S T A 
S T A 
504 
The soul about itself circumgyrates 
Her various forms, and what she most doth love 
She oft before herself stabilitates. More. 
STABILITY, 5. [ stability , Fr.; from stabi/itas, Lat.] 
Stableness; steadiness; strength to stand. 
These mighty girders which the fabrick bind, 
These ribs robust and vast in order join’d. 
Such strength and such stability impart, 
That storms above, and earthquakes under ground 
Break not the pillars. Blackmore. 
Fixedness; not fluidity.—Since fluidness and stability are 
contrary qualities, we may conceive that the firmness or 
stability of a body consists in this, that the particles which 
compose it do so rest, or are intaugled, that there is among 
them a mutual cohesion. Boyle. —Firmness of resolu¬ 
tion. 
STABLE, adj. [stabilis, Lat.] Fixed; able to stand.— 
Steady; constant; fixed in resolution or conduct. 
If man would be unvariable. 
He must be like a rock or stone, or tree; 
For ev’n the perfect angels were not stable, 
But had a fall more desperate than we. Davies. 
Strong; fixed in state or condition; durable.—This region 
of chance and vanity, where nothing is stable, nothing equal; 
nothing could be offered to day but what to-morrow might 
deprive us of. Rogers. 
To STABLE, v. a. To make stable; to fix; to establish. 
Obsolete. —Articles devised by the king’s highness to stable 
Christian quietness and unity among the people. Strype. 
STABLE, s. [ stabuluin , Lat.] A house for beasts. 
Slothful disorder fill’d his stable, 
And'sluttish plenty deck’d her table. Prior. 
To STABLE, v.n. [ stabulo, Lat.] To kennel; to dwell 
as beasts. 
In their palaces, 
Where luxury late reign’d, sea monsters whelp’d 
And stabled. Milton. 
To STABLE, v. a. [stabulo, Lat.] To put into a stable. 
Phoebus, wearie of his yearly taske, 
Ystabled hath his steeds in lowly lay. Spenser. 
STABLEBOY, or Sta'bleman, s. One who attends 
in the stable.—If the gentleman hath lain a night, get the 
stableman and the scullion to stand in his way. Swift. 
STABLENESS, s. Power to stand.—Behold the spaces, 
and the stablenesse, and the swyft courseof heven. Chaucer. 
—Steadiness; constancy; stability. 
The king becoming graces 
As justice, verity, temp’rance, stableness. 
Bounty, persev’rance, I have no relish of them. Shalcspeare. 
ST ABLEST AND, s. [In law.] Is one of the four evi¬ 
dences or presumptions, whereby a man is convinced to in¬ 
tend the stealing of the king’s deer in the forest: and this is 
when a man is found at his standing in the forest with a cross¬ 
bow bent, ready to shoot at any deer; or with a long bow, 
or else standing close by a tree with greyhounds in a leash 
ready to slip. Cowel. —I’ll keep my stublestand where I 
lodge my wife, I’ll go in couples with her. Shalcspeare. 
STABLING, s. House or room for beasts. 
Her terror once, on Afric’s tawny shore, 
Now smok’d in dust, a stabling now for wolves! Thomson. 
To STABLISII, o.a. [stabilio, Lat.] To establish; to 
fix; to settle. 
Stop effusion of our Christian blood, 
And stab Us h quietness on every side. Shalcspeare , 
His covenant sworn 
To David, stablish'd as the days of Heaven. Milton. 
STABLO, a town of the Netherlands, in the province of 
Liege, situated in the bottom of a deep valley on the Warge. 
Population 2800. It takes its name from a celebrated Bene¬ 
dictine abbey, founded by Sigebert so far back as 667. It 
has a manufacture of leather, and a considerable trade in 
cloth and other stuffs; 12 miles south of Limburg. Lat. 50. 
27. N. long. 5. 55. E. 
STABLY, adv. Firmly; steadily: so that it may stand 
or endure. 
STABROEK, a town of the Netherlands, in the province 
of Antwerp, with 1600 inhabitants; 7 miles north-north- 
west of Antwerp. 
STABROEK, a town of Dutch Guiana, situated on the 
Demerara river, about a mile from the sea. This town is 
simply twO long rows of houses, built very distant from each 
other, according to Mr. Pinckard; but in Bolingbroke’s ac¬ 
count of Guiana, it is said to consist of wooden houses, with 
colonaded porticoes and balconies, shaded by a projecting 
roof “ orderly arranged between spacious intervals, in three 
parallel lines.” They are seldom above two stories high, and 
stand on low brick foundations, roofed with a sort of red 
wood. Venetian blinds, in place of glass, close every win¬ 
dow'; and the rooms project in all directions to catch the 
luxury of a thorough draught of air ; so that the ground plan 
of a dwelling is mostly in the form of a cross. Casks and 
bales lie about, as if every road was a wharf, and numerous 
warehouses are intermingled with the dwellings. Even the 
public buildings are of wood. The town has an oblong form 
being about one-fourth of a mile broad and one mile long. 
The principal streets are quite straight, with carriage roads. 
The middle street, leading from the kiug’s stelling, (wharf) 
is paved with bricks, and has lamps on each side: another 
public stelling, (besides several that are private,) is kept 
purposely in order for landing and shipping goods. A navi¬ 
gable canal on each side of the town, which fills and empties 
with the tide, affords the same convenience to those houses 
which are not situated near the water-side. But these canals 
which have been cut at the backs of the houses, are perhaps 
the worst neighbours the inhabitants could have near them; 
for, being the receptacles of mud, and all the filthy drainings 
of the town, and only partially emptied by the reflux of the 
tide, they become highly offensive, and tend to generate 
disease. There is a market-place, where the negroes assemble 
to sell their fruit, vegetables, fowls, eggs, and where the 
hucksters expose for sale articles of European manufacture 
(much in the same manner as the pedlars do in England,) in 
addition to salt beef, pork, and fish, bread, cheese, pipes, 
tobacco, and other articles, in small quantities, to enable the 
negroes to supply themselves. Hucksters are free women of 
colour, who purchase their commodities of merchants at two 
or three months’ credit, and retail them out in the manner 
described. Many of them are indeed wealthy, and possess 
ten, fifteen, and twenty negroes, all of whom they employ in 
this traffic. It is by no means an uncommon thing for 
negroes in this line to be travelling about the country for 
several weeks together, sometimes with an attendant, having 
trunks of goods to a considerable amount. Adjoining the 
market-place are the butchers’ shambles. The butchers are 
mostly free men of colour, who have purchased their eman¬ 
cipation, and have acquired a little capital and credit. The 
market is copiously supplied with butchers’ meat, but at a 
most extravagant rate: mutton, 3s.; veal, 2s. 6d.; beef, 
2s. Id.; pork, fOd. per pound. With fish the town is not 
so well provided as the country: no fish-monger has ever yet 
engaged in the business upon a scale sufficiently extensive to 
supply the population. At the king’s stelling, ferry boats 
are always in waiting to carry passengers, horses, and chaises, 
to the other side of the river, where there are two high roads, 
one leading up the river, the other across to the Essequebo, 
The public buildings in the town are the governor’s house, 
and a range of offices for conducting public business. The 
secretary’s office is so large as to comprise the courts of police 
and justice, and a place of worship, in which the Dutch 
service is first performed, on a Sunday, by an ecclesiastic of 
that country, after which the garrison chaplain reads the 
prayers appointed by the church of England. Next comes 
the receiver general's office for the king’s colonial duties; the 
commissary’s or king’s stores; the town guard-house; and 
the 
