Robert Bell

“ Gathering into a species of glaciers against the shores, buildings, and bridges, sometimes broken off by the action of the tide and forming islands of ice crowned with pinnacles of fleecy drift, and sometimes carried away with perilous rapidity, the surface presented an appearance of a wild sea of ice and snow tossed by tempests, and never level or secure. The dislocation and dispersion of these frozen rifts was attended with great peril. A thaw set in all at once, with torrents of rain, and in a single night the Thames was strewn with the fragments of the merry fair. ”

“ Why has he gone to Union Hall with a counsel at his elbow, and called on the magistrates to do no more than require the printer to suppress the publication of these printed papers, which request the magistrates have complied with, on the ground that such publications tended to a breach of the peace? I hope that no person—and I am confident that no reader of the Weekly Dispatch will be so foolish as to join in any riotous proceedings. But is Christianity, in the mean time, to continue suffering under such a slander as that of being promulgated by a man who is even suspected? ”

“ FROSTS ON THE THAMES.
A hundred years hence people will be comparing notes with the calamitous winter of 1860-61, just as we have been doing during the last few weeks with such scraps and fragments of description as have come down to us about the famous frosts, and tempests, and fogs, that visited this stupendous London of ours ages upon ages ago. But they will find us of the nineteenth century intolerably tame, when they contrast us with the ancients who flourished before the Revolution. ”

“ There is but one day in this current month of September for the inhabitants of Ypres, and that is the day when the King is to make his appearance amongst them; but that day I know has not come yet, because the King has not come, although it is palpably close at hand, from the hammering I hear on all sides, the ladders that are stretching up against the fronts of the houses, and the multitudes of lamps and lanterns and artificial flowers and great boughs of evergreen that are passing and re-passing in all directions through the streets. The bustle grows more and more enlivening ”

“ Let us for ever endeavour to turn every thing, whether good or bad, into good. I do not not believe that God begot Jesus Christ—they say too that Joseph was an impostor at this very day;—every thing that is done against the church is done against Christ; also that which is done against Christ is done against the Church; and any thing done against the people of God is done against Christ. ”

“ A man who has had his unmanly qualities laid bare, is apt to imagine personalities where none is intended; and when Dryden took up with Mulgrave for his patron, it seemed to Rochester as if he espoused his quarrel. ”

“ We must have the spirit of God before we are his people. Believe in the predestination of eternal life, but not in eternal death; people that suffer were beforehand predestined so to do, by God. Bad or horrid is the religion of a proud Pharisee. That religion that is preached by the people of God is God himself. There can be no going forth until the Spirit of God has entered. ”

“ Thy heart.
Lord H.’Twere but to find thy image there,
Where none but thine can ever entrance make.
Love that has quicken’d in a genial soil,
With each revolving season strikes its roots
The deeper. Time! ’Twill only make me love
Thee more.
Edith.Again—be sure! while yet there’s space
To act.
Lord H.It is too late. Never again
Can we be to each other what we were.
I have confess’d, and all is changed between us.
We cannot meet, or speak, as we have done.
I cannot look at thee, and, silent, trace
Sweet mystery in thine eyes, too conscious now
Of love in mine. Oh! ”

“ Complaints have often been made from very high quarters of the publicity given to certain proceedings in Courts of Justice; and it is but justice to say, that within the last twenty years, the press has been very cautious in its manner of relating them. But it is a matter of doubt with many wise men whether the suppression of facts in such instances does not, upon the whole, do more injury to public morals than a complete disclosure of them ”

“ The close neighbourhood of these antagonisms, and the curious dialogues one can fancy taking place between the opposite tenants, as they sit on their benches of a summer’s evening, “chaffing” each other, gave us something to think of till we found ourselves dashing over the pavement of Poperinghe. If we had not been apprised of the fact by the thunder of the wheels, we must have known that we had entered a town by the detonating cracks of the driver’s whip, accompanied by that shrill cry “Yeu!” which all travellers in France carry away ringing in their ears, but nobody can imitate. ”

“ Theodore Page, the printer, in Blackfriars road, was obliged to do? No, Sir; so long as I continue to live in a free country, I will suffer no Justice of peace to lay an illegal imprimatur on my press. Mr. Page, as quiet and discreet a man as ever existed, who was not seen in any crowd, and who would be the first to get away from any place where there happened to be the slightest disturbance, is now bound in the penalty of 100l. to preserve the peace! and for what, because he printed some hand-bills, giving an account of Church’s infamous practices. ”

“ The diversions were endless, not the least extraordinary of them being horse and coach races. There were show-booths for rope-dancing, conjuring, and puppet-plays; music booths and lottery booths, a miniature bear-garden, a ring for bull-baiting, close under the Temple Gardens, and not far off might be enjoyed the singular pastime of hunting a fox on the ice, an incident selected for particular admiration by one of the river poets ”

“ I am informed that Church belongs to that sect called Antinomians, which is thus described by the Rev. John Evans in his “Sketch of the Denominations of the Christian World”:—
“The Antinomian derives his name from Anti and Nomos; signifying, against, and a Law, his favourite tenet being, that the law is not a rule of life to believers. It is not easy to ascertain what he means by this position, but he seems to carry the doctrine of imputed righteousness of Christ and salvation by faith without works to such lengths as to injure, if not wholly destroy the obligation to moral obedience. ”

“ Five or six hundred years ago it was as well known to the English as any spot on the globe to which they adventured for trade or pleasure; and at this present time the advent of an Englishman is so rare in the place that, when such an apparition appears, the worthy people collect at their shop-doors to gaze at him, and the little children gather about him with gaping eyes, and examine him from head to foot, with an expression of mixed curiosity and fear. ”

“ I picture to my imagination the affecting scene the painful thought, I must close the affecting subject ’tis more than my feelings are able to bear—My hearths full, my mind is sunk, I shall be better when I have vented out my grief, Stand fast my dearest Ned to me I shall to you whether you do to me or no, and may we be pardoned, justified, and brought more to the knowledge of Christ. ”

“ But who can look with confidence to the future from the vantage ground of present prosperity? Both favourite and frost came to violent ends: the one poisoned on a journey to that same castle in which he had himself secretly despatched two of his victims, and the other broken up suddenly into fearful inundations, upon whose rising waters houses, bridges, and vessels were borne down to the sea like the fragments of a wreck. ”

“ Several persons have been at a loss to know by what authority this man presumed to take upon himself the functions of a minister of the gospel. They have asked how could a man so profligate—so notoriously criminal, come forth to instruct others in religion. The question was natural, and I will answer it. The practice among Dissenters is, that when any man feels a strong desire to become a preacher, he communicates the same to several Ministers, who make strict enquiry into his qualifications as to piety, learning, morals, &c. ”

“ If we look a little beyond bread and mutton, it is quite a different affair. Literature is at a discount in Ypres. I will not venture to say that the art of reading is not cultivated here; but, if it be, there can be no hesitation in saying that it is cultivated under difficulties. There is a bookshop in the town, which is as much as can be said about it; for it is evident from its contents that stationery is more in demand than print. To the credit, however, of a population that has something else to do than to read, an excellent free library has been established within the last twenty years. ”

“ This has been the principle on which I have uniformly acted in the conduct of this paper. But to suppress in a newspaper the publication of a fact which meets the eyes and ears of all people would be at once absurd and mischievous. ”

“ These primitive people take scarcely any interest in politics. It is astonishing how little they know or care about what is going on in the rest of Europe. If you hear the name of Garibaldi, it is, most likely, in connection with a piece of news at least a month old. Simple, cordial, and friendly, they live in a round of old-fashioned usages and ideas, which is quite marvellous in this age of stratagem and movement. They like the English, and dislike the French. France, indeed, is the only foreign point upon which they are at all strong, either in knowledge or opinion. ”

“ If every one that is saved should be as bright as the sun, what a place heaven must be, where there will be so many millions! Angels beckon me away, and Christ bids me come. The sight of Christ, you may depend on’t, will be worth suffering for. ”

“ It was during the frost of 1662 that skates were introduced into England from Holland. Evelyn witnessed what he describes as the wonderful and dexterous evolutions of the skaters for the first time on the 1st December. The performance took place in the presence of their majesties, on the canal which had then been recently cut in St. James’s Park. Evelyn particularly notes the swiftness of the skaters, and the suddenness with which they arrested themselves in full career upon the ice. The Thames was frozen that winter, but the watermen contrived to keep a passage open for the gentry. ”

“ And, on the other hand, there are certain acts, which, if passed over without notice by civil authority, or animadversion on the part of the press, may produce evils destructive to society. Another laborious task imposed on a journalist is the dilemma in which his duty to the public and his fear of offending the delicacy of individuals, frequently places him, when he is about to record events which cannot be suppressed without doing a serious injury to public morals. ”

“ We knew, by lamentable experience, how little external appearances are to be trusted as an index to internal accommodation in the matter of French hotels; and I believe that if we had been driven to extremities, we should have decided for the house that made the least show. But we were fortunately saved the necessity of determining that question by discovering that in a certain back street there was a cariole to be obtained, which would convey us into Belgium as far as a place called Poperinghe, from whence we might proceed by way of rail to Ypres. ”

“ All persons acquainted with history will recollect, that this mode of healing the consciences of profligate men was practised by the Romish Church before the reformation, and when it flourished in its rankest state of corruption—when indulgences for sins to be committed, and pardon for sins past, were openly sold for money. The manner in which the Obelisk Preacher conducts the affairs of his chapel bears some resemblance to this practice. ”

“ Concerning the main fact of this beating, there is no question; but proof is wanting that Dryden had been at Will’s that night, and, wherever he was going, he certainly could not have been going to Gerard Street, if it be true, as it is alleged, that Gerard Street was not built for two years afterwards. Quiet, intelligent people who read books for their amusement, and, in a general way, for their instruction, have no notion, happily for themselves, of the voluntary drudgery a literary antiquary undergoes in the pursuit of small, and, apparently, trivial details. ”

“ People may be laughed at for being fools, but you may depend upon it the more God will like them. All that believe not will certainly be damned. The duties of Christianity are not to be preached to an ungodly world; John Church is very much spoken of, but they had much better speak of Jesus; the people of the established church feel no spiritual joy. Spiritual discourse is enlivening to the senses, &c. The bread of life is not to be given away to Dogs. ”

“ The entire population, with such dissipated or vagrant exceptions as are to be found in all towns, are a-bed by ten; half an hour afterwards, the dreamy music of the carillons rings out from the lofty belfry over the squares and streets, which are as fast asleep as the inhabitants.
Society and amusements are the only wants of Ypres; but they are wants which are felt only by strangers. Residents are accustomed to do without them, and have become moulded to habits which much bustle or pleasure-going would inconveniently derange. ”

“ The house would be frequently more like a play-house, (I might say a bawdy house) than a minister’s house, where a set of young people would come, and behave more indecently than ought to be mentioned. ”

“ There is a theatre somewhere hidden away in Ypres, but it is never open. The people take no interest in the drama in any shape, and don’t affect to disguise their indifference to it. There may be a ball on some extraordinary occasion; but it happens so rarely that the ladies declare they have no relish for dancing. ”

“ Satan and all his spirits never sleeps; the power of life and death is only in the hands of our Lord Jesus Christ. Devils are allowed to harrass the people of God day and night—no wonder they perplex those they cant destroy. People are mostly liable to fall in their first love into awful heresies and temptation. ”

“ For an Englishman to make a journey to Ypres is like paying a visit to the birth-place or residence of an ancestor, of whose name, deeds, and whereabouts one’s family has preserved dim traditions, which are growing dimmer every day. ”

“ There must be spiritual life in the soul. The Lord Jesus Christ and the people of God are all one. Christ has no sorrow but the people of God must sympathise with him; and the people of God have no affliction but that Christ sympathises with them.”
[20] Alluding to his being turned out of Banbury.
[21] Before Church got to bed to young Clark, he scoffed at secret prayer. What abominable hypocrisy, to hear the same man pretending to pray before a public congregation, where he can get himself paid for his devotions! how he must hate and despise himself on account of his own most odious cant!!! ”

“ Dependence, as a matter of course, is not to be placed on the expedition of a cariole; and, to confess the truth, we never thought about it, resigning ourselves to the easy pace of our moving panorama, till we reached the station at Poperinghe, when we had the satisfaction of finding that the train for Ypres had started exactly seven minutes before, and that there was no other train that evening. ”

“ The printer is a respectable and responsible house-holder residing in the neighbourhood. He has sent forth from his press many hundred sheets of paper filled with direct allegations of criminality against Church: and I again ask, why does not Church take that step which an honest innocent man would take in vindication of his character, namely—that of bringing an action for damages, wherein evidence to their truth or falsehood may be legally admitted? ”

“ In all such cases, however, there was undeniable provocation, while in Dryden’s case there was none of which a scintilla of evidence could be produced. The plot of this little drama is a microcosm of the age.
Louise de Quérouaille, at the age of nineteen, rather more than ten years before the attack upon Dryden, was appointed maid of honour to the Duchess of Orleans, the sister of Charles II. She was descended from a decayed Breton family, and was considered a great beauty, with a child-like expression of sweetness in her face, rich clustering hair, and a voluptuous form. ”