United States or Slovenia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
In his account of the Romantic School in Germany, Heine says, "In the breast of a nation's authors there always lies the image of its future, and the critic who, with a knife of sufficient keenness, dissects a new poet can easily prophesy, as from the entrails of a sacrificial animal, what shape matters will assume in Germany." The diverse indications would puzzle the most acute dissector.
A Roman consulting futurity by the pecking of birds, or a king of Sparta inspecting the entrails of a beast, Mithridates consulting his women on the interpretation of his dreams, are examples sufficient to prove, that a childish imbecility on this subject is consistent with the greatest military and political conduct. Confidence in the effect of charms is not peculiar to any age or nation.
Then, when they had sorted their booty, they walled up the entrance as before, and went their way, leaving an inextricable confusion of shrouds, of human bodies, of entrails issuing from shattered vases, of broken gods and emblems.
They draw and pluck their fowls, skin and paunch their quadrupeds, but dress their fish with the scales on, and without gutting; they leave the scales, entrails, and bones, till they eat the fish, when they throw the offal away. Their food is chiefly beeves, turtle, several species of snakes, broth made of deer’s humbles, peas, beans, &c.
When youth and despair embrace, we know not to what fury they may rise, or what may be their sudden resignation; we know not whether the volcano will burst the mountain or become suddenly extinguished within its entrails. De Thou, in alarm, raised his friend. The blood gushed from his nostrils and ears; he would have thought him dead, but .for the torrents of tears which flowed from his eyes.
Those larvæ must be rejected which are nourished upon one single corpulent insect, as is that of the Scolia. The grub attacks its prey at a determined point, plunges its head and neck into the body of the insect, skilfully divides the entrails in order to keep the remains fresh until its meal is ended, and does not emerge from the opening until all is consumed but the empty skin.
The natives then singed off the hair for us, by holding the animal over a fire, and also gutted it, desiring nothing but the entrails for their trouble. We cooked it in our iron pot, which the slaves who followed us had brought along with the rest of the luggage belonging to our party.
I shall bring plague down upon you like of which hath never been." This new plague consisted in mice crawling forth out of the earth, and jerking the entrails out of the bodies of the Philistines while they eased nature. If the Philistines sought to protect themselves by using brass vessels, the vessels burst at the touch of the mice, and, as before, the Philistines were at their mercy.
The Druids, who were the magi of the Britons, had an infinite number of rites in common with the Persians. One of the chief functions of the Eastern magi, was divination; and Pomponius Mela tells us, that our Druids possessed the same art. There was a solemn rite of divination among the Druids from the fall of the victim and convulsions of his limbs, or the nature and position of his entrails.
The boughs of the Argan tree also suddenly changed into jereeds of the date-palm burdened with luscious fruit; but, on weary travellers descending to slake their parching thirst and refresh themselves, they fell headlong into the gaping holes of the ground, and disappeared in the abyss of the dark entrails of the world.
Word Of The Day