William James Stillman

“ I must confess a strong liking for the Russian individual, and I have hardly known a Russian whom I did not take to, in spite of a looseness in matters of veracity in which they are so unlike the Anglo-Saxon in general. I think that the time is coming when the evolution of the Russian character will make the race the dominant one in Europe; and that, when the vices inherent in a people governed despotically have been outgrown, they will develop a magnificent civilization, which, in poetry, in music, and in art, even, may distance the West of to-day. ”

“ We were nearest each other in our Adirondack life, in which he had all the zest of a boy. He was the soul of the merriment of the company, fullest of witticisms, keenest in appreciation of the liberty of the occasion, and the genius loci. One sees through all his nature-poetry the traces of the heredity of the early settler, the keen enjoyment of the fresh and unhackneyed in nature, even of the angularity of the New England farmhouse and the brightness and newness of the villages, so crude to the tastes founded in the picturesqueness of the Old World. ”

“ We rode back across the plain in the twilight, accompanied by the building gang, whose polyglot murmur was as cheerful and full of mirth as though they were peasants going home from the vintage.
Nothing can surpass the good-humor and patience of the Turkish soldier. Brutal and barbarous they doubtless were when their fanaticism and the rage of battle united to excite them, but in camp and in peace I have found them always models of the purely physical man. ”

“ And when you finally leave Rome, as you must some day, you will always harbor a small canker-worm of immitigable grief, that you did not purchase one stone you saw and thought too high-priced; and will pass thenceforward no curiosity-shop without looking in the windows a moment, in the hope of finding some gem strayed away into parts where no man knows its value. If you feel in you the capacity of loving them, let them alone. ”

“ I was unable to give him any assurance of the existence of anything beyond the primitive and patriarchal state which fitted its present position, in which a personal government by a wise prince is sufficient to reach all the needs of the population. And to-day I am of the opinion that a greatly enlarged Montenegro would run the danger of becoming a little Russia, in which the best ruler would be lost in the intricacies of the intrigues and personal ambitions that facilitate corruption and injustice, and where the worst ruler might easily become a curse to all his neighbors. ”

“ The fascination of indulgence in this illusory life became such that I lingered every summer longer, and finally until November, when, in that high and northerly locality, the snow had fallen and the lake began to freeze, living only under a bark roof, open to the air and to the snow, which fell on my bed during the night. I can easily imagine the life leading to insanity. Probably my interest in nature and my painting kept me measurably free from this danger, but not from illusions as unaccountable as spiritism, and sometimes more real than the physical facts. ”

“ Madam, one of the reasons of state policy which led the great Powers to replace us under the dominion of Turkey, was no doubt the amount of the Mussulman population in our island, which was considered higher than that of the Christian population.
But now the Turks compose but one-fourth of the whole population, which amounts to 300,000 souls. It is unjust that the most numerous should suffer on account of the lesser number, whereas if we were under a Christian government our Turkish brethren would enjoy the same happiness and the same advantages as ourselves. ”

“ Like every other really great artist, he had a very just appreciation of the work of other men, and his criticisms were, me judice, very sound and broad from the point of view of art; the only painter of any note I ever heard him speak of with strong dislike was Brett, whom he could not tolerate. But he had a higher opinion of his own natural abilities than of his actual achievement,—his self-appreciation was not the conceit of a man who understood only what he himself did, but a full consciousness of what at his best he would be capable of doing and hoped to do before he died. ”

“ The Scarabæus then, instead of the rude, straightforward representation of the Egyptian workman, assumes a more elegant form, with elaborate sculpture of all the insect characteristics, the edges of the wings and the lines that divide them from the chest being exquisitely beaded and wrought, and the claws being relieved and modelled with the highest care and most artistic finish. The form of the image, in fact, generally resembles more the beautiful green beetle which I have often caught in the mountains around Rome, than his plebeian and utilitarian cousin, the Scarabæus pilularius. ”

“ Lowell to have embodied the antique sentiment, "I am a man, and hold nothing human as indifferent to me." Both were adored by those around them, and the adoration kindled Holmes to a warmer reflection to the adorers; Lowell felt it as the earth feels sunshine, which sinks into the fertile soil and bears its fruit in a richer harvest.
Excepting Holmes, Norton, and Longfellow, our company included most of what was most distinct in the world in which we lived, with some who were eminent only in their social relations, and who neither cared to be nor ever became of interest to the general world. ”

“ About to carry out this decision, the Pasha intervened, and to pacify them issued an order that no Christian man should sleep in the walls of Canéa, and accordingly the whole adult male population was mustered out every night, leaving their wives and children in the city. There is hardly room to wonder that the Cretan is still a liar, rather wonder that he is still a man, with courage to revolt and die, considering that only one generation has intervened between him and a slavery more abject than any domestic servitude the civilized world knows of. ”

“ The plain between the frontier and Trebinje is a waste of limestone crags and blocks, scattered as if after a combat of Titans, a miserable stunted vegetation springing between the rocks, capable of hiding thousands of men within a rifle-shot from the road, and, as we found, actually hiding a good many. But word had been sent before by our friends the patriots, and we only caught a glimpse of one insurgent, and saw one dead Turk, a victim of the last skirmish, whose body the garrison had not dared come out to bury. ”

“ Of it all, we have only the grave into which art sought to carry an immortality of its own, and from which religion strove to banish the drear gloom of the uncertain by surrounding the dead with all the objects familiar to their daily lives and the incidents which were the most antagonistic in impression to the darkness and silence to which they abandoned the beloved ones only when conquest and destruction had concealed the portals of their tombs, and ancestor and descendant had yielded to the same oblivion. ”

“ Rousseau was a most instructive talker on art, beyond the sphere of which he hardly seemed to care to go in his thinking. He had never been out of France, had never seen the Alps, and did not care for mountain scenery, but concentrated all his feelings and labor on what he used to call "sujets intimes," the picturesque nooks of landscape one can always find in a highly cultivated country, where nature is tamed to an intimacy with the domestic spirit, or where she vainly struggles against the invasion of culture, as in the borders of the forest of Fontainebleau. ”

“ At this juncture came H.B.M.'s sloop Assurance, Commander Pym, relieving the Wizard, ordered to Malta. We parted from our gallant protector with an emotion not easily comprehended by those who do not know the nature and nearness of the dangers of the previous four months, or how the resolute and outspoken manhood of the young officer in his one-gun steamer had stood so long between us and death, as the representative of a power in civilization which subsequent years made me honor more and more—the English navy. ”

“ I found the island materially as I had left it, but almost deserted and quite desolate, and the local administration in the hands of the spies and the traitors of the insurrection; all the brave men in exile and the gloom of death over everything; villages still unrebuilt, and the only sign of activity the building in the most accessible districts of military roads and blockhouses. As my successor delayed, I, to pass the time, went to Omalos to carry out the ancient plan which could no longer be postponed if it was to be carried out, for I never intended to see Crete again. ”

“ There were confederation without over-centralization; states side by side, without mutual hate or subjugation; wealth and power, without the corruption that destroys nations; and military prowess, without the unscrupulous ambition that cannot live and let live. They were instructors of Rome in all that Rome knew of civilization; many times masters of the imperial city, without ever envying it its existence ”