Felicia Skene

“ Elizabeth's sorrow for the absence of her sister she considered a most childish and ridiculous weakness. Her grief for her father's loss, after the period of her mourning had expired, was positively improper, as being contrary to all laws of etiquette.
Mrs. Hardman could not compassionate the follies which circumstances had given her no temptation to commit, and she would have spurned a penitent from her feet with as little pity as though she was never to stand one day in fearful need of mercy herself. Let no one think that the evil of his own soul is to injure himself alone. ”

“ Before, however, they could even reach the door, it burst open, and Agnes flew into the room breathless with an overwhelming joy, and flung herself half-sobbing half-laughing into her sister's arms. For a moment neither spoke; the orphans, who had so long been all in all to each other, were together once more, and their happiness was too great for utterance. When at length Agnes disengaged herself from her sister's embrace, Elizabeth almost started in astonishment at the change which an interval of nearly two years had made upon her. ”

“ In the solitude which is filled with earth's loveliness alone, he seems to lose the sentiment of individuality, and the sting is taken from all personal sorrows; he finds himself suddenly in blessed companionship with the glorious stars, and the fragrant flowers, and the waving trees; and these all seem to call out to him, saying, "Be not dismayed, though thou art sad at heart and lonely; behold, we are the creatures of thy God, and thou mayest read in our beauty of His goodness and loving-kindness." ”

“ The first gleam of sunshine which penetrated into Elizabeth's most cheerless existence was an event which took place about a year after her father's death. One of Mr. Hardman's children became so seriously unwell, that change of air was pronounced necessary, and the family went to spend the summer in the country. Elizabeth had passed her whole existence in London, where the natural and moral atmosphere are both alike so foul and clouded. The fresh pure air, the bright green fields, the quiet woods, were all therefore so many sources of delight to her.
Man has a strange sympathy with nature. ”

“ But the moment when this fair English church is seen to most advantage is at the setting of the sun, when a gush of golden light flows through it from the west, like a path for the angels desiring to enter there; and brightens with a warm glow the stained glass of the rich east window, whilst through the low arch of the open doorway, the evening star may be seen going up into heaven, there to shine with its pure pale light, like a silver lamp burning before the shrine of the Eternal. ”

“ For her, whose gaze was yet too dim to discern the glory of that Love, to gain one hour of which an eternity of earthly care and tenderness might well be battered, it was in truth a bitter thing to dwell in so chilling an atmosphere. ”

“ At night, when the moon is high, there is one broad flat tombstone all wet with the evening dew, on which its pure rays gleam with extraordinary brightness while the rest are left in shadow, as though it would prove how even the grave can be made radiant by a light from heaven. ”

“ There are rich pasture lands, soft and undulating as the green hunting-fields of the Indian's Paradise; thick shadowy woods, where the sunshine glances like hope on the soul, and the singing-birds make merry with the long summer day ”

“ Clayton would indeed have preferred that the life-long companion of his son should have been a more decided servant of the cross; but Elizabeth seemed humble-minded and docile, well disposed to profit by the instructions he would now have an opportunity of giving her; and he trusted that she was one whose soul could not long remain in exile from the only source of life and joy which can satisfy our immortality. He trusted much to her influence with Richard, should she indeed become what he hoped ”

“ The village itself, although a portion of it is disfigured by the public house, dissenting chapel, and one or two houses of unseemly pretension, is singularly picturesque; little thatched dwellings nestling among the ivy, inhabited, as the prettiest cottages always are, by withered old women most quaint and simple ”

“ She little knew how frail and uncertain was that good on which she had staked the whole hopes of her existence, that should have rested rather on that sure Foundation, whereon if a man do build, his work shall abide. ”