New heights of popularity for Jane Austen* ~
British novelist, Jane Austen, will be honoured on the 10-pound banknote. Bank of England announced. The design will feature an 1870 portrait and include the Pride and Prejudice quotation, "I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading."
"Her novels have an enduring and universal appeal and she is recognized as one of the greatest writers in English Literature." ~ Mark Carney, Bank of England Governor.
~ CBC News, July 24.
* (Jane Austen, born December 16, 1775; died July 18, 1817)
Photo: Cover of Jane Austen : her life, by Park Honan, 1987. U.S. Edition. St. Martin's Press. First published in Great Britain by George Weidenfeld & Nicolson Limited.
Nostalgic ~
In Rivers of Canada, Hugh MacLennan refers to "The gentle Grand ... I kept marvelling at the Grand. How does it generate enough force to move at all?
"Streams with low banks running through rich tillage can be very deceptive. They remind me of quiet, apparently docile women who periodically lose their tempers and are all the more terrifying because you don't expect it. The Grand River has a long history of losing its temper in the month of April."
p. 147 Rivers of Canada, 1974 Macmillan Company of Canada Ltd.
Photo: Conway Park, Cayuga. lbw files.
"There are times when I think that the reading I have done in the past has had no effect except to cloud my mind and make me indecisive."
~ Robertson Davies (1913 - 1935) Canadian novelist, professor, journalist.
Thought for Today ~
An Essay concerning Human Understanding (1690)
"New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not already common."
"No man's knowledge here can go beyond his experience."
"It is one thing to show a man that he is in error, and another to put him in possession of truth."
"Crooked things may be as stiff and unflexible as straight: and men may be as positive in error as in truth."
~ John Locke (1632 - 1704) English Philosopher
"I OMIT THE UNUSUAL ~ the hurricanes and earthquakes ~ and describe the common. This has the greatest charm and is the true theme of poetry. You may have the extraordinary for your province, if you will let me have the ordinary. Give me the obscure life, the cottage of the poor and humble, the workdays of the world, the barren fields, the smallest share of all things but poetic perception. Give me but the eyes to see the things which you possess."
~ Henry David Thoreau/ An American Landscape/ Selected Writings from His Journals, edited and illustrated by Robert L. Rothwell, Paragon House, 1991.
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"THERE IS SOME ADVANTAGE, intellectually and spiritually, in taking wide views with the bodily eye and not pursuing an occupation which holds the body prone. There is some advantage, perhaps, in attending to the general features of the landscape over studying the particular plants and animals which inhabit it. A man may walk abroad and no more see the sky than if he walked under a shed. The poet is more in the air than the naturalist, though they may walk side by side. Granted that you are out-of-doors; but what if the outer door is open, if the inner door is shut! You must walk sometimes perfectly free, not prying nor inquisitive, not bent upon seeing things. Throw away a whole day of a single expansion, a single inspiration of air."
~ Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau An American Landscape, Selected Writings from His Journals, Edited and Illustrated by Robert L. Rothwell, Paragon House, 1991.
(Photo: Family, Haldimand County. Pls. click on photo. lbw)
