Mary Russell Mitford

“ Two of the most interesting of these flower-formed acquaintances, were my little friends Harry and Bessy Leigh.
Every year I go to the Everley woods to gather wild lilies of the valley. It is one of the delights that May—the charming, ay, and the merry month of May, which I love as fondly as ever that bright and joyous season was loved by our older poets—regularly brings in her train; one of those rational pleasures in which (and it is the great point of superiority over pleasures that are artificial and worldly) there is no disappointment. ”

“ I do not believe that there is a dog in England who has more friends than my Dash. A spaniel was wanted at Bath like my Dash: and what spaniel could be more like Dash than Chloe? A distant home was wanted for Chloe: and what home could open a brighter prospect of canine felicity than to be the pet of Mrs. Keating, and the playmate of Pretty May? It seemed one of those startling coincidences which amuse one by their singular fitness and propriety, and make one believe that there is more in the exploded doctrine of sympathies than can be found in our philosophy. ”

“ God bless you, Miss Phoebe," said Jesse.
"What! does he threaten? Take him off, Daniel. And you, Phoebe, go to bed and compose yourself. Heaven bless you, my darling!" said the fond grandfather, smoothing her hair, as, the tears still chasing each other down her cheeks, she stood leaning against his knee. "Go to bed and to sleep, my precious! and you, Sally, bring me my pipe:" and wondering why the fulfilment of a strong desire should not make him happier, the honest farmer endeavoured to smoke away his cares. ”

“ Go where she might, Hannah was sure to encounter Edward Forester; and this devotion from one whose personal attractions extorted as much admiration from the lasses, her companions, as she herself had been used to excite amongst the country lads, had in it, in spite of its ostentatious openness, a flattery that seemed irresistible.
"I do not think she loves him, Lucy," said James Meadows, sighingly; "indeed I am sure that she does not. She is dazzled by his showiness and his fluency, his horsemanship and his dancing; but love him she does not. ”

“ Nothing could be more unlike our friend Edward than the stranger. Fair, freckled, light-haired, light-eyed, with invisible eye-brows and eye-lashes, insignificant in feature, pert and perking in expression, and in figure so dwarfed and stunted, that though in point of age he had evidently attained his full growth, (if one may use the expression to such a he-doll,) Robert at fifteen would have made two of him,—such was the new favourite. So far as appearance went, for certain Mrs. Deborah had not changed for the better. ”

“ Mayor, if you prefer the sound of your new dignity," broke out John Parsons, in a fury, "I shall do what I like with my money and my daughter, without consulting you, or caring what anybody may chance to say, whether whig or tory. For my part, I think there's little to choose between them. One side's as bad as the other. Tyrants in office and patriots out. If Hanson is a conservative and a churchman, his foreman is a radical and a dissenter; and they neither of them pretend to dictate to their betters, which is more than I can say of some who call themselves reformers. ”

“ Susan advanced rapidly to meet him; and in a few seconds the brother and sister were in each other’s arms; and, after most affectionate greetings, they sat down by mutual consent upon a piece of felled timber which lay upon the bank—the lane on one side being bounded by an old coppice—and began to ask each other the thousand questions so interesting to the children of one house who have been long parted.
Seldom surely has the rough and rugged bark of an unhewed elm had the honour of supporting so perfect an exquisite. ”

“ In a word, the chief beauty of Helen Cameron was her sensibility. It was the perfume to the rose.
Her little boy, born just before his father's death, and upon whom she doated, was a magnificent piece of still life. Calm, placid, dignified, an infant Hercules for strength and fair proportions, grave as a judge, quiet as a flower, he was, in point of age, exactly at that most delightful period when children are very pleasant to look upon, and require no other sort of notice whatsoever. ”

“ They say that a spirit haunts this deep pool—a white lady without a head. I cannot say that I have seen her, often as I have paced this lane at deep midnight, to hear the nightingales, and look at the glow-worms;—but there, better and rarer than a thousand ghosts, dearer even than nightingales or glow-worms, there is a primrose, the first of the year; a tuft of primroses, springing in yonder sheltered nook, from the mossy roots of an old willow, and living again in the clear bright pool. Oh, how beautiful they are—three fully blown, and two bursting buds! ”

“ Fairer by the famous wells To this present day ne'er grew, Never better nor more true. Here be grapes whose lusty blood Is the learned poet's good; Sweeter yet did never crown The head of Bacchus; nuts more brown Than the squirrel whose teeth crack 'em. Deign, oh fairest fair, to take 'em! For these black-eyed Dryope Hath often times commanded me, With my clasped knee to climb; See how well the lusty time Hath deck'd their rising cheeks in red, Such as on your lips is spread. Here be berries for a queen, Some be red, and some be green ”

“ You would not give your own sweet Harriet, the best and prettiest girl in the county, to an adventurer, the history of whose life is to be found in the Gazette and the Insolvent Court, and who is a high churchman and a tory to boot. Surely you would not fling away your daughter and your honest earnings upon a man of notorious bad character, with whom you have not an opinion or a prejudice in common? ”

“ I know that you went away for love of Mary, and flung yourself into the finery of London to try to get rid of the thought of her, and came down with all this nonsense of britschkas, and whiskers, and waistcoats, and rings, just to show her what a beau she had lost in losing you—Did not you, now? Well! don’t stand squeezing my hand, but go and meet your French friend, who has got a man, I see, to help to pick up the fallen equipage. Go and get rid of him,” quoth Susan.
“How can I?” exclaimed William, in laughing perplexity. ”

“ As a piece of colour, nothing can be well finer. The ruddy glow of the heath-flower, contrasting, on the one hand, with the golden-blossomed furze—on the other, with a patch of buck-wheat, of which the bloom is not past, although the grain be ripening, the beautiful buck-wheat, whose transparent leaves and stalks are so brightly tinged with vermilion, while the delicate pink-white of the flower, a paler persicaria, has a feathery fall, at once so rich and so graceful, and a fresh and reviving odour, like that of birch trees in the dew of a May evening. ”

“ For a long time, Daniel and his master waited in vain. Jesse, whom they had entertained some vague hope of chasing away by angry looks and scornful words, had been so much accustomed all his life long to taunts and contumely, that it was a great while before he became conscious of their unkindness; and when at last it forced itself upon his attention, he shrank away crouching and cowering, and buried himself in the closest recesses of the coppice, until the footstep of the reviler had passed by. ”

“ Oh, what enjoyment this nut-gathering is! They are in such abundance, that it seems as if there were not a boy in the parish, nor a young man, nor a young woman,—for a basket of nuts is the universal tribute of country gallantry; our pretty damsel Harriet has had at least half a dozen this season; but no one has found out these. And they are so full too, we lose half of them from over-ripeness; they drop from the socket at the slightest motion. If we lose, there is one who finds. May is as fond of nuts as a squirrel, and cracks the shell and extracts the kernel with equal dexterity. ”

“ She is the wife of a rich country gentleman of high descent and higher attainments, to whom she is most devotedly attached,—the mother of a little girl as lovely as herself, and the delight of all who have the happiness of her acquaintance, to whom she is endeared not merely by her remarkable sweetness of temper and kindness of heart, but by the singular ingenuousness and openness of character which communicate an indescribable charm to her conversation. She is as transparent as water. You may see every colour, every shade of a mind as lofty and beautiful as her person. ”

“ The underwood is no less picturesque. The red-spotted leaves and redder berries of the old thorns, the scarlet festoons of the bramble, the tall fern of every hue, seem to vie with the brilliant mosaic of the ground, now covered with dead leaves and strewn with fir-cones, now, where a little glade intervenes, gay with various mosses and splendid fungi. How beautiful is this coppice to-day! especially where the little spring, as clear as crystal, comes bubbling out from the old 'fantastic' beech root, and trickles over the grass, bright and silent as the dew in a May morning. ”

“ Small intention had Jesse Cliffe to return to their protection or their workhouse! The instinct of freedom was strong in the poor boy—quick and strong as in the beast of the field, or the bird of the air. He betook himself to the Moors (one of his earliest and favourite haunts) with a vague assurance of safety in the deep solitude of those wide-spreading meadows, and the close coppices that surrounded them: and at little more than twelve years of age he began a course of lonely, half-savage, self-dependent life, such as has been rarely heard of in this civilised country. ”