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Cornugaya Directory 01
It is a very remarkable fact that not only are such substances as
albumin, gluten, fibrin, and syntonin, known exclusively as products
of animal and vegetable bodies, but that every animal and every plant,
at all periods of its existence, contains one or other of them,
though, in other respects, the composition of living bodies may vary
indefinitely. Thus, some plants contain neither starch nor cellulose,
while these substances are found in some animals; while many animals
contain no horny matter and no gelatin-yielding substance. So that the
matter which appears to be the essential foundation of both the animal
and the plant is the proteid united with water; though it is probable
that, in all animals and plants, these are associated with more or
less fatty and amyloid (or starchy and saccharine) substances, and
with very small quantities of certain mineral bodies, of which the
most important appear to be phosphorus, iron, lime, and potash.
I must, however, return to Frost's "Lives of Eminent Christians." I
will leave none of the ambiguity about my words in which Moore and
Wordsworth seem to have delighted. I am very sorry the book is
gone, and know not where to turn for its successor. Till I have
found a substitute I can write no more, and I do not know how to
find even a tolerable one. I should try a volume of Migne's
"Complete Course of Patrology," but I do not like books in more than
one volume, for the volumes vary in thickness, and one never can
remember which one took; the four volumes, however, of Bede in
Giles's "Anglican Fathers" are not open to this objection, and I
have reserved them for favourable consideration. Mather's
"Magnalia" might do, but the binding does not please me; Cureton's
"Corpus Ignatianum" might also do if it were not too thin. I do not
like taking Norton's "Genuineness of the Gospels," as it is just
possible some one may be wanting to know whether the Gospels are
genuine or not, and be unable to find out because I have got Mr.
Norton's book. Baxter's "Church History of England," Lingard's
"Anglo-Saxon Church," and Cardwell's "Documentary Annals," though
none of them as good as Frost, are works of considerable merit; but
on the whole I think Arvine's "Cyclopedia of Moral and Religious
Anecdote" is perhaps the one book in the room which comes within
measurable distance of Frost. I should probably try this book
first, but it has a fatal objection in its too seductive title. "I
am not curious," as Miss Lottie Venne says in one of her parts, "but
I like to know," and I might be tempted to pervert the book from its
natural uses and open it, so as to find out what kind of a thing a
moral and religious anecdote is. I know, of course, that there are
a great many anecdotes in the Bible, but no one thinks of calling
them either moral or religious, though some of them certainly seem
as if they might fairly find a place in Mr. Arvine's work. There
are some things, however, which it is better not to know, and take
it all round I do not think I should be wise in putting myself in
the way of temptation, and adopting Arvine as the successor to my
beloved and lamented Frost.
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