Letitia Elizabeth Landon

“ The Cafés of the kind represented in the plate are perhaps the greatest luxury that a stranger finds in Damascus. Gardens, kiosques, fountains, and groves are abundant around every Eastern capital; but Cafés on the very bosom of a rapid river, and bathed by its waves, are peculiar to this ancient city: they are formed so as to exclude the rays of the sun while they admit the breeze. ”

“ Which o’er some scenes are cast.
A softer beauty fills the grove,
A light is in the grass,
A deeper sense of truth and love
Comes o’er us as we pass;
While lingers in the heart one line,
The nameless poet hath a shrine. ”

“ It is not, however, without feelings of the deepest and most heartfelt satisfaction that I recall to your recollection the fact that one man, the most religiously inspired, the most conscientiously influenced of all who laboured in the dawn and the rising of this great and glorious cause—Wilberforce,—still remains, to witness the final consummation of that important triumph to which his last energies were devoted, and to exclaim, like the last of the prophets to whom I have before alluded, ‘Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace.’"—Lord Stanley’s Speech, May 14th, 1833. ”

“ Ah! only love can read within the hidden heart of love.
There came from these white silent lips more eloquence than breath,
The tenderness of childhood—the sanctity of death.
He felt their old familiar love had ties he could not break,
The warrior spared the Moorish town, for that dead maiden’s sake. ”

“ He weareth no gift of a woman’s white hand.
⁠A seal on his lip, and an oath at his heart,
His future a warfare—he knoweth his part.
The visions that haunted his boyhood are o’er,
The young knight of Malta can dream them no more. ”

“ THE DELECTABLE MOUNTAINS.
⁠"Is this the way to the celestial city?
⁠"You are just in the way.
"————They went up the mountains, to behold the gardens and the orchards."
⁠Pilgrim's Progress.
Oh, far away ye are, ye lovely hills,
Yet can I feel the air
Grow sweet while gazing where
The valley with the distant sunshine fills.
Fair Morning! lend thy wings, and let me fly
To thy eternal home,
Where never shadows come,
Where tears are wiped away from every eye. ”

“ Which to some small mind's pretension
Would subdue that song,
⁠Shrined in manhood’s general heart.
One almighty mind—one only,
Could such strain have sung;
Ever be the laurel lonely,
Where such lyre is hung. ”

“ Too real the memories that haunt
The purple shadows round thy brink—
I only asked of thee to dream,
I did not ask to think.
False beauty haunting still my heart,
Tho' long since from that heart removed ”

“ Of great and generous thought there is no dearth,
And highest hopes of late have had their birth,
Hopes for the many, what the few have shared.
The wind that bears our flag from soil to soil,
Teaches us as it flies ”

“ All the guests took some character from the Waverley novels. The deserted city echoed with music; lamps flung their light over walls so long unconscious of festivity. The city of the Dead suited well the festival of the dying. ”

“ Then let our boat, my sweet one!
To yonder shore depart,
When not a sound is louder
Than our own beating heart.
Like a dream beneath the moonlight,
Our fairy float will be;
Let the weary crave the many—
I ask only for thee! ”

“ The grass grows o’er the hearthstone, the fern o’ertops the walls;
And yet those scenes are present, as they were of our age—
Such is the mighty mastery of one enchanted page.
The name of Scott awakens a world within the heart;
The scenes are not more real wherein ourselves have part. ”

“ Sweet comrade of its hours;
The music of the wild wood,
The colour of the flowers;
They do not bring again the dream
That haunted me beside thy stream.
When black-lettered old romances
Made a world for me alone ”

“ But on that kindled brow is wrought
The energy that is of thought,
The sternness and the strength that grow
In the high heart that beats below.
The golden spur is on his heel,
The spur his war-horse does not feel ”

“ Victory is on Marathon.
She cometh with brightened cheek,
She who all day hath wept;
The wife and mother’s tears,
Where her youngest infant slept,
The heart is in her eyes alone,
What careth she for Marathon? ”

“ The smoke is round the housetops slowly wreathing,
Until upgathered in one gloomy cloud,
It rises like the city’s heavy breathing,
Material, dense, the sunshine’s spreading shroud.
Night knows not silence, for that living ocean
Pants night and day with its perpetual flow,
Stirring the unquiet air with restless motion,
From that vast human tide which rolls below. ”

“ She bade from him depart;
Death has no bitterness like life,
Life with a wasted heart.
Proud—beautiful—she boweth down
Beneath one deep despair;
Youth lingers lovely on her cheek,
It only lingers there. ”

“ Conquest and commerce have been the two great principles of civilization. It is only of late years that we have seen the superiority of the sail over the sword. The expedition, whose advantages I have ventured above to prophesy, is in the noblest spirit of enlightened enterprise. We must take with us our knowledge ”

“ Is on the outward world;
It waketh thoughts and feelings
In careless coldness furled.
To love and to admire
Seems natural to the heart;
Life’s small and selfish interests
From such a scene depart. ”

“ And mountain heights of dark grey stone,
Are bright with lichens overgrown.
Thou art too fay-like and too fair
For our more common clouded air.
Beauty such as thine belongs
To a world of dreams and songs ”

“ Be the boarding-axe sharpened, the scimetar bared;
Set the canisters ready, and then bring to me,
For the last of my duties, the powder-room key.
It shall never be lowered, the black flag we bear;
If the sea be denied us, we sweep through the air. ”

“ Look to the past—if present there
Be visible one great despair:
Look to the future—if it give
Nothing which charmeth thee to live.
Then come—the present knows its doom;
Thy heart already is a tomb. ”

“ The future has its hope, the past its deep affection.
The Cemetery of the Smolensko Church is situated about two versts from Petersburgh, on one of the islands on the mouth of the Neva, and less than a quarter of a mile from the gulf of Finland. The curious ceremony represented takes place yearly, when the Russians gather from all parts, to scatter flowers on the graves, and to mourn over the dead, and afterwards proceed to regale themselves with soup, fruit of all kinds, and wine; in many instances spreading their cloths on the very graves over which they had been bitterly mourning. ”

“ And brave us as they go!
There’s no place in English annals
For the triumph of a foe.
Thus spoke the English admiral,
His hand was on his sword;
Hurrah! was the sole answer
From every man on board. ”

“ To the date and orange stall.
Gay voices are around me,
I seem to gladden too;
And a thousand changing objects
Win my wandering eyes anew.
It is pleasant through the city
In a sunny day to roam ”

“ There came a knight in presence there, he named my master’s name,
As he stood betting golden coin upon the royal game.
And on Sir Robert Clifford’s word, they took his sword away,
And William Stanley to the Tower was prisoner sent that day.
God only knows the hearts of men, but ’twas a wondrous thing
My noble master should conspire against the crowned king ”

“ The scene that once was animated by the presence of nearly a million of warlike inhabitants is now buried in the silence of the grave; no living soul appearing, if we occasionally except a soldier going or returning from the fort, or the solitary and motionless figure of an Arab, watching his flocks from the summit of the fragment of some former palace or temple."—Sir G. Temple’s Excursions in the Mediterranean. ”

“ The brilliant theory of a republic has never been reduced to more rational practice than in the history of Holland. Commerce, religious toleration, security of life and property, and universal instruction—these have been the principles of the States from the very first. Liberty can have no securer foundations. ”

“ She called her friends around her, she whispered soft and low,
Like music from a wind-touched lute her languid accents flow.
Again upon her crimson couch she laid her weary head;
They looked upon the dark-eyed maid—they looked upon the dead. ”

“ And men, upon the bed of death,
Met only stranger eyes:
The nurse—and guard, stern, harsh, and wan
Remained, unpitying, by;
They had known so much wretchedness,
They did not fear to die.
Heavily rung the old church bells,
But no one came to prayer:
The weeds were growing in the street,
Silence and Fate were there.
O’er the first grave by which I stood,
Tears fell, and flowers were thrown,
The last grave held six hundred lives,*
And there I stood alone.
⁠* A fact, mentioned to me by a clergyman, Mr. Howe, whose duty enforced residence during the ravages of the Yellow Fever. ”

“ Waking the visionary gleams
Around the colder present cast.
Two worlds there are—one, chill and stern,
Is the external world alone,
Whose lessons all mankind must learn,
Whose troubles all mankind have known. ”

“ Round thee fades the beautiful.
Still thou seekest on though weary,
Seeking still in vain;
Daylight deepens into twilight,
What has been thy gain?
Death and night are closing round,
All that thou hast sought unfound. ”

“ Warlike—yet long years have past
Since they looked on slaughter last.
Never more will that dark wall
Echo with the trumpet’s call,
When the Red Rose and the White
Called their warriors to the fight. ”

“ Whose red banners swept its towers,
Nor of any lovely lady,
Blooming in its former bowers—
Think I now;—but one as lovely,
And more gifted, haunts my line.
In the visions round yon castle
Is no fairer one than thine! ”

“ It is curious to observe how much the aspect of nature has in every country given its aspect to architecture. The colossal proportions of Indian scenery have not more given their likeness to the vast temples of the Hindoos, than our own northern forests have given their own character to the Gothic cathedral. ”

“ A graceful fancy linked with fame,
A flattery—such as poets' are; [1]
Who link with lovely things their praise,
And ask the earth, and ask the sky,
To colour with themselves their lays
And some associate grace supply. ”

“ We know of nothing finer in all history, than their unequal but triumphant struggle with le Grand Monarque. The spirit which animated the young and gallant Prince of Orange, was that of the whole nation. ”

“ Well we know each gallant deed
Done in Ilion's spreading land,—
When, as gods of heaven decreed,
Greece and Troy fought hand to hand.
Whatsoe'er beside is done
In earth’s confines know we well ”

“ Such time is passing o’er our land,
New thoughts arise—new hopes expand,
And man knows in his own strong will
It is his purpose to fulfil:
In the fierce contest of such hour,
How mighty is the leader’s power. ”

“ I frankly confess that I can never write till interested in my subjects. Now, a female writer cannot pretend to even an opinion on the political and public characters of the day. The above incident, on the contrary, belongs to the many who look back with admiration and gratitude to the gifted and the gone. ”

“ Francis, which had for the last three hundred years stood under a banyan tree, close by the great Hindoo temple. Not one of the innumerable devotees who resort thither on pilgrimages had ever molested the shrine of another faith. ”

“ Surely, the matter cannot be allowed to merge in that selfish carelessness with which we are too apt to regard the sufferings of others. Political enlightenment has yet many steps to make, while justice and vengeance are synonymous terms. ”

“ A friend told me that he found him once in the greatest agitation, looking for a despatch which he had mislaid, one of the royal family was waiting for it:—he had delayed the search to the last moment ”

“ All is nothingness below.
"The small dome in the centre belongs to the lesser set of cisterns; on the left are the ruins of a palace or church; and on the extreme left the remains of an ancient edifice, on which now stands Burj Sidi Boo-Saeed, or Fort St. ”