dead monster:

. . .Informe cadaver
Protrahitur; nequeunt expleri corda tuendo
Terribiles oculos: vultum, villosaque saetis
Pectora semiferi, atque extinctos faucibus ignes. VIRG.

The wond'ring neighborhood, with glad surprise,
Behold his shagged breast, his giant size,
His mouth that flames no more, and his extinguish'd eyes.
[trans. Dryden] [Virgil: Aeneid, 8. 264-7}

It is for the same reason that we are delighted with the reflecting upon dangers that are past, or in looking on a precipice at a distance, which would fill us with a different kind of horror, if we saw it hanging over our heads.

In the like manner, when we read of torments, wounds, deaths, and the like dismal accidents, our pleasure does not flow so properly from the grief which such melancholy descriptions give us, as from the secret comparison which we make between ourselves and the person who suffers. Such representations teach us to set a just value upon our own condition, and make us prize our good fortune which exempts us from the like calamities. This is, however, such a kind of pleasure as we are not capable of receiving, when we see a person actually lying under the tortures that we meet with in a description; because, in this case, the object presses too close upon our senses, and bears so hard upon us, that it does not give us time or leisure to reflect on ourselves. Our thoughts are so intent upon the miseries of the sufferer, that we cannot turn them upon our own happiness. Whereas, on the contrary, we consider the misfortunes we read in history or poetry, either as past, or as fictitious, so that the reflection upon ourselves rises in us insensibly, and overbears the sorrow we conceive for the sufferings of the afflicted.

But because the mind of man requires something more perfect in matter, than what it finds there, and can never meet with any sight in nature which sufficiently answers its highest ideas of pleasantness; or, in other words, because the imagination can fancy to itself things more great, strange, or beautiful, than the eye ever saw, and is still sensible of some defect in what it has seen; on this account it is the part of a poet to humour the imagination in its own notions, by mending and perfecting nature where he describes a reality, and by adding greater beauties than are put together in nature, where he describes a fiction.

He is not obliged to attend her in the slow advances which she makes from one season to another, or to observe her conduct, in the successive production of plants and flowers. He may draw into his description all the beauties of the spring and autumn, and make the whole year contribute something to render it the more agreeable. His rose-trees, woodbines, and jessamines may flower together, and his beds be covered at the same time with lilies, violets, and amaranths. His soil is not restrained to any particular set of plants, but is proper either for oaks or myrtles, and adapts itself to the products of every climate. Oranges may grow wild in it; myrrh may be met with in every hedge, and if he thinks it proper to have a grove of spices, he can quickly command sun enough to raise it. If all this will not furnish out an agreeable scene, he can make several new species of flowers, with richer scents and higher colours, than any that grow in the gardens of Nature. His consorts of birds may be as full and harmonious, and his woods as thick and gloomy as he pleases. He is at no more expense in a long vista than a short one, and can as easily throw his cascades from a precipice of half a mile high, as from one of twenty yards. He has his choice of the winds, and can turn the course of his rivers in all the variety of meanders that are most delightful to the reader's imagination. In a word, he has the modeling of Nature in his own hands, and may give her what charms he pleases, provided he does not reform her too much, and run into absurdities, by endeavoring to excel.

The Spectator. Nos. 417 PAPER VII

PAPER VII.

How a whole set of ideas hang together, &c.: a natural cause assigned for it.
How to perfect the imagination of a writer: who among the ancient poets had this faculty in its greatest perfection.
Homer excelled in imagining what is great; Virgil in imagining what is beautiful; Ovid in imagining what is new.
Our own countryman, Milton, very perfect in all three respects.


Spectator. No 417. Saturday, June 28, 1712
Quem tu Melpornene semel
Nascentem placido lumine videris,
Illum non labor lsthmius
Clararbit pugilem, non equus impiger, &c.
Sed quae Tibur aquaef ertile perfluunt
Et Spissae nemorum coma
Fingent Aeolio carmine nobilem. HOR.

[Horace: Odes. 4. 3. 1-4, 10-12 :
He whose birth the muse, Melpomene,
Hast welcomed with a smile,
Will never by the boxer's skill
Be renown'd abroad, nor for Isthmian mastery striving.
But the cool streams that make green Tibur flourish
And the tangled forest deep
Shall nourish his fame on soft Aeolian airs.]

WE may observe, that any single circumstance of what we have formerly seen often raises up a whole scene of imagery, and awakens numberless ideas that before slept in the imagination; such a particular smell or colour is able to fill the mind, on a sudden, with the picture of the fields or gardens where we first met with it, and to bring up into view all the variety of images that once attended it. Our imagination takes the hint, and leads us unexpectedly into cities or theatres, plains or meadows. We may further observe, when the fancy thus reflects on the scenes that have passed in it formerly, those which were at first pleasant to behold appear more so upon reflection, and that the memory heightens the delightfulness of the original. A Cartesian would account for both these instances in the following manner.

The set of ideas, which we received from such a prospect or garden, having entered the mind at the same time, have a set of traces belonging to them in the brain, bordering very near upon one another; when, therefore, any one of these ideas arises in the imagination, and consequently dispatches a flow of animal spirits to its proper trace, these spirits, in the violence of their motion, run not only into the trace to which they were more particularly directed, but into several of those that lie about it: by this means they awaken other ideas of the same set, which immediately determine a new dispatch of spirits that in the same manner open other neighboring traces, till at last the whole set of them is blown up, and the whole prospect or garden flourishes in the imagination. But because the pleasure we received from these places far surmounted and overcame the little disagreeableness we found in them, for this reason there was at first a wider passage worn in the pleasure traces, and, on the contrary, so narrow a one in those which belonged to the disagreeable ideas, that they were quickly stopped up, and rendered incapable of receiving any animal spirits, and consequently of exciting any unpleasant ideas in the memory.

It would be in vain to inquire whether the power of imagining things strongly proceeds from any greater perfection in the soul, or from any nicer texture in the brain of one man than of another. But this is certain, that a noble writer should be born with this faculty in its full strength and vigor, so as to be able to receive lively ideas from outward objects, to retain them long, and to range them together, upon occasion, in such figures and representations as are most likely to hit the fancy of the reader. A poet should take as much pains in forming his imagination as a philosopher in cultivating his understanding. He must gain a due relish of the works of Nature, and be thoroughly conversant in the various scenery of a country life.

When he is stored with country images, if he would go beyond pastoral and the lower kinds of poetry, he ought to acquaint himself with the pomp and magnificence of courts. He should be very well versed in everything that is noble and stately in the productions of art, whether it appear in painting or statuary, in the great works of architecture which are in their present glory, or in the ruins of those which flourished in former ages.

Such advantages as these help to open a man's thoughts, and to enlarge his imagination, and will therefore have their influence on all kinds of writing if the author knows how to make right use of them. And among those of the learned languages who excel in this talent, the most perfect in their several kinds are, perhaps, Homer, Virgil, and Ovid. The first strikes the imagination wonderfully with what is great, the second with what is beautiful, and the last with what is strange. Reading the Iliad is like traveling through a country uninhabited, where the fancy is entertained with a thousand savage prospects of vast deserts, wide uncultivated marshes, huge forests, misshapen rocks, and precipices. On the contrary, the Aeneid is like a well-ordered garden, where it is impossible to find out any part unadorned, or to cast our eyes upon a single spot that does not produce some beautiful plant or flower. But when we are in the Metamorphoses, we are walking on enchanted ground, and see nothing but scenes of magic lying round us.

Homer is in his province when he is describing a battle or a multitude, a hero or a god. Virgil is never better pleased than when he is in his elysium, or copying out an entertaining picture. Homer's epithets generally mark out what is great, Virgil's what is agreeable. Nothing can be more magnificent than the figure Jupiter makes in the first Iliad, nor more charming than that of Venus in the first Aeneid:

As he spoke the son of Saturn bowed his dark brows, and the ambrosial locks swayed on his immortal head, till vast Olympus reeled.
[trans. Butler] [Homer, Illiad, I. 528-30]

Dixit, & avertens rosea cervice refulsit:
Ambrosiaeque comae divinum vertice odorem
Spiravere: pedes vestis defluxit ad imos:
Et vera incessu patuit dea . . .

Thus having said, she turn'd, and made appear
Her neck refulgent, and dishevel'd hair,
Which, flowing from her shoulders, reach'd the ground.
And widely spread ambrosial scents around:
In length of train descends her sweeping gown;
And, by her graceful walk, the Queen of Love is known.
[trans. Dryden] [Virgil, Aeneid, I, 402-5]

Homer's persons are most of them godlike and terrible: Virgil has scarce admitted any into his poem who are not beautiful, and has taken particular care to make his hero so.

. . . Lumenque juventae
Purpureum, & laetos oculis afflarat honores.

And giv'n his rolling eyes a sparkling grace,
And breath'd a youthful vigor on his face.
[trans. Dryden] [Virgil, Aeneid, I. 590-1]

In a word, Homer fills his readers with sublime ideas, and, I believe, has raised the imagination of all the good poets that have come after him. I shall only instance Horace, who immediately takes fire at the first hint of any passage in the Iliad or Odyssey, and always rises above himself when he has Homer in his view. Virgil has drawn together into his Aeneid all the pleasing scenes his subject is capable of admitting, and in his Georgics has given us a collection of the most delightful landscapes that can be made out of fields and woods, herds of cattle, and swarms of bees.

Ovid, in his Metamorphoses, has shown us how the imagination may be affected by what is strange. He describes a miracle in every story, and always gives us the sight of some new creature at the end of it. His art consists chiefly in well-timing his description before the first shape is quite worn off, and the new one perfectly finished; so that he everywhere entertains us with something we never saw before, and shows monster after monster to the end of the Metamorphoses.

If I were to name a poet that is a perfect master in all these arts of working on the imagination, I think Milton may pass for one: and if his Paradise Lost falls short of the Aeneid or Iliad in this respect, it proceeds rather from the fault of the language in which it is written than from any defect of genius in the author. So divine a poem in English is like a stately palace built of brick, where one may see architecture in as great a perfection as in one of marble, though the materials are of a coarser nature. But to consider it only as it regards our present subject: what can be conceived greater than the battle of angels, the majesty of Messiah, the stature and behavior of Satan and his peers ? What more beautiful than pandemonium, paradise, heaven, angels, Adam and Eve? What more strange than the creation of the world, the several metamorphoses of the fallen angels, and the surprising adventures their leader meets with in his search after paradise ? No other subject could have furnished a poet with scenes so proper to strike the imagination, as no other poet could have painted those scenes in more strong and lively colours.

The Spectator. Nos. 416 PAPER VI

PAPER VI.
The secondary pleasures of the imagination.
The several sources of these pleasures (statuary, painting, description, and music) compared together.
The final cause of our receiving pleasure from these several sources.
Of descriptions in particular.
The power of words over the imagination.
Why one reader more pleased with descriptions than another.


Spectator. No 416. Friday7, June 27, 1712
Quatenus hoc simile est oculis, quod mente videmus. LUCR.

[Lucretius, De rerum natura, 4. 750: Because the objects that we fancy in our mind represent what we see in the eye.]

I AT first divided the pleasures of the imagination into such as arise from objects that are actually before our eyes, or that once entered in at our eyes, and are afterwards called up into the mind, either barely by its own operations, or on occasion of something without us, as statues or descriptions. We have already considered the first division, and shall therefore enter on the other, which, for distinction sake, I have called the secondary pleasures of the imagination. When I say the ideas we receive from statues, descriptions, or such like occasions, are the same that were once actually in our view, it must not be understood that we had once seen the very place, action, or person which are carved or described. It is sufficient that we have seen places, persons, or actions, in general, which bear a resemblance, or at least some remote analogy with what we find represented. Since it is in the power of the imagination, when it is once stocked with particular ideas, to enlarge, compound, and vary them at her own pleasure.

Among the different kinds of representation, statuary is the most natural, and shows us something likest the object that is represented. To make use of a common instance, let one who is born blind take an image in his hands, and trace out with his fingers the different furrows and impressions of the chisel, and he will easily conceive how the shape of a man, or beast, may be represented by it; but should he draw his hand over a picture, where all is smooth and uniform, he would never be able to imagine how the several prominences and depressions of a human body could be shown on a plain piece of canvas that has in it no unevenness or irregularity. Description runs yet further from the things it represents than painting; for a picture bears a real resemblance to its original, which letters and syllables are wholly void of. Colours speak all languages, but words are understood only by such a people or nation. For this reason, though men's necessities quickly put them on finding out speech, writing is probably of a later invention than painting; particularly we are told that in America, when the Spaniards first arrived there, expresses were sent to the Emperor of Mexico in paint, and the news of his country delineated by the strokes of a pencil, which was a more natural way than that of writing, though at the same time much more imperfect, because it is impossible to draw the little connections of speech, or to give the picture of a conjunction or an adverb. It would be yet more strange to represent visible objects by sounds that have no ideas annexed to them, and to make something like description in music. Yet it is certain there may be confused, imperfect notions of this nature raised in the imagination by an artificial composition of notes; and we find that great masters in the art are able, sometimes, to set their hearers in the heat and hurry of a battle, to overcast their minds with melancholy scenes and apprehensions of deaths and funerals, or to lull them into pleasing dreams of groves and elysiums.

In all these instances this secondary pleasure of the imagination proceeds from that action of the mind which compares the ideas arising from the original objects, with the ideas we receive from the statue, picture, description, or sound that represents them. It is impossible for us to give the necessary reason why this operation of the mind is attended with so much pleasure, as I have before observed on the same occasion; but we find a great variety of entertainments derived from this single principle: for it is this that not only gives us a relish of statuary, painting, and description, but makes us delight in all the actions and arts of mimicry. It is this that makes the several kinds of wit pleasant, which consists, as I have formerly shown, in the affinity of ideas: and we may add, it is this also that raises the little satisfaction we sometimes find in the different sorts of false wit; whether it consist in the affinity of letters, as in anagram, acrostic; or of syllables, as in doggerel rhymes, echoes; or of words, as in puns, quibbles; or of a whole sentence or poem, to wings, and altars. The final cause, probably, of annexing pleasure to this operation of the mind was to quicken and encourage us in our searches after truth, since the distinguishing one thing from another, and the right discerning betwixt our ideas, depends wholly upon our comparing them together, and observing the congruity or disagreement that appears among the several works of Nature.

But I shall here confine myself to those pleasures of the imagination which proceed from ideas raised by words, because most of the observations that agree with descriptions are equally applicable to painting and statuary.

Words, when well chosen, have so great a force in them, that a description often gives us more lively ideas than the sight of things themselves. The reader finds a scene drawn in stronger colours, and painted more to the life in his imagination by the help of words, than by an actual survey of the scene which they describe. In this case the poet seems to get the better of Nature; he takes, indeed, the landscape after her, but gives it more vigorous touches, heightens its beauty, and so enlivens the whole piece that the images which flow from the objects themselves appear weak and faint in comparison of those that come from the expressions. The reason probably may be, because in the survey of any object we have only so much of it painted on the imagination as comes in at the eye; but in its description the poet gives us as free a view of it as he pleases, and discovers to us several parts that either we did not attend to, or that lay out of our sight when we first beheld it. As we look on any object our idea of it is, perhaps, made up of two or three simple ideas; but when the poet represents it, he may either give us a more complex idea of it, or only raise in us such ideas as are most apt to affect the imagination.

It may be here worth our while to examine how it comes to pass that several readers, who are all acquainted with the same language, and know the meaning of the words they read, should nevertheless have a different relish of the same descriptions. We find one transported with a passage which another runs over with coldness and indifference, or finding the representation extremely natural, where another can perceive nothing of likeness and conformity. This different taste must proceed either from the perfection of imagination in one more than in another, or from the different ideas that several readers affix to the same words. For to have a true relish and form a right judgment of a description, a man should be born with a good imagination, and must have well weighed the force and energy that lie in the several words of a language, so as to be able to distinguish which are most significant and expressive of their proper ideas, and what additional strength and beauty they are capable of receiving from conjunction with others. The fancy must be warm to retain the print of those images it hath received from outward objects; and the judgment discerning, to know what expressions are most proper to clothe and adorn them to the best advantage. A man who is deficient in either of these respects, though he may receive the general notion of a description, can never see distinctly all its particular beauties; as a person with a weak sight may have the confused prospect of a place that lies before him, without entering into its several parts, or discerning the variety of its colours in their full glory and perfection.

The Spectator. Nos. 415 PAPER V

PAPER V.
Of architecture as it affects the imagination.
Greatness in architecture relates either to the bulk or to the manner.
Greatness of bulk in the ancient Oriental buildings.
The ancient accounts of these buildings confirmed: I. From the advantages for raising such works in the first ages of the world and in the Eastern climates; 2. From several of them which are still extant.
Instances how greatness of manner affects the imagination.
A French author's observation on this subject. Why concave and convex figures give a greatness of manner to works of architecture.
Everything that pleases the imagination in architecture either great, beautiful, or new.


Spectator. No 415. Thursday, June 26, 1712
Adde tot egregias urbes, operumque laborem. VIRG.

[Virgil, Georgics 2, 155: Mark too her illustrious cities, achieved through mighty toil]

HAVING already shown how the fancy is affected by the works of nature, and afterwards considered in general both the works of nature and of art, how they mutually assist and complete each other, in forming such scenes and prospects as are most apt to delight the mind of the beholder, I shall in this paper throw together some reflections on that particular art which has a more immediate tendency than any other to produce those primary pleasures of the imagination which have hitherto been the subject of this discourse. The art I mean is that of architecture, which I shall consider only with regard to the light in which the foregoing speculations have placed it, without entering into those rules and maxims which the great masters of architecture have laid down, and explained at large in numberless treatises upon that subject.

Greatness, in the works of architecture, may be considered as relating to the bulk and body of the structure, or to the manner in which it is built. As for the first, we find the ancients, especially among the Eastern nations of the world, infinitely superior to the moderns.

Not to mention the Tower of Babel, of which an old author says there were the foundations to be seen in his time, which looked like a spacious mountain, what could be more noble than the walls of Babylon, its hanging gardens, and its temple to Jupiter Belus, that rose a mile high by eight several storeys, each storey a furlong in height, and on the top of which was the Babylonian observatory? I might here likewise take notice of the huge rock that was cut into the figure of Semiramis with the smaller rocks that lay by it in the shape of tributary kings; the prodigious basin, or artificial lake, which took in the whole Euphrates, until such time as a new canal was formed for its reception, with the several trenches through which that river was conveyed. I know there are persons who look upon some of these wonders of art as fabulous, but I cannot find any grounds for such a suspicion, unless it be that we have no such works among us at present: there were indeed many greater advantages for building in those times, and in that part of the world, than have been met with ever since. The earth was extremely fruitful, men lived generally on pasturage, which requires a much smaller number of hands than agriculture: there were few trades to employ the busy part of mankind, and fewer arts and sciences to give work to men of speculative tempers; and what is more than all the rest, the prince was absolute; so that when he went to war, he put himself at the head of a whole people. As we find Semiramis leading her three millions to the field, and yet overpowered by the number of her enemies. 'Tis no wonder, therefore, when she was at peace, and turned her thoughts on building, that she could accomplish so great works, with such a prodigious multitude of labourers: besides that in her climate there was small interruption of frosts and winters, which make the Northern workmen lie half the year idle. I might mention, too, among the benefits of the climate, what historians say of the earth, that it sweated out a bitumen or natural kind of mortar, which is doubtless the same with that mentioned in Holy Writ as contributing to the structure of Babel: Slime they used instead of mortar. [Genesis 11. 3]

In Egypt we still see their pyramids, which answer to the descriptions that have been made of them; and I question not but a traveler might find out some remains of the labyrinth that covered a whole province, and had a hundred temples disposed among its several quarters and divisions.

The wall of China is one of these Eastern pieces of magnificence, which makes a figure even in the map of the world, although an account of it would have been thought fabulous, were not the wall itself still extant. We are obliged to devotion for the noblest buildings that have adorned the several countries of the world. It is this which has set men at work on temples and public places of worship, not only that they might, by the magnificence of the building, invite the Deity to reside within it, but that such stupendous works might, at the same time, open the mind to vast conceptions, and fit it to converse with the divinity of the place. For everything that is majestic imprints an awfulness and reverence on the mind of the beholder, and strikes in with the natural greatness of the soul.

In the second place we are to consider greatness of manner in architecture, which has such force upon the imagination, that a small building, where it appears, shall give the mind nobler ideas than one of twenty times the bulk, where the manner is ordinary or little. Thus, perhaps, a man would have been more astonished with the majestic air that appeared in one of Lysippus's statues of Alexander, though no bigger than the life, than he might have been with Mount Athos, had it been cut into the figure of the hero, according to the proposal of Phidias, with a river in one hand and a city in the other.

Let any one reflect on the disposition of mind he finds in himself, at his first entrance into the Pantheon at Rome, and how his imagination is filled with something great and amazing; and at the same time consider how little, in proportion, he is affected with the inside of a Gothic cathedral, though it be five times larger than the other; which can arise from nothing else, but the greatness of the manner in the one, and the meanness in the other.

I have seen an observation upon this subject in a French author, which very much pleased me. It is in Monsieur Fréard's Parallel of the Ancient and Modern Architecture. I shall give it the reader with the same terms of art which he has made use of: I am observing, says he a thing which in my opinion is very curious, whence it proceeds, that in the same quantity of superficies, the one manner seems great and magnificent, and the other poor and trifling; the reason is fine and uncommon. I say then, that to introduce into architecture this grandeur of manner, we ought so to proceed, that the division of the principal members of the order may consist but of few parts, that they be all great and of a bold and ample relievo, and swelling; and that the eye, beholding nothing little and mean, the imagination may be more vigorously touched and affected with the work that stands before it. For example, in a cornice, if the gola or cynatium of the corona, the coping, the modillions or dentelli, make a noble show by their graceful projections, if we see none of that ordinary confusion which is the result of those little cavities, quarter rounds of the astragal, and I know not how many other intermingled particulars, which produce no effect in great and massy works, and which very unprofitably take up place to the prejudice of the principal member, it is most certain that this manner will appear solemn and great; as, on the contrary, that will have but a poor and mean effect where there is a redundancy of those smaller ornaments, which divide and scatter the angles of the sight into such a multitude of rays, so pressed together that the whole will appear but a confusion.

Among all the figures in architecture, there are none that have a greater air than the concave and the convex; and we find in all the ancient and modern architecture, as well in the remote parts of China as in countries nearer home, that round pillars and vaulted roofs make a great part of those buildings which are designed for pomp and magnificence. The reason I take to be, because in these figures we generally see more of the body than in those of other kinds. There are, indeed, figures of bodies where the eye may take in two-thirds of the surface; but as in such bodies the sight must split upon several angles, it does not take in one uniform idea, but several ideas of the same kind. Look upon the outside of a dome, your eye half surrounds it; look up into the inside, and at one glance you have all the prospect of it; the entire concavity falls into your eye at once, the sight being as the centre that collects and gathers into it the lines of the whole circumference. In a square pillar, the sight often takes in but a fourth part of the surface, and, in a square concave, must move up and down to the different sides, before it is master of all the inward surface. For this reason, the fancy is infinitely more struck with the view of the open air, and skies, that passes through an arch, than what comes through a square, or any other figure. The figure of the rainbow does not contribute less to its magnificence, than the colours to its beauty, as it is very poetically described by the son of Sirach: Look upon the rainbow, and praise Him that made it; very beautiful it is in its brightness; it encompasses the heavens with a glorious circle, and the hands of the Most High have bended it. [Ecclus. 43. 11]

Having thus spoken of that greatness which affects the mind in architecture, I might next show the pleasure that rises in the imagination from what appears new and beautiful in this art; but as every beholder has naturally a greater taste of these two perfections in every building which offers itself to his view than of that which I have hitherto considered, I shall not trouble my reader with any reflections upon it. It is sufficient for my present purpose to observe that there is nothing in this whole art which pleases the imagination, but as it is great, uncommon, or beautiful.