William Eleroy Curtis

“ Imagine a university and a campus of forty-seven acres of lawn and grove where Trinity Church stands in New York or where the post office stands in Chicago or St. Louis. In Washington we have something like it in the mall where the National Museum, the Smithsonian Institution, and the Agricultural Department are. Trinity College, Dublin, has an equally expansive setting of green grass and grove and flowering shrubs, cricket grounds, and tennis courts, surrounded on all sides by business houses, clubs, and hotels. It is like an island of verdure in the midst of an ocean of trade and commerce. ”

“ The sun always rises and sets very suddenly in the tropics. There is no “rosy blush of morn to herald the coming of a newborn day,” and so on, nor is there a gorgeous glow in the west when the twilight comes; but old Sol gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night without any ceremony, and with a startling suddenness. You awaken at the noise of carts in the street, find it dark as midnight, with the stars more brilliant than you ever saw them at home, turn over, doze a little, and in a few moments jump up, supposing it to be noonday. ”

“ They led us to the top of the hill, where we could stand beside the spot once occupied by the coronation stone and admire all Ireland, spread out like a cyclorama around us. It is one of the most beautiful landscapes in the universe. There are no mountains, except in the far distance; there are no rocks or other ungainly objects in view, but as serene and peaceful and fertile a tract of territory as can be found upon God’s footstool. Ireland is the greenest country that ever was. The turf and the foliage have a brighter color and a richer luster than those of any other country. ”

“ The cloudless blue of the skies and the water, the purple tints of the hills, mingled with the orange and scarlet of the autumn foliage, make a harmony of color that can scarcely be found elsewhere, while the little islands that make up the archipelago protect the coast from rough water, and the steamers glide in and out among them without feeling the wind or the tide or any other marine disturbance that a passenger can object to. ”

“ And I aver that, to this day, I have done no official act in mere deference to my abstract judgment and feeling on slavery. I did understand, however, that my oath to preserve the Constitution to the best of my ability imposed upon me the duty of preserving, by every indispensable means, that government, that nation, of which that Constitution was the organic law. Was it possible to lose the nation and yet preserve the Constitution? By general law, life and limb must be protected, yet often a limb must be amputated to save a life; but a life is never wisely given to save a limb. ”

“ Here are the shops of the principal merchants, and the gorgeous stores of the artificers of feather flowers, and the dealers in gold and silver and precious stones. The street, from one end to the other, is filled at night with people, not on the narrow sidewalks only, but completely filling the thoroughfare from wall to wall. Officers of the army and navy, and soldiers and sailors, all in uniform, mingle with the crowd, and flash their gold lace in the bright light that floods the street. Everywhere, too, are the elaborate mulatto gendarmes, the police of the city. ”

“ No one can realize what an awful religion Brahminism is until he visits Benares, the most sacred city of India, upon the banks of the Ganges, the most sacred river, more holy to more millions of human souls than Mecca to the Moslem, Rome to the Catholic or Jerusalem to the Jew. This marvelous city it so holy that death upon its soil is equivalent to life eternal. ”

“ Here and there the farming land is broken by a lofty precipice rising a thousand feet or more directly out of luxuriant vegetation, just as an artist would put some bold figure into a picture to offer a contrast to the peaceful, cultivated slope. And the lofty mountain peaks look bolder and sterner because they rise so near the wheat fields, the gentle valleys dotted with white villages, and the sombre forests that are so thick and so green. ”

“ The roofs of the cars are arranged with comfortable seats, from which one can see everything within the range of human vision and gratify his curiosity about what is behind the high stone walls, green with lichen and ivy and overhung with lustrous boughs. There isn’t much satisfaction going about in an automobile in the immediate vicinity of Dublin, because the roadways are mere tunnels between walls eight feet high and overhung with foliage, which makes a perpetual twilight, a damp, cool atmosphere, a dustless ride, and a picturesqueness that an artist would admire. ”

“ Hymettus and Pentelikos, the two famous mountains which lie on either side of Athens, are often enveloped in a curious pink glow at sunset, and then, as the flame fades out of the sky, they take on a deep violet tinge. The Greek sunset is something that cannot be represented on canvas. Artists and poets rave about it, but it is beyond their power to reproduce.
It is not a land for luxurious people, however. The climate is more to be recommended than the hotels, but the natural scenery has a variety, a richness and a color that no other part of Europe affords. ”

“ Macuto is the Newport of Venezuela—the summer, or rather the winter resort of the wealthy and aristocratic, who find the temperature of Caracas trying upon their constitutions, and seek sea-air, sea-bathing, and flirtations under the palms. It is six miles from La Guayra, and is reached by a tramway, over which a little dummy engine goes shrieking every half hour, and by a broad boulevard which would furnish as delightful a drive as that upon the beach at Long Branch were it not for the dust, which is almost hub-deep, and nearly suffocates one. ”

“ The columns and pillars, the cornices, the beams that support the roofs, the arches of the gateways, windows and doors, the sills and lintels, the friezes and wainscoting, all of the purest and daintiest marble, were chiseled by artists of a race whose creed pronounces patience to be the highest virtue, whose progenitor lived 8,000,000 years, and to whom a century is but a day. The purpose of the prayers of these people is to secure divine assistance in the suppression of all worldly desires, to subdue selfishness, to lift the soul above sordid thoughts and temptations. ”

“ In the villages on market days you can see crowds of peasants, both men and women, wearing the national dress, which is artistic and attractive. In Bukharest, however, the women wear Paris gowns and Paris hats, and the hobble skirt is as common these days as it is in any city of Europe. The extravagance of the people is seen on every block. The cafés are numerous, and they are always crowded; the public vehicles are smarter than any you see in London, or Paris, or New York, and they are drawn by magnificent Russian horses, black as ebony, with long, flowing manes and tails. ”

“ All they ask we could readily grant, if we thought slavery right; all we ask they could as readily grant, if they thought it wrong. Their thinking it right, and our thinking it wrong, is the precise fact upon which depends the whole controversy.... Wrong as we think slavery is, we can yet afford to let it alone where it is, because that much is due to the necessity arising from its actual presence in the nation; but can we, while our votes will prevent it, allow it to spread into the national Territories, and to overrun us here in the free States? ”

“ Constantinople was then the center of the world and the headquarters of the Christian Church, and it was the ambition of that great emperor to embody in this building an expression of his adoration for and devotion to the omniscient and the omnipotent God, to place before the world a symbol combining all things beautiful, all art—then rescued from paganism—all riches, all human thought and skill as a tribute to the Creator. ”