William Makepeace Thackeray

“ But for our women, who are free, why should they rebel against Nature, shut their hearts up, sell their lives for rank and money, and forgo the most precious right of their liberty? Look, Ethel, dear. I love you so, that if I thought another had your heart, an honest man, a loyal gentleman, like—like him of last year even, I think I could go back with a God bless you, and take to my pictures again, and work on in my own humble way. You seem like a queen to me, somehow; and I am but a poor, humble fellow, who might be happy, I think, if you were. ”

“ Thrice his Grace had yawned at table, when his favorite gleemen sung, Once the Queen would have consoled him, but he bade her hold her tongue. "Something ails my gracious master," cried the Keeper of the Seal. "Sure, my lord, it is the lampreys served to dinner, or the veal?" "Psha!" exclaimed the angry monarch, "Keeper, 'tis not that I feel. "'Tis the HEART, and not the dinner, fool, that doth my rest impair: Can a king be great as I am, prithee, and yet know no care? Oh, I'm sick, and tired, and weary."—Some one cried, "The King's arm- chair!" ”

“ Then forgotten tones of love recur to us, and kind glances shine out of the past—oh, so bright and clear!—oh, so longed after!—because they are out of reach; as holiday music from withinside a prison wall—or sunshine seen through the bars; more prized because unattainable—more bright because of the contrast of present darkness and solitude, whence there is no escape.
All the notice, then, which Lady Castlewood seemed to take of Harry Esmond's melancholy, upon Tom Tusher's departure, was, by a gaiety unusual to her, to attempt to dispel his gloom. ”

“ You angel—you peri—you rosebud, let me be thy bulbul—thy Bulbo, too! Fly to the desert, fly with me! I never saw a young gazelle to glad me with its dark blue eye that had eyes like shine. Thou nymph of beauty, take, take this young heart. A truer never did itself sustain within a soldier’s waistcoat. Be mine! Be mine! Be Princess of Crim Tartary! My Royal father will approve our union; and, as for that little carroty-haired Angelica, I do not care a fig for her any more.’
‘Go away, Your Royal Highness, and go to bed, please,’ said Betsinda, with the warming-pan. ”

“ But I cannot help my nature, and grow obstinate as I grow to be an old woman; and as I love my children so, sure our Father loves us with a thousand and a thousand times greater love. It must be that we shall meet yonder, and be happy. Yes, you—and my children, and my dear lord. Do you know, Harry, since his death, it has always seemed to me as if his love came back to me, and that we are parted no more. Perhaps he is here now, Harry—I think he is. Forgiven I am sure he is: even Mr. Atterbury absolved him, and he died forgiving. ”

“ Like two black Templars sit they there, Beside one crupper, Knight and Care. “No knight am I with pennoned spear, To prance upon a bold destrere: I will not have black Care prevail Upon my long-eared charger's tail, For lo, I am a witless fool, And laugh at Grief and ride a mule.”
And his bells rattled as he kicked his mule's sides.
“Silence, fool!” said Sir Wilfrid of Ivanhoe, in a voice both majestic and wrathful. “If thou knowest not care and grief, it is because thou knowest not love, whereof they are the companions. Who can love without an anxious heart? ”

“ As they rode over the downs between home and Baymouth, Pen did not speak much, though they rode very close together. He was thinking what a mockery life was, and how men refuse happiness when they may have it; or, having it, kick it down; or barter it, with their eyes open, for a little worthless money or beggarly honor. And then the thought came, what does it matter for the little space? The lives of the best and purest of us are consumed in a vain desire, and end in a disappointment: as the dear soul's who sleeps in her grave yonder. ”

“ Get up, Countess, and let us be married; I can keep my word, but I can die afterwards."
"Oh, dear Giglio," cries Gruffanuff, skipping up, "I knew, I knew I could trust thee—I knew that my Prince was the soul of honor. Jump into your carriages, ladies and gentlemen, and let us go to church at once; and as for dying, dear Giglio, no, no:—thou wilt forget that insignificant little chambermaid of a Queen—thou wilt live to be consoled by thy Barbara! She wishes to be a Queen, and not a Queen Dowager, my gracious Lord!" ”

“ I never did look through the keyhole, George. It's a shame you should say so! I, who have watched, and tended, and nursed you, like a mother; who have sate up whole weeks with you in fevers, and carried you from your bed to the sofa in these arms. There, sir, I don't want you there now. My dear Mountain, indeed! Don't tell me! You fly into a passion, and, call names, and wound my feelings, who have loved you like your mother—like your mother?—I only hope she may love you half as well. I say you are all ungrateful. ”

“ Beatrix would scorn it. Ah! Henry, 'tis not with you the fault lies, 'tis with her. I know you both, and love you: need I be ashamed of that love now? No, never, never, and 'tis not you, dear Harry, that is unworthy. 'Tis for my poor Beatrix I tremble—whose headstrong will frightens me; whose jealous temper (they say I was jealous too, but, pray God, I am cured of that sin) and whose vanity no words or prayers of mine can cure—only suffering, only experience, and remorse afterwards. Oh, Henry, she will make no man happy who loves her. ”

“ And the past and its dear histories, and youth and its hopes and passions, and tones and looks for ever echoing in the heart, and present in the memory—these, no doubt, poor Clive saw and heard as he looked across the great gulf of time, and parting, and grief, and beheld the woman he had loved for many years. There she sits; the same, but changed: as gone from him as if she were dead; departed indeed into another sphere, and entered into a kind of death. If there is no love more in yonder heart, it is but a corpse unburied. Strew round it the flowers of youth. ”

“ And the Fairy Blackstick said, ‘Bless you, my darling children! Now you are united and happy; and now you see what I said from the first, that a little misfortune has done you both good. YOU, Giglio, had you been bred in prosperity, would scarcely have learned to read or write—you would have been idle and extravagant, and could not have been a good King as now you will be. You, Rosalba, would have been so flattered, that your little head might have been turned like Angelica’s, who thought herself too good for Giglio.’
‘As if anybody could be good enough for HIM,’ cried Rosalba. ”

“ Who will be open where there is no sympathy, or has call to speak to those who never can understand? Our gentle Amelia was thus solitary. She had no confidante, so to speak, ever since she had anything to confide. She could not tell the old mother her doubts and cares; the would-be sisters seemed every day more strange to her. And she had misgivings and fears which she dared not acknowledge to herself, though she was always secretly brooding over them.
Her heart tried to persist in asserting that George Osborne was worthy and faithful to her, though she knew otherwise. ”

“ If seeing and acknowledging the lies of the world, Arthur, as see them you can with only too fatal a clearness, you submit to them without any protest further than a laugh: if, plunged yourself in easy sensuality, you allow the whole wretched world to pass groaning by you unmoved: if the fight for the truth is taking place, and all men of honour are on the ground armed on the one side or the other, and you alone are to lie on your balcony and smoke your pipe out of the noise and the danger, you had better have died, or never have been at all, than such a sensual coward. ”

“ I know her temper—and now I've lost her, by heaven I love her ten thousand times more than ever I did—yes, when she was as young and as beautiful as an angel—when she smiled at me in her old father's house, and used to lie in wait for me there as I came from hunting—when I used to fling my head down on her little knees and cry like a child on her lap—and swear I would reform, and drink no more and play no more, and follow women no more; when all the men of the Court used to be following her—when she used to look with her child more beautiful, by George, than the Madonna in the Queen's Chapel. ”

“ I'd say, your woes were not less keen, Your hopes more vain than those of men; Your pangs or pleasures of fifteen At forty-five played o'er again. I'd say, we suffer and we strive, Not less nor more as men, than boys; With grizzled beards at forty-five, As erst at twelve in corduroys. And if, in time of sacred youth, We learned at home to love and pray, Pray Heaven that early Love and Truth May never wholly pass away. And in the world, as in the school, I'd say, how fate may change and shift; The prize be sometimes with the fool, The race not always to the swift. ”

“ Are you not awe-stricken, you, friendly reader, who, taking the page up for a moment's light reading, lay it down, perchance, for a graver reflection—to think how you, who have consummated your success or your disaster, may be holding marked station, or a hopeless and nameless place, in the crowds who have passed through how many struggles of defeat, success, crime, remorse, to yourself only known!—who may have loved and grown cold, wept and laughed again, how often!—to think how you are the same, You, whom in childhood you remember, before the voyage of life began? ”

“ Clive. If it is so false, and base, and hollow, this great world—if its aims are so mean, its successes so paltry, the sacrifices it asks of you so degrading, the pleasures it gives you so wearisome, shameful even, why does Ethel Newcome cling to it? Will you be fairer, dear, with any other name than your own? Will you be happier, after a month, at bearing a great title, with a man whom you can’t esteem, tied for ever to you, to be the father of Ethel’s children, and the lord and master of her life and actions? ”

“ Hark, Harry! I speak to you as a man of the world—nay, as an old friend. This appointment humiliates you and others, you say? Be it so! Must we not bear humiliation, along with the other burthens and griefs, for the sake of our country? It is no more just perhaps that the Marquis should be set over you gentlemen, than that your Prince Ferdinand or your Prince of Wales at home should have a command over veterans. But if in appointing this young nobleman we please a whole nation, and bring ourselves twenty millions of allies, will you and other gentlemen sulk because we do him honour? ”

“ Briggs told all her history amidst those perfectly uncalled-for sobs and ejaculations of wonder with which women of her soft nature salute an old acquaintance, or regard a rencontre in the street; for though people meet other people every day, yet some there are who insist upon discovering miracles; and women, even though they have disliked each other, begin to cry when they meet, deploring and remembering the time when they last quarrelled. So, in a word, Briggs told all her history, and Becky gave a narrative of her own life, with her usual artlessness and candour. ”

“ Oh, gentle breast to pity me! Oh, lovely Ladye Emily! Till death—till death I'll think of thee— Of thee and Nora!
TO MARY. I seem, in the midst of the crowd, The lightest of all; My laughter rings cheery and loud, In banquet and ball. My lip hath its smiles and its sneers, For all men to see; But my soul, and my truth, and my tears, Are for thee, are for thee! Around me they flatter and fawn— The young and the old. The fairest are ready to pawn Their hearts for my gold. They sue me—I laugh as I spurn The slaves at my knee ”

“ Bows. The old man followed slowly, his pale face blushing, and his hand trembling somewhat as he took Pen’s. He coughed, and wiped his face in his checked cotton pocket-handkerchief, and sate down with his hands on his knees, the sunshining on his bald head. Pen looked at the homely figure with no small sympathy and kindness. This man, too, has had his griefs and his wounds, Arthur thought. This man, too, has brought his genius and his heart, and laid them at a woman’s feet; where she spurned them. The chance of life has gone against him, and the prize is with that creature yonder. ”