Really old stuff in a shoebox.....

From time to time I have collected really old books.  It will come
as no surprise to faithful readers that there was no organizing
purpose behind such a collection, other than I suspected that the
trash bin was soon to be their fate if I didn't accept them.  I like
having them around, but don't handle them much.  Books printed
and bound in the 1820's don't really like being handled too much.

Occasionally though one has to sort gently through the treasures.
Yesterday, I picked up The Carcanet compiled by Sir Harry
Nicolas and published by William Pickering in MDCCCXXVIII
(1828 if I'm doing my sums correctly)  Not knowing what a
carcanet was, the oracle Google was consulted.  Amazing the
information that is out there, like here and here.

From the Preface:

The following pages contain part of an album into which the
writer was accustomed, some years since, to copy any
passage, remarkable for its beauty or for the truth which it
expressed, whether in prose of poetry, and without reference
to the period in which the author lived.  From those gleanings
this little volume has been formed, with no other attention to
arrangement than to prevent the too frequent occurrence of
the same writer's productions, and to intersperse the poetry
with prose
     Although nothing could be less intended that to give these
extracts a didactic form, they will not only be found wholly
free from a line to which the most rigid moralist can object;
but many of them inculcate sentiments of the purest piety
and the strictest virtue, clothed in the most beautiful
language.  Others were selected for the admirable rules which
they prescribe for human conduct, and some few for their
literary excellence alone.

Sounds like Sir Harry would have been a pretty fair blogger.
Seems only fair that, from time to time, a passage will be
borrowed from there to here.  Like this:

The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a heav'n of hell, a hell of heaven.
                                            -Milton