Louise Imogen Guiney

“ To him, the graveyard moss that eats out the charactery of proud names, is a sage commentator on mundane fame; and the humble mound to which genius and virtue have lent their blessed association inspires him with precepts beyond all philosophy. For history is not a clear scroll, but a palimpsest; and he who is versed only in the autography of his contemporaries misses half the opportunity and half the gladness of life.
The habit of providing for personal comfort anticipates an easy couch and a fair prospect for us at the end. ”

“ I recognized the battle-call, the rush of the wings of the morning, the pæan of young ambition in the victor-voice, whose very petition was a conquest, in the irresistible faith and strength of its asking; but the lowly voice sang with unspeakable pathos,-152- in whose every plea the greater grief of rejection was already apprehended. A grateful spirit would fain bestow on the glorious voice an ardent welcome, and on the gentle voice a lingering caress. Both I loved, and unto both my soul hearkened; for they were the voices of angels, and one was Joy, and one was Peace. ”

“ There is no perceptible attempt at ambitious and weakish criticism, but a most felicitous selection and placing of these single lines of letters and conversations that are revelations of the soul and life of the persons under consideration. It is a reversion to charity and truth in literature and life, and as a piece of clean, sweet and clear work is deserving of the highest praise."—Philadelphia Times. ”

“ Out of celestial gardens, in the tender Cappadocian legend, maid Dorothy's angel brought apples to Theophilus; to him, indeed, the fruit of salvation. Yet, having lost the sweet symbolic grace of yore, she comes ever benignly, and without malice. Lavish October's legacy, foretelling to thy fancy other seasons yet to make glad the earth, she, more than any other, is the staunch stand-by, the winter friend. Her native orchards droop lifelessly in snows; but, like a fair deed, she surviveth mortality, a kind and vital influence still. ”

“ THERE survives in certain men a climbing instinct, a persistence, dating from Babel days, which keeps them to the belief that they were meant to be, in Spenser's phrase, "neighbors to the sky." Put them down in a city, and they mount, by choice, as by force of circumstances, oil-like, over the gross mass. These are the garret-dwellers, disburdened, for the most part, of the money-bags of capitalists. Surely, the more a creature is denuded of riches and responsibilities, the lighter his spiritual weight, the fitter he is for nearing the unembarrassed planets. ”

“ The poet lauds a river-bank, and sheds on a grove the starry fascinations of rhetoric; it is none other than Mosquito who induces you to hate and shun what you would fain be persuaded to consider fair. She it is who can make the greenest landscape odious, and the calm haunts of trees vociferous as if all Bedlam were let loose under their outspread arms. She is your best circumnavigator. I cannot picture to my wildest speculations a place where she is not. Nowhere is she an exile, but hath her native bog all over Christendom. She holds her cannibalistic orgies wherever human foot hath trodden. ”

“ A poet tries his morning lay, to a continent's delight, and after years of joy and triumph it shall be revealed to him how the self-same music fell from long-silent lips in a land across the sea. The unaltered radiance of an inspiration streams yesterday on one, to-morrow on another, as moving sunshine visits the hundred panes of a cathedral window; and that elusive thing which we name the originality of any artist resembles little else but the kaleidoscopic newness of color thrown hourly along the aisles. ”

“ Straightway, as fear building on fear, mount my fancies, memories, speculations, till on their topmost pinnacle flashes the saying of the liberal philosophers, that the immortal principle may not be lacking in the "meanest thing that feels;" and my sole, honest, overwhelming impulse is to forswear the pious Sunday-school hope of becoming an angel, that is, a winged creature, lest in any phase of untried being, Mosquito! I should bear affinity to that which thou art. ”

“ It would be a delight to come across one who is sensitive yet on the subject of that Arcadian failure.
When genius seems to work disregarding rule, we may be sure that it has assimilated to itself whatever is best in every rule.
The undertaker ostensibly reverses the venerable truism that "the young may die, the old must," by thrusting forward the smaller coffins in his awful windows, and keeping the others (in the subjunctive mood, as it were) well in the background.
The mind is fearless so long as there is no reproach of conscience. ”

“ Dr. R. had the artistic temperament, being a poet of rare worth. There was always a fine metaphoric haze about his sermons. He was by nature diffident and somewhat listless; the effort of mounting the pulpit stair must have been distasteful to him. His phrasing was of extreme nicety and justness; and he spoke English pure and simple. Yet his "Greek languor," his low, unobtrusive voice, served to veil the excellence of his thoughts. He was shy of any display. His Sunday efforts certainly did not become popular, in the Brentford acceptance of that term. ”

“ It is not the chisel which keeps a memory alive. An inscription is superfluous for him whose deeds are graven in the book of life. Many another, who has but elbowed his way selfishly through the world, is laid under all the figures of rhetoric, and is beholden to nothing better than an obelisk to speak him fair. "To be but pyramidally extant," says Sir Thomas Browne, "is a fallacy in duration." ”

“ Why, it is a disloyalty to mankind. In the eye of Heaven sinlessness is the criterion, not riches or health or intelligence. And he may stand nearer to the Throne than you, because of a more repentant spirit. Why should you despise him? It belongs to you rather to love and aid him. He is a reflection of yourselves, distanced from you by the mean formalities of the world, but fashioned like you without and within, and co-heir of whatever has fallen to your share. What you have been taught through the dignity of manhood and womanhood to think yourselves—that is he. ”

“ Many, many times, but especially at the breaking of the frosts, when sap begins to thrill in the naked boughs, comes the desire to approach her peaceful abiding-place, and learn, by moon or sun, what more of winsomeness or splendor one year hath brought her. What more can it ever bring? For her soul is crystalline and candid, and on her forehead shines perpetual youth. ”

“ The friends of Apple, your sworn familiars, who offend not her sun-mottled exterior with barbaric divisions of the knife, may be known-13- by their ready wit and their bright glances. Hath not the wholesome autumn light, which filtered into the fruit they affect, permeated their moral temperament? They must needs be sound, consolatory, humane, and fit to wrestle with every wind that blows. "Man is that he eats," we read among the bewilderments of German speculation. But of her chaste and subtle cup, rimmed with gold or crimson, as Nature willed, the elect drink invigoration. ”

“ The soft, starlit voice might touch an over-eager soul with calm; to the soul distressed, the strong voice would come like a great noon-tide wind, impelling it towards the height where the sun dwelt, and all the fountains of the day. ”

“ So is that wonderful mental life, so flaming, so easily working itself into words and deeds, so much less removed in subtlety from our common life of common people than was the mental life of almost any other great genius. ”

“ When a soul finds nothing to reverence among its common surroundings, it is blind indeed.
The beauty of youth is inconstant and shifting as the tint at the heart of a rose, not two mornings the same; or the fall of snow-flakes, blown by every wind into new and airy relationships. ”

“ If I have a friend, though absent many years, I hold a true treasure with fear and trembling, knowing that whatever losses come, I have been blessed beyond measure with the wealth no chance can take away.
Love is unlike the bow of Ulysses, in that it can be drawn to its full capacity of magnificence or destruction not only by the greatest. ”

“ Men have lived and died, like motes of the air, hovering about this hoarded preciousness of ages, and forgetful ever of the awakened world, with its exquisite outlook into the future. In the pathetic companionship of books lived Southey, long after their beauty was shut out from him, passing his trembling hand up and down their ranks, and taking comfort in the certainty that they had not forsaken him. ”

“ Carrying his house with him, he leaves no cares at home. He is otium cum dignitate. He is the moral antipode of the ant. He shirks responsibilities, and turns the cold shoulder on labor and fret. Deliberation, calmness of intellect, consciousness of superiority, are in his slow, majestic tread. So that he gets to the place in mind, it is of no possible consequence how long the journey may be. The crystal day is all his own. He is a Nabob, a gentleman of leisure, and considers haste vulgar, and proper only to grasshoppers and miserable sparrows. ”

“ We are stricken mute by an heroic death. Praise is poor and vain if the life forerunning it was heroic too; and if it was not, love and forgiveness seem not half good enough to offer at the ruined shrine, where at last a divinity has descended. ”

“ Then, as in a vision, I beheld a fair prospect before me, and in the centre of its green beauty arose two hills, from whose separate summits the voices ruled perennially, showering blessings, healing sorrow, banishing care, cheering and solacing the earth. Now the weak needed not to rely on the strong ”

“ Not one of the unfortunates is a stranger to such dogmas. A visitor of classrooms, with a proper dash of vinegar in him, knows nevertheless that the tender geometric parrot-prodigy shall scarce be taught some more curious problems: why political bribery is not a state-prison crime, nor oppression of dumb beasts, nor marriage—O tempora!—without love. Therefore the cretin wears his rue with a difference, and is enviable. ”

“ She shows an exact knowledge of the subject, of the literature, times, customs and manners of Maria Edgeworth's day, and a power to sound the true quality and depth of Miss Edgeworth's mental powers. She analyzes critically and well, pointing out defects and good qualities with keen judgment and impartial hand. One feels that Miss Zimmern thoroughly understands what she is writing about. Miss Edgeworth's life is worth the telling, not alone for her literary career, but for her upright and lovely moral character, which is not always combined with literary ability,"—Hartford Times. ”

“ We take in ours, with enthusiastic consciousness, a hand we honor, or a hand that by representation has, perhaps, held cordially that of "the great of old." So chance we to strike, across-27- the gulf of time, into the grasp of Caedmon, the Saxon beginner, or the real Roland of the horn, or Plato, or Alcuin, or him of Salzburg, the sunniest-hearted maker of music. Neither in our speculations can we forget that a Hand not all of earth rested once upon childish heads in Galilee, and passed among vast crowds, forgiving, healing, and doing good ”

“ Of this best sort, too, was the hospitality of Alcinoüs to Ulysses, treating him like a king, and dreaming not of his hidden kingliness. Spanish courtesy yet keeps a show of heart-whole giving: "This is thy house," an Andalusian tells his visitor. An Indian, in his forest wigwam, does yet better. If he abide you at all, with your scalp at its accustomed altitude, he tenders whatsoever he calls his, and would scorn to conceal from you the innermost recesses of his savage larder.
"Is he not hospitable," quaintly asks one of our American essayists, "who entertains thoughts?" ”

“ The life beyond the grave, when the short life in this world is ended, is to many a source of dread—to all a mystery. 'A Little Pilgrim' has apparently solved it, and, indeed, it seems on reading this little book as if there were a great probability about it. ”

“ Halm's illustrations, which are printed in light brown or sepia, are notably fine. The symbolism which the artist employs suggest interpretations without forcing them upon the eye, and is pervaded by a delicate imaginative insight and beauty which delight one the more the longer they are looked at; indeed, we doubt if anything has been done of late in the way of illustration quite so original and beautiful. ”

“ It is heart-rending to make over a used and shaken veteran to the custody of the public, anew. We know well enough that it shall collapse utterly ere we shall have the virtue to borrow it a second time. Or we speculate on an inestimable octavo, readerless on the shelf for scores of years, till our mark is set over against it, and doomed to deeper than Abyssinian solitude when we loosen its clinging hold ”

“ The following must be incessant, the allegiance unabated, lest the Emersonian and gossamer-like sequence of ideas, the swift beauty of phrase and figure, elude you, never to reappear the same. His playfulness in the pulpit was unique. Subdued it was, yet how potent! Humor has many a fit abiding-place in this world, of which the pulpit seems last to be chosen. ”