Inaugural Addresses by Lords Rectors of the University of Glasgow: To which are Prefixed an Historical Sketch and Account of the Present State of the University

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David Robertson, 1839 - 205 sider
 

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Side 22 - A stranger yet to pain! I feel the gales, that from ye blow, A momentary bliss bestow, As waving fresh their gladsome wing, My weary soul they seem to soothe, And, redolent of joy and youth, To breathe a second spring.
Side 128 - My temper is not very susceptible of enthusiasm, and the enthusiasm which I do not feel, I have ever scorned to affect. But at the distance of twenty-five years, I can neither forget nor express the strong emotions which agitated my mind as I first approached and entered the eternal city. After a sleepless night, I trod, with a lofty step, the ruins of the Forum ; each memorable spot where Romulus stood, or Tully spoke, or Caesar fell, was at once present to my eye ; and several days of intoxication...
Side 122 - He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper. This amicable conflict with difficulty obliges us to an intimate acquaintance with our object, and compels us to consider it in all its relations. It will not suffer us to be superficial.
Side 122 - I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.
Side 122 - DIFFICULTY is a severe instructor, set over us by the Supreme ordinance of a parental guardian and legislator, who knows us better than we know ourselves, as he loves us better, too. Pater ipse colendi, haud facilem esse viam voluit. He that wrestles with us, strengthens our nerves and sharpens our skill ; our antagonist is our helper.
Side 126 - The travellers into the East tell us that, when the ignorant inhabitants of those countries are asked concerning the ruins of stately edifices yet remaining amongst them, the melancholy monuments of their former grandeur and long-lost science, they always answer that they were built by magicians.
Side 49 - ... redundant or obscure. Those great wits had no foreknowledge of such times as succeeded their brilliant age, when styles should arise, and for a season prevail over both purity, and nature, and antique recollections — now meretriciously ornamented, more than half French in the phrase, and to mere figures fantastically sacrificing the sense — now heavily and regularly fashioned as if by the plumb and rule, and by the eye rather than the ear, with a needless profusion of ancient words and flexions,...
Side 54 - This requires no contrast to make its merit shine forth ; but compare it with any of Cicero's invectives — that, for instance, in the third Catilinarian, against the conspirators, where he attacks them regularly under six different heads and in above twenty times as many words ; and ends with the known and very moderate jest of their commander keeping "Scortorum cohortem Prsetoriam.
Side 2 - I received the earliest and by far the most valuable part of my academical education — and first imbibed that relish and veneration for letters which has cheered and directed the whole course of my after life — and to which, amidst all the distractions of rather too busy an existence, I have never failed to recur with fresh and unabated enjoyment.
Side 45 - Besides the number of admirable orations and of written arguments upon causes merely forensic, we have every subject of public policy, all the great affairs of state, successively forming the topics of discussion. Compare them with Cicero in this particular, and the contrast is striking. His finest oration for matter and diction together is in defence of an individual charged with murder, and there is nothing in the case to give it a public interest, except that the parties were of opposite factions...

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