Nathaniel Parker Willis

“ Martin’s lane, life appears to have become suddenly a struggle and a calamity. Turbulent and dirty women are everywhere visible through the open windows; the half-naked children at the doors look already care-worn and incapable of a smile; and the men throng the gin-shops, bloated, surly, and repulsive. Hurry through this leprous spot in the vast body of London, and let us emerge in the Strand.
You would think London Strand the main artery of the world. I suppose there is no thoroughfare on the face of the earth where the stream of human life runs with a tide so overwhelming. ”

“ Hymettus is rather loftier than the Pentland-hills, and Pentelicus farther off and grander than Arthur’s seat, but the old castle of Edinburgh is a noble and peculiar feature of its own, and soars up against the sky, with its pinnacle-placed turrets, superbly magnificent. The Forth has a high shore on either side, and, with the island of Inchkeith in its broad bosom, it looks more like a lake than an arm of the sea.
It is odd what strange links of acquaintance will develop between people thrown together in the most casual manner, and in the most out-of-the-way places. ”

“ If ever there was a writer who sees things as every one wishes to, and nobody else can—whose eyes penetrate just to the right depth through the skin of human nature, neither too much nor too little—who describes people with an unequalled novelty and just-enough-ness, that is to say, and at the same time, invariably betters the heart of the reader, it is this Swedish authoress. I would rather see her than any woman living whom I have not seen, and I feel very much interested that our country should cherish her, and show her its appreciation of her womanly and yet wonderful genius. ”

“ Still our people last—and though I should define the English climate as the one in which the human frame is in the highest condition, I should say of America, that it is the one in which you could get the most work out of it.
Atmosphere, in England and America, is the first of the necessaries of life. In Italy, it is the first of its luxuries. We breathe in America, and walk abroad, without thinking of these common acts but as a means of arriving at happiness. In Italy, to breathe and to walk abroad are themselves happiness. ”

“ If I may judge by my own experience and by what I can see in the streets, all this night-splendor out of doors empties the playhouses—for I would rather walk Regent street of an evening than see ninety-nine plays in a hundred; and so think apparently multitudes of people, who stroll up and down the clean and broad London sidewalks, gazing in at the gorgeous succession of shop-windows, and by the day-bright glare of the illumination extending nods and smiles—the street, indeed, becoming gradually a fashionable evening promenade, as cheap as it is amusing and delightful. ”

“ Indeed, a possessor of more power, in its most attractive shape, could hardly have been named, in life public or private—for the extent of Lady Blessington’s friendships with distinguished men of every nation, quality, character, rank and creed, was without a parallel. Her friends were carefully chosen—but, once admitted to her intimacy, they never were neglected and never lessened in their attachment to her. She has a circle of mourners, at this moment, in which there is more genius, more distinction, and more sincere sorrowing, than has embalmed a name within the lapse of a century. ”

“ It is early yet for the Park; but the equipages you will see by-and-by “in the ring” are standing now at Howell and James’s, and while the high-bred horses are fretting at the door, and the liveried footmen lean on their gold-headed sticks on the pavement, the fair creature whose slightest nod these trained minions and their fine-limbed animals live to obey, sits upon a three-legged stool within, and in the voice which is a spell upon all hearts, and with eyes to which rank and genius turn like Persians to the sun, discusses with a pert clerk the quality of stockings! ”

“ He is the most beautiful Park horse in England; and behind follows a high-bred milk-white pony, ridden by a small, faultlessly-dressed groom, who sits the spirited and fretting creature as if he anticipated every movement before the fine hoof rose from the ground. He rides admirably, but his master is more of a study. A luxuriance of black curls escapes from the broad rim of a peculiar hat, and forms a relief to the small and sculpture-like profile of a face as perfect, by every rule of beauty, as the Greek Antinous. ”

“ How so much is represented in so small a compass is as puzzling as the miracles of clairvoyance. If one were conjured, bodily, indeed, for five minutes to the ruins of Athens, the next five minutes left lounging in a Moorish palace, then dropped into Switzerland, then held in an angel’s lap high over London—winding up with a wilderness of galleries, aviaries, conservatories, statuary and grottoes—it would, probably, be not a bit more astonishing than a visit to the Colosseum, and, of course, not near so agreeable. ”

“ The boy sat on the shafts, and talked Gaelic to his horse; the mountains and the lake, spread out before us, looked as if human eye had never profaned their solitary beauty, and I enjoyed it all the more, perhaps, that our conversation was of London and its delights; and the racy scandal of the distinguished people of that great Babel amused me in the midst of that which is most unlike it—pure and lovely nature. Everything is seen so much better by contrast! ”

“ It is naturally a most wild and precipitous glen, through which the rapid Esk pursues its way almost in darkness; but, leaving only the steep and rocky shelves leaning over the river with their crown of pines, the successive lords of Dalhousie have cultivated the banks and hills around for a park and a paradise. The smooth gravel walks cross and interweave, the smoother lawns sink and swell with their green bosoms, the stream dashes on murmuring below, and the lofty trees shadow and overhang all. At one extremity of the grounds are a flower and a fruit garden, and beyond it the castle farm ”

“ We are inclined to think his heavy mustache accidentally favors this, by aiding the unexpectedness of the smile, and by leaving its fading glow to the imagination—but, at moments when the lips of another orator would be cloud-wrapt in the darkest expression of solemnity, a gleam, like the breaking away for a transfiguration, comes suddenly over the lips of Kossuth—as beautiful and inspired a smile certainly as was ever seen on the face of a human being—and the effect is in the peculiar triumph that he achieves. Love irresistibly follows conviction. ”

“ The home of Sir Walter Scott would possess an interest to thrill the heart, if it were as well painted to the eye of fancy as the homes of his own heroes.
It is a dreary country about Abbottsford, and the house itself looks from a distance like a small, low castle, buried in stunted trees, on the side of a long, sloping upland or moor. The river is between you and the chateau as you come down to Melrose from the north, and you see the gray towers opposite you from the road at the distance of a mile—the only habitable spot in an almost desolate waste of country. ”

“ I passed the time till the sun set, looking out on the park. Hill and valley lay between my eye and the horizon; sheep fed in picturesque flocks, and small fallow deer grazed near them; the trees were planted, and the distant forest shaped by the hand of taste; and broad and beautiful as was the expanse taken in by the eye, it was evidently one princely possession. A mile from the castle wall, the shaven sward extended in a carpet of velvet softness, as bright as emerald, studded by clumps of shrubbery, like flowers wrought elegantly on tapestry ”

“ If you could imagine a paper-mine, with a very deep cut shaft laid open to the surface of the earth, you might get some idea of Ivy lane. One walks along through its dim subterranean light, with no idea of breathing the proper atmosphere of day and open air. A strong smell of new books in the nostrils, and one long stripe of blue sky much farther off than usual, are the predominant impressions.
From the dens of the publishers, I wormed my way through the crowds of Cheapside and the Strand, toward that part of London, which, as Horace Smith says, is “open at the top.” ”

“ But what a strange thing it is that nobody can write a good book on America! The ridiculous part of it seems to me that men of common sense go there as travellers, and fill their books with scenes such as they may see every day within five minutes’ walk of their own doors, and call them American. Vulgar people are to be found all over the world, and I will match any scene in Hamilton or Mrs. Trollope, any day or night here in Edinburgh. I have always had an idea that I should be the best traveller in America myself. ”

“ They looked about them with undisguised curiosity, ordered a great deal more wine than they wanted (very American, that!) and were totally without the self-complacent, self-amused, sober-felicity air which John Bull assumes after his cheese in a coffee room.
I did not introduce myself to my countrymen, for an American is the last person in the world with whom one should depart from the ordinary rules of society. Having no fixed rank either in their own or a foreign country, they construe all uncommon civility into either a freedom, or a desire to patronise—and the last is the unpardonable sin. ”

“ The more one sees of Jenny Lind, the more one is puzzled as to her countenance. One’s sight, in her presence, does not seem to act with its usual reliable discretion. Like the sinner who “went to scoff and remained to pray,” the eye goes to find her plain, and comes back with a report of her exceeding beauty. The expression, as she animates, positively alters the lines; and there is an expansion of her irregular features to a noble breadth of harmony, at times, which, had Michael Angelo painted her, would have given to Art one of its richest types of female loveliness. ”

“ Countrymen’s carts piled with women and children like loads of market baskets in Kent; post-chaises with exhausted horses and occupants straining their eyes forward for a sight of the castle; carriages of the neighboring gentry with “bodkins” and over-packed dickeys, all in costume; stout farmers on horseback, with plaid and bonnet; gingerbread and ale carts, pony carts, and coal carts; wheelbarrows with baggage, and porters with carpet bags and hat boxes, were mixed up in merry confusion with the most motley throng of pedestrians it has ever been my fortune to join. ”

“ I may add, too, that in this country of care-worn and pale faces, we can as little conceive the effect of an assembly rosy with universal health, habitually unacquainted with care, and abandoned with the apparent child-like simplicity of high breeding, to the inspiring gayety of the hour. The greater contrast, however, is between a nation where health is the first care, and one in which health is never thought of till lost; and light and shade are not more contrasted than the mere general effect of countenance in one and in the other. ”

“ The few weeks of the rainy season are forgotten in these long halcyon months of sunshine. No one can have lived in Italy a year, who remembers anything but the sapphire sky and the kindling and ever-seen stars. You grow insensibly to associate the sunshine and the moonlight only with the fountain you have lived near, or the columns of the temple you have seen from your window, for on no objects in other lands have you seen their light so constant.
I scarce know how to convey, in language, the effect of the climate of Italy on mind and body. ”

“ The sun here triumphs partially over the skirt of London smoke, which sways backward and forward over the chimneys of Park lane, and, as far as it is possible so near the dingy halo of the metropolis, the gay occupants of these varied conveyances “take the air.”
Let us stand by the railing a moment, and see what comes by. This is the field of display for the coachman, who sits upon his sumptuous hammercloth, and takes more pride in his horses than their owner, and considers them, if not like his own honor and blood, very like his own property. ”

“ Observe the nice fitness of the dead-black harness, the modest crest upon the panel, the delicate picking out of white in the wheels, and, if you will venture upon a freedom in manners, look in through the window of rose-teinted glass, and see the splendid cushions and the costly and splendid adaptation of the interior. The twin-mated footmen fly to the carriage-door, and the pomatumed clerk who has enjoyed a tête-à-tête for which a Prince Royal might sigh, and an Ambassador might negociate in vain, hands in his parcel. ”

“ Cheeks and lips of the delicacy and bright teint of carnation, with snowy teeth, and hair and eyebrows of jet, are what we should look for on the palette of Apelles, could we recall the painter, and re-animate his far-famed models; and these varied charms, united, fall very commonly to the share of the fair Milesian of the upper classes. In other lands of dark eyes, the rareness of a fine-grained skin, so necessary to a brunette, makes beauty as rare—but whether it is the damp softness of the climate or the infusion of Saxon blood, a coarse skin is almost never seen in Ireland. ”