Marcus Clarke

“ The fire behind the boulder, fed fast by the gigantic shadows, shot high up into the night its threefold flame. I turned, and lo! The moon, mounted to her zenith, flung down the hill I had left the triple shadow of the three altars! The murmurous prelude to the hymn already began to tremble over the valley, and the multitude, pressing nearer to the sacrificial fire, carried me along with them. ”

“ How often weary and hot with folly or with toil, had not that magnificent moon swum up into heaven to soothe and comfort me. Here, then, was Atlantis, here the Fortunate Isles, the Valley of Avilion, the true El Dorado--the wondrous Land of Might-have-been! ”

“ Wallaby could shoot or snare any living creature that bred, and boasted that he knew every mountain-path, track, and gully between White Swamp and Mount Dreadful. So mighty was the prowess of his gun, that men from the stations round about, spending a barren day stalking the scrub, would aver that Wallaby had discovered the track which led to that legendary Land of Plenty existing on the inaccessible summit of the ranges, and was wont to withdraw from his kind to hunt there.
There is an indescribable ghastliness about the mountain bush at night which has affected most imaginative people. ”

“ The little open flats encircled by boulders which seem the forgotten altars of some unholy worship. The white, bare, and ghastly gums gleaming momentarily amid the deeper shades of the forest. The lonely pools begirt with shivering reeds, and haunted by the melancholy bittern only. The rifted and draggled creek-bed, which seems violently gouged out of the lacerated earth by some savage convulsion of nature; the silent and solitary places where a few blasted trees crouch together like withered witches, who, brooding on some deed of blood, have suddenly been stricken horror-stiff. ”

“ Perhaps from the glare and smoke of the torches my brain had become stupified, or my vision impaired, but it seemed to me that the persons who surrounded me were of all nations and colours. Mulattoes, Blacks, Chinese, Yellow men, and Red men, all the barbaric nations of the South came hurrying onwards: walking, riding, crawling--old men, women, and cripples--as they swarmed along the mighty mountain-side like travelling ants. ”

“ It had been in old times the camping-place of the blacks, and upon the largest of the three gigantic stones, which disposed in the form of triangle, seemed to point to the triple peaks of the triform mountain, human sacrifices had been held, and horrible banquets celebrated. The earth, pawed by my impatient horse, was black and rich--strangely black and rich when compared with the surrounding soil, and the three enormous trees that overshadowed the three alter-stones seemed to own roots fed with fat food, so vigorously had they upsprung from out the rock. ”

“ It was evident that some settler, more adventurous than his neighbours, had penetrated the mysteries of the mountain, and had set up his abode in this fertile and charming valley. Wallaby Dick had indeed discovered a pleasant place in which to spend his holidays! Descending the track, which soon widened into a broad and well-kept road, I pulled the hanging handle of a bell which was suspended from a lofty wooden gateway before a huge and nail-studded door. ”

“ I shall soon be as famous as you."
"As I. You jest. A poor devil banished to Bush Land, tied neck and heels in debt, soon slips out of the memory even of his friends."
"So you persist in that dream out Australia! Surely you know that the fortune was recovered, and that your year of poverty but served to correct your boyish extravagances, and that in easy circumstances you banished Poins and Pistol, and settled down to the career you chose!"
"Gerard, you are laughing at me!"
"Come into your house, then, and be convinced," said Gerard. ”

“ Riding through this nightmare landscape, a whirr of wings, and a harsh cry disturb you from time to time, hideous and mocking laughter peals above and about you, and huge grey ghosts with little red eyes hop away in gigantic but noiseless bounds. ”

“ Passing by an old house which stood back from the others in the terrace, my attention was caught by a crimson scarf trailing from one of the upper windows. "An artist lives there," was my first thought, for nowhere in the world but in the pictures of Prout do we see bits of colour floating about in that fashion. "Yes, you are right," said a young man emerging from the well-dressed crowed which throngs in spring the steps of the Academy.
It was Gerard! Gerard, my boy friend, who fled from Oxford to Stonyhurst, and embraced the discipline of Loyola. ”

“ Those savage priests, those leaping warriors, might be administering a right primeval, recalling in their wild dances the mystic worship of Egypt, and completing, in their ignorance, the magnificent allegory of that ancient Faith, which, through all the world's history, remains still the hope of thousands. ”

“ She who forever waits and forever eludes our passionate arms. Dante called her Beatrice, Petrarch Laura, Burns knew her as Mary, Byron as----but why multiply names? She is for all of us, the impossible woman. ”

“ It is lucky that your income is not sufficiently large to suffer you to indulge a taste for pictures. You had better put down your yacht, and buy my 'Death of Cromwell.'"
"No, no," said I, dreamily, accepting this novel position; "I always had a taste for yachting;--but come in and let us converse."
"You dine with Carabas to-night, remember," said Gerard; "Ballhazar Claes and Byles Gridley wil be there. I know you affect to dislike dinners, but the marchioness is a good soul, and you must not disappoint her." ”

“ Prosperous and well-dined merchant, musing with your fond children round your knees, and your faithful wife smiling cheerily at the end of the table? You love your wife and children, but, but--was there not--is there not--an ideal somewhere in your heart, albeit shut up and locked down, and the Family Bible laid at the top of it? Yes, she exists ”