J. G. Lockhart

“ It was the first time that I had been in the presence of a human being, foreseeing distinctly, and quietly waiting, the termination of his mortal existence, and I could not help asking of myself, how, under similar circumstances of terror, I should have been able to sustain my spirits?—to what resources I should, in such a moment, look for the support which seemed to have been vouchsafed so abundantly to this old man; by what charm, in fine,—by what tenet of philosophy, or by what hope of religion,—I should, in the midst of life, be able to reconcile myself to a voluntary embrace of death! ”

“ Citizens of Paris! A hostile column has descended on Meaux. It advances; but the Emperor follows close behind, at the head of a victorious army. The Council of Regency has provided for the safety of the Empress and the King of Rome. I remain with you. Let us arm ourselves to defend this city, its monuments, its riches, our wives, our children—all that is dear to us. Let this vast capital become a camp for some moments; and let the enemy find his shame under the walls which he hopes to overleap in triumph. The Emperor marches to our succour. ”

“ Scott took the subject on which he thought such a man or woman would like best to hear him speak—but not to handle it in their way, or in any way but what was completely, and most simply his own;—not to flatter them by embellishing, with the illustration of his genius, the views and opinions which they were supposed to entertain,—but to let his genius play out its own variations, for his own delight and theirs, as freely and easily, and with as endless a multiplicity of delicious novelties, as ever the magic of Beethoven or Mozart could fling over the few primitive notes of a village air. ”

“ Imagination can figure few deaths more horrible than to be sucked under these rocks into some unfathomable abyss, where your corpse could never be found to give intimation of your fate. A water kelpy, or an evil spirit of any aquatic propensities, could not choose a fitter abode; and, to say the truth, I believe at our first entrance, and when all our feelings were afloat at the novelty of the scene, the unexpected plashing of a seal would have routed the whole dozen of us. ”

“ We entered by a small side-door, and found ourselves, as if by some magical delusion, transported from the glare of a Roman highway, into the depth and silence of some primeval forest. No nicely trimmed path conducted our feet. Every thing had at least the appearance of being left as nature had formed it. The fern rustled beneath us as we moved; the ivy was seen spreading its careless tresses from tree to tree; the fawn bounded from the thicket. By degrees, however, the gloom lessened, till at length, over an open space of lawn, we perceived the porch of entrance, and a long line of colonnade. ”

“ So Lord Byron's romance seems to be concluded for one while—and it is surely time, after he has announced, or rather they themselves have announced, half-a-dozen blackguard newspaper editors, to have been his confidants on the occasion. Surely it is a strange thirst of public fame that seeks such a road to it. But Lord Byron, with high genius and many points of a noble and generous feeling, has Childe Harolded himself, and outlawed himself, into too great a resemblance with the pictures of his imagination. He has one excuse, however, and it is a sad one. ”

“ To say that he was incapable of such feelings, or that he really never had a friend, would be to deny to him any part in the nature and destiny of his species.—No one ever dared to be altogether alone in the world.—But we doubt if any man ever passed through life, sympathising so slightly with mankind; and the most wonderful part of his story is, the intensity of sway which he exerted over the minds of those in whom he so seldom permitted himself to contemplate anything more than the tools of his own ambition. ”

“ I am sure, my dear Lord, you will command me in all I can do. I have only to regret it is so little. But to show that my gratitude has survived my benefactor, would be the pride and delight of my life. I never thought it possible that a man could have loved another so much, where the distance of rank was so very great. But why recur to things so painful? I pity poor Adam Ferguson, whose affections were so much engaged by the Duke's kindness, and who has with his gay temper a generous and feeling heart. ”

“ Do not trouble me any more, good Tarna, with any of your speeches. Allow me to believe as all my fathers did, and to contemplate not only the sepulchre in which their urns are placed, but the same dim regions in which many dear shades expect the greeting of a descendant.”
“To me,” said the slave modestly, “it still seems, that by the rushing shower of atoms which moves every where through space, the mind is soothed, as by the sound of a great river carrying continually the watery offspring of the mountains into the bosom of ocean. ”

“ The summer—an uncommon summer in beauty and serenity—has glided away from us at Abbotsford, amidst our usual petty cares and petty pleasures. The children's garden is in apple-pie order, our own completely cropped and stocked, and all the trees flourishing like the green bay of the Psalmist. I have been so busy about our domestic arrangements, that I have not killed six hares this season. Besides, I have got a cargo of old armor, sufficient to excite a suspicion that I intend to mount a squadron of cuirassiers. ”

“ As for our people, they live in a most orderly and regular manner. All the young men pique themselves on imitating the Duke of Wellington in nonchalance and coolness of manner; so they wander about everywhere, with their hands in the pockets of their long waistcoats, or cantering upon Cossack ponies, staring and whistling, and trotting to and fro, as if all Paris was theirs. ”

“ Spain falls whenever I have destroyed the English influence at St. Petersburg. I have 800,000 soldiers in readiness: with such an army I consider Europe as an old prostitute, who must obey my pleasure. Did not you yourself once tell me that the word impossible is not French? You grandees are now too rich, and though you pretend to be anxious about my interests, you are only thinking of what might happen to yourselves in case of my death, and the dismemberment of my empire. I regulate my conduct much more by the sentiments of my army than by yours. ”

“ My dear Walter,—I have a train of most melancholy news to acquaint you with. On Saturday I saw your grandmother perfectly well, and on Sunday the girls drank tea with her, when the good old lady was more than usually in spirits; and, as if she had wished to impress many things on their memory, told over a number of her old stories with her usual alertness and vivacity. On Monday she had an indisposition, which proved to be a paralytic affection, and on Tuesday she was speechless, and had lost the power of one side, without any hope of recovery, although she may linger some days. ”

“ She wore a tiara that rose high above her tresses, and was all over resplendent with flowers woven in jewellery; and around her delicate wrists and ankles were twined broad chains of virgin gold, interspersed with alternate wreaths of sapphire. Her form was the perfection of luxury; and although I have said that her deportment was in general lively and brilliant, yet there was a soft seriousness that every now and then settled in her eyes, which gave her, for a moment, a look of melancholy that seemed to me more likely to be in harmony with the secret nature of her disposition. ”

“ All this is beautiful to witness: the indoor work does not please me so well, though I am aware that, to those who are to inhabit an old castle, it becomes often a matter of necessity to make alterations by which its tone and character are changed for the worse. Thus a noble gallery, which ran the whole length of the front, is converted into bedrooms—very comfortable, indeed, but not quite so magnificent; and as grim a dungeon as ever knave or honest man was confined in, is in some danger of being humbled into a wine-cellar. ”

“ How can the two most enlightened nations of Europe, stronger and more powerful than is necessary for their safety and independence, sacrifice commercial advantages, internal prosperity, and domestic happiness, to vain ideas of grandeur? Whence comes it that they do not feel peace to be the first of wants as well as of glories? These sentiments cannot be new to the heart of your Majesty, who rule over a free nation with no other view than to render it happy. ”

“ My life has been, in all its private and public relations, as fortunate perhaps as was ever lived, up to this period; and whether pain or misfortune may lie behind the dark curtain of futurity, I am already a sufficient debtor to the bounty of Providence to be resigned to it. Fear is an evil that has never mixed with my nature, nor has even unwonted good fortune rendered my love of life tenacious; and so I can look forward to the possible conclusion of these scenes of agony with reasonable equanimity, and suffer chiefly through the sympathetic distress of my family. ”

“ The horizon becomes colder around us—the soul waxes faint and more faint within. It is then that man begins to recognize the true state, not of his own nature alone, but of all things that surround him—that having tasted much of evil, he is taught to feel the value of good—and weaning himself from vain-glorious dreams, learns the great lesson of wisdom, to enjoy the moments as they pass—to snatch some solid pleasure, at least, amidst a world of vision and imagination; so, in a word, as the poet has expressed it, he may not have reason to complain in the hour of death that he has never lived. ”

“ Such was, or had recently been, the state of affairs when Buonaparte landed at Frejus, and sent before him to Paris, to the inexpressible delight of a nation of late accustomed to hear of nothing but military disasters, the intelligence of that splendid victory which had just destroyed the great Turkish armament at Aboukir. He arrived at a moment when all men, of all parties, were satisfied that a new revolution was at hand; and when the leaders of all the contending factions were equally desirous of invoking arms to their support in the inevitable struggle. ”

“ The gay and wild romance of life is over with all of us. The real, dull, and stern history of humanity has made a far greater progress over our heads; and age, dark and unlovely, has laid his crutch over the stoutest fellow's shoulders. One thing your old society may boast, that they have all run their course with honor, and almost all with distinction; and the brother suppers of Frederick Street have certainly made a very considerable figure in the world, as was to be expected from her talents under whose auspices they were assembled. ”

“ Instinctively I turned me from the spectacle, and my eye rested again upon the couch of Athanasia—but not upon the vision of her tranquillity. The clap with which the corpse fell upon the stones had, perhaps, reached the sleeping ear, and we know with what swiftness thoughts chase thoughts in the wilderness of dreams. So it was that she started at the very moment when the blow was given; and she whispered—for it was still but a deep whisper—“Spare me, Trajan, Cæsar, Prince—have pity on my youth—strengthen, strengthen me good Lord!—Fie! fie! we must not lie to save life. ”

“ A habit of the mind it is which is very apt to beset men of intellect and talent, especially when their time is not regularly filled up, but left at their own arrangement. But it is like the ivy round the oak, and ends by limiting, if it does not destroy, the power of manly and necessary exertion. I must love a man so well to whom I offer such a word of advice, that I will not apologize for it, but expect to hear you are become as regular as a Dutch clock—hours, quarters, minutes, all marked and appropriated. ”

“ In almost every town of Spain, and almost simultaneously, the flame of patriotic resentment broke out in the terrible form of assassination. The French residents were slaughtered without mercy: the supposed partisans of Napoleon and Godoy (not a few men of worth being causelessly confounded in their fate) were sacrificed in the first tumult of popular rage. At Cadiz, Seville, Carthagena, above all in Valencia, the streets ran red with blood. The dark and vindictive temper of the Spaniards covered the land with scenes, on the details of which it is shocking to dwell. ”

“ She threw open the lattice, as if that she might inhale the free air, and her eyes wandered to and fro over all the magnificent prospect that lay stretched out below us,—the temples and high porticos of the Forum—the gleaming battlements and long arcades of the Palatine—the baths, and theatres, and circuses between and the river—Tiber winding away among fields and groves—and the sky of Italy extending over all things its arch of splendour. ”

“ The effect of the scene in the Abbey was beyond measure magnificent. Imagine long galleries stretched among the aisles of that venerable and august pile—those which rise above the altar pealing back their echoes to a full and magnificent choir of music—those which occupied the sides filled even to crowding with all that Britain has of beautiful and distinguished, and the cross-gallery most appropriately occupied by the Westminster schoolboys, in their white surplices, many of whom might on that day receive impressions never to be lost during the rest of their lives. ”

“ So great a spirit must have had glimpses of whatever adorns and dignifies the character of man. But with him the feelings which bind love played only on the surface—leaving the abyss of selfishness untouched. His one instrument of power was genius ”