Highlanders in America

An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America
by J.P. MacLean

Seven hundred prisoners taken at Preston were sold as slaves to some West Indian merchants, which was a cruel proceeding, when it is considered that the greater part of these men were Highlanders, who had joined the army in obedience to the commands of their chiefs. Wholly unfitted for such labor as would be required in the West Indies and unacclimated, their fate may be readily assumed. But this was no more heartless than the execution in Lancashire of twenty-two of their companions.

The specifications above enumerated have no bearing on the emigration which took place on a large scale, the consequences of which, at the time, arrested the attention of the nation. The causes now to be enumerated grew out of the change of policy following the battle of Culloden. The atrocities following that battle were both for vengeance and to break the military spirit of the Highlanders. The legislative enactments broke the nobler spirit of the people. The rights and welfare of the people at large were totally ignored, and no provisions made for their future welfare. The country was left in a state of commotion and confusion resulting from the changes consequent to the overthrow of the old system, the breaking up of old relationship, and the gradual encroachment of Lowland civilization, and methods of agriculture. While these changes at first were neither great nor extensive, yet they were sufficient to keep the country in a ferment or uproar. The change was largely in the manner of an experiment in order to find out the most profitable way of adaptation to the new regime. These experiments resulted in the unsettling of old manners, customs, and ideas, which caused discontent and misery among the people. The actual change was slow; the innovations, as a rule, began in those districts bordering on the Lowlands, and thence proceeded in a northwesterly direction.

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Osteopathy

Philosophy of Osteopathy page 80
by Andrew T. Still

We do know that all blood for use of the whole system below the twelfth dorsal vertebra does pass through the diaphragm, and all nerve supply, also passes through the diaphragm and spinal column for limb and life. This being a known fact, we have only to use reason to know that an unhealthy condition of the diaphragm is bound to be followed by many diseases. A list of questions arise at this point with the inquirers that must and can be answered every time by reason only. The diaphragm is a musculo-fibrinous organ and depends for blood and nerve supply above its own location, and that supply must be given freely and pure for nerve and blood or we will have a diseased organ to start with; then we may find a universal atrophy or oedema, which would, besides its own deformity not be able to rise and fall, to assist the lungs to mix air with blood to purify venous blood, as it is carried to the lungs to throw off impurities and take on oxygen previous to returning to the heart, to be sent off as nourishment for the system. It is only in keeping with reason that without a healthy diaphragm both in its form and action, disease is bound to be the result.

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Richard Rolle

The Form of Perfect Living and Other Prose Treatises page 13
by Richard Rolle of Hampole

In every sinful man and woman that is bound in deadly sin, are three wretchednesses, the which bring them to the death of hell. The first is: Default of ghostly strength. That they are so weak within their heart, that they can neither stand against the temptations of the fiend, nor can they lift their will to yearn for the love of GOD and follow thereto. The second is: Use of fleshly desires:--for they have no will nor might to stand, they fall into lusts and likings of this world; and because they think them sweet, they dwell in them still, many till their lives' end, and so they come to the third wretchedness. The third is, Exchanging a lasting good for a passing delight: as who say they give endless joy for a little joy of this life. If they will turn them and rise to penance, GOD will ordain their dwelling with angels and with holy men. But because they choose the vile sin of this world, and have more delight in the filth of their flesh than in the fairness of heaven, they lose both the world and heaven. For he that hath not JESUS Christ loses all that he hath, and all that he is, and all that he might get. For he is not worthy of life, nor to be fed with swine's-meat. All creatures shall be stirred in His vengeance in the day of Doom. These wretchednesses that I have told you of are not only in worldly men and women, who use gluttony, lust, and other open sins: but they are also in others who seem in penance and godly life. For the devil that is enemy to all mankind, when he sees a man or a woman among a thousand, turn wholly to GOD, and forsake all the vanities and riches that men who love this world covet, and seek lasting joy, a thousand wiles he has in what manner he may destroy them. And when he can not bring them into such sins which might make all men wonder at them who knew them, he beguiles many so privily that they cannot oftentimes feel the trap that has taken them.

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Mark Twain

The Mysterious Stranger page 1
by Mark Twain
Chapter 1
It was in 1590--winter. Austria was far away from the world, and asleep; it was still the Middle Ages in Austria, and promised to remain so forever. Some even set it away back centuries upon centuries and said that by the mental and spiritual clock it was still the Age of Belief in Austria. But they meant it as a compliment, not a slur, and it was so taken, and we were all proud of it. I remember it well, although I was only a boy; and I remember, too, the pleasure it gave me.

Yes, Austria was far from the world, and asleep, and our village was in the middle of that sleep, being in the middle of Austria. It drowsed in peace in the deep privacy of a hilly and woodsy solitude where news from the world hardly ever came to disturb its dreams, and was infinitely content. At its front flowed the tranquil river, its surface painted with cloud-forms and the reflections of drifting arks and stone-boats; behind it rose the woody steeps to the base of the lofty precipice; from the top of the precipice frowned a vast castle, its long stretch of towers and bastions mailed in vines; beyond the river, a league to the left, was a tumbled expanse of forest-clothed hills cloven by winding gorges where the sun never penetrated; and to the right a precipice overlooked the river, and between it and the hills just spoken of lay a far-reaching plain dotted with little homesteads nested among orchards and shade trees.

The whole region for leagues around was the hereditary property of a prince, whose servants kept the castle always in perfect condition for occupancy, but neither he nor his family came there oftener than once in five years. When they came it was as if the lord of the world had arrived, and had brought all the glories of its kingdoms along; and when they went they left a calm behind which was like the deep sleep which follows an orgy.

Eseldorf was a paradise for us boys. We were not overmuch pestered with schooling. Mainly we were trained to be good Christians; to revere the Virgin, the Church, and the saints above everything. Beyond these matters we were not required to know much; and, in fact, not allowed to. Knowledge was not good for the common people, and could make them discontented with the lot which God had appointed for them, and God would not endure discontentment with His plans. We had two priests. One of them, Father Adolf, was a very zealous and strenuous priest, much considered.

There may have been better priests, in some ways, than Father Adolf, but there was never one in our commune who was held in more solemn and awful respect. This was because he had absolutely no fear of the Devil. He was the only Christian I have ever known of whom that could be truly said. People stood in deep dread of him on that account; for they thought that there must be something supernatural about him, else he could not be so bold and so confident. All men speak in bitter disapproval of the Devil, but they do it reverently, not flippantly; but Father Adolf's way was very different; he called him by every name he could lay his tongue to, and it made everyone shudder that heard him; and often he would even speak of him scornfully and scoffingly; then the people crossed themselves and went quickly out of his presence, fearing that something fearful might happen.

Father Adolf had actually met Satan face to face more than once, and defied him. This was known to be so. Father Adolf said it himself. He never made any secret of it, but spoke it right out. And that he was speaking true there was proof in at least one instance, for on that occasion he quarreled with the enemy, and intrepidly threw his bottle at him; and there, upon the wall of his study, was the ruddy splotch where it struck and broke.

Goethe

The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' page 10
by H.B. Cotterill

In almost every age and nation we find a vital Power, an ordering Force, recognised as present in the natural world, and the human mind seems ever prone to believe such Power to have affinity to human nature and to be, so to speak, open to a bargain. The fetish priest, the rain doctor, the medicine-man, the Hindu yogi, the Persian Mage, the medieval saint, and countless miracle-workers in every age, have ever believed themselves to be, whether by force of will, or by ecstatic contemplation, or by potent charms, in communion with the great Spirit of Nature, or with mighty cosmic influences--with Powers of Light or of Darkness; with Oromasdes or Arimanes, Brahma or Siva, Jehovah or Baal; with Zoroastrian Devs, Persian Genii, guardian angels or attendant demons; with the Virgin Queen of heaven--whether as Selene, Astarte, Hecate, or the Madonna; with the Prince of the powers of this world--with or without his horns and his cloven foot.

Not only among the heathen--the orientals and Egyptians--but also among the Chosen People we find the priests attesting their favour with the Deity, and asserting the truth of their religion, by what we may call orthodox magic. We all remember how Aaron's rod, in the form of an orthodox snake, swallowed up the unorthodox rod-snakes of the Egyptian sorcerers, and how Elijah attested the power of the true God by calling down fire from heaven in his contest with the priests of the Sun-god Baal. King Solomon too was for many ages credited with magic powers and was regarded in medieval times as the great authority in matters of wizardry.

Among the Greeks, although mysteries and witches played no small part in the old religion and survived long in popular superstition, magic was thrust into the background by the poetic and philosophic Hellenic imagination. The powers of Nature were incorporated in the grand and beautiful human forms of the Olympian gods, or in the dread shapes of the Infernal deities. But even among those of the Greeks who were raised far above the ordinary superstitions of the populace we find many traces of mysticism and magic, as for example in connexion with oracles, with divine healing, with the efficacy of images and other sacred objects, and especially in connexion with Orphic and other Mysteries. And, while for the most part Greek philosophy was rather imaginative than mystic, still we encounter the genuine mystic element in such Greek sages as Empedocles and Pythagoras, both of whom assumed the priestly character and seem to have laid claim to supernatural powers. Empedocles indeed, it is said, gave himself out to be a deity exiled from heaven, and was apparently worshipped as such. According to a not very trustworthy legend he threw himself into the crater of Mount Etna--perhaps in order thus to solve the mystery of existence. Pythagoras is said by some to have met his death at the hands of the people of Crotona, who set fire to his house and burnt him alive with many of his disciples. Goethe evidently alludes to Pythagoras (as well perhaps as to John Huss and others who found their death at the stake) in some well-known lines, which may be roughly thus translated:

The few that truth's deep mystery have learned And could not keep it in their hearts concealed, But to the mob their inner faith revealed, Have evermore been crucified and burned.

We now come to Christianity. In the early ages of the Church the final appeal seems to have been an appeal to miracles, and we find the apostles and their followers claiming the sole right of working miracles in the name of the one true God and anathematizing all other wonder-workers as in league with Satan. We all remember Elymas the Sorcerer struck blind by St. Paul, and the adversary of St. Peter, Simon the Mage, around whom first gathered the myths which lived so long in the popular imagination and many of which we shall meet with in the legend of Dr. Faust.

This Simon, the Magus or Sorcerer, who bewitched the people of Samaria, and was looked upon as 'the great power of God,' is said in the Acts of the Apostles to have been converted by St. Philip and to have brought upon himself a severe rebuke from St. Peter for offering to purchase with money the gift of wonder-working. In about the third century the legend of Simon Magus, as related by Clement of Alexandria, seems to have already incorporated in a mythical form the discords of the early Church, and especially the feud between the Jewish Christians, followers of St. Peter, and the Gentile proselytes, followers of St. Paul. Indeed Simon the Sorcerer was in course of time regarded by some as having been identical with St. Paul--that is to say, it was believed that St. Paul had been none other but Simon Magus in disguise. The voice heard at St. Paul's conversion and the light by which for a season he was struck blind were alleged to have been feats of wizardry by which he, a wolf in sheep's clothing, stole his way into the true fold in order to introduce discord and to betray the Church to the Gentiles.

St. Peter, the true Simon, is said to have followed the false Simon from city to city, out-rivalling his Satanic miracles by orthodox miracles, until at length they reached Rome. Here Simon Magus by his magic arts succeeded in flying up into the sky in the presence of the Emperor and his court, but at the word of Peter the charm was broken and the wizard fell to earth and was killed.

But, besides this, the so-called Gnostic heresy introduced other elements into the legend. These Gnostics were a sect that arose in the early times of Christianity. They pretended to a special insight into the divine nature, and combined Platonic and oriental theories with Christian dogmas. They tried to convert the story of the Redemption into a cosmological myth, and regarded the human person of Christ as a kind of phantom--a magic apparition. Some of these Gnostics seem to have accepted Simon Magus as the 'Power of God'--as the Logos, or divine Reason, by which the world was created (or reduced from chaos to an ordered Cosmos). From this a curious myth arose. This Logos, or creative Power, was identified with the Sun-god, as the source of life, and as Sun-god was united to the Moon-goddess, Selene. Now the words Helen and Selene are connected in Greek, and Helen of Troy was accepted by these Gnostics as a mythical form of the goddess of the moon. Hence it came that in the Gnostic form of the Simon Magus legend he was married to Helen of Troy, and this notion found its way into the old Faust-legend, and is used by Goethe in that exceedingly wonderful and beautiful part of his great poem which is called the Helena.

After the suppression of Gnostic and other early heresies came the contest of the now united and politically powerful Church against the outer world of heathendom. While retaining for herself what we may call a monopoly in orthodox magic the Church condemned as in league with the devil all speculation, whether theological or scientific--the one as leading to heresy, the other to sensual ends, such as riches, fame, and those lusts of the flesh and that pride of intellect which were fatal to the contemplative and ascetic ideals of medieval Christianity.

It was not among Teuton and Celtic savages but among the learned adherents of the old Greek philosophy that the Church in those earlier days found her most dangerous and obstinate adversaries.

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Beethoven

Beethoven page 80
by George Alexander Fischer

The Eighth Symphony which was brought out at the same time as the Seventh is the shortest by a few bars, of the nine. It was completed in about four months from the date of its inception. Here as in the Seventh, the dance element is in the ascendant, commanding, swaying everything, thus coming back to first principles, almost to the origin of the art, as an art. The dance is the primordial, autochthonic form of music; its foundation so to speak. The song had its origin in the dance as indicated by its name "ballad." It is a comparatively simple matter to trace its upward course in instrumental music, as such. It is conceivable that people from remote times on, had the faculty of originating tunes, and of humming and singing them, and dancing to them long before such things as scales and notation were conceived of. Song and dance must have come into being at the same time, and the earliest dancing was done with a singing accompaniment. As people advanced in the art and became able to manufacture instruments with which to produce music to dance by, it is readily apparent that those persons who did not dance, derived pleasure from listening to it. The next step was to play these dance tunes without dancing. This naturally led to a collection of dance tunes. By playing three or four in succession it was soon found that a more agreeable effect was produced by selecting those differing in rhythm. Here we have the suite, the earliest orchestral form. After a while it was found that a change of key heightened the effect, and, when composing purely orchestral music not intended for actual use in dancing, the more original of the composers at times allowed the strict dance form to fall into abeyance in one or two movements to enable them to try their hand in another style, and also for contrast. A broadening and augmenting of the different forms and we have the sonata. The symphony is an enlargement of the sonata. All our intellectual progress is an unfolding, like a flower from the bud. We have first an impression, then an opinion, then demonstration.

Many years were to elapse before the next and last symphony was to appear; years in which the ripening process was to go on, and which were to culminate in the Mass in D, the Choral Symphony and the last quartets,--works that are in a class by themselves in the same sense that the works from the Third Symphony on, up to, and including the Eighth, are in a class apart from the others. His compositions prior to the Third Symphony are in the style of Mozart and Haydn. They are the naïve utterances of the young musician who does not yet realize that he has a mission to perform; whose ambition was to be ranked with his great predecessors. Of the works of the second period, it can be said that their most prominent characteristic is gayety (Heiterkeit). They are not all in this mood, and but rarely is the mood maintained throughout a single work, but it exists to the extent that it dominates it, just as the key-note to his later works is to be found in his mysticism. The works of the second period are coincident with his best years physically and when his mental powers had reached their highest maturity. When he found out what manner of man he was and realized the place he was destined to occupy among the great ones of earth; when he had accepted his destiny and had made his peace with himself it is easy to understand how a certain gayety and serenity should have spread itself over his life and have communicated itself to his works; and though this serenity was alternated by periods of despair, he allowed no more of this to appear in his work than his esthetic sense approved of. Like all highly organized people he sounded the gamut of joy and sorrow. His journal entries tell the story. One day, exulting in life and its possibilities he writes, "Oh, it would be glorious to live life over a thousand times." At another time he calls upon his God in abject despair to help him through the passing hour. At one time life is so difficult a problem that he sees not how it can be continued at all. Then he loses himself in his creations and soars into regions where his troubles cannot follow. This joyousness is the portion of many extraordinary people.

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