Sir Jonah Barrington

“ While on their visit at my house, I perceived, in Hartpole’s disposition, among other traits which so close a communion could scarcely fail to develope, one which I had never before suspected in him, and calculated to prove the certain and permanent source of unhappiness. Jealousy is of all others the most terrible of human passions. When once it fixes its roots in a hasty, sanguine nature, it becomes master of every action and every word; and reason, justice, and humanity, all fly before it! When it pervades a less ardent spirit, impetuosity is bridled ”

“ Hartpole’s presence of mind entirely forsook him; he retraced his steps, and found Mary lying, as it should seem, quite senseless, in the arms of Honor: his heart relented; his evil genius profited by the advantage; and he assisted to restore her. Gradually Mary’s eyes opened; she regarded George wildly but intently, and having caught his eye, closed hers again—a languid, and, as it were, an involuntary pressure of his hand, conveying to him her sensations. ”

“ We should have recollected Paoli before we reproached him for being a Corsican, and we should have recurred to our own annals and our great King William, who dethroned his father, before we called Napoleon a usurper. He mounted a throne which had long been vacant; the decapitation of Louis, in which he could have had no concern, had completely overwhelmed the dynasty of Bourbon, and Napoleon in a day re-established that monarchical form of government which we had, with so much expense of blood and treasure, been for many years unsuccessfully attempting to restore. ”

“ It had reached Issy, and seemed approaching. I now perceived a great many gendarmes singly, and in profound silence, strolling about the boulevard, and remarking (though without seeming to notice) every thing and every body.
I had no mode of accounting for the fortitude and indifference of so many females, but by supposing that a great proportion of them might have been themselves campaigning with their husbands or their chers-amis—a circumstance that, I was told, had been by no means uncommon during the wars of the revolution and of Napoleon. ”

“ One short period is the true Paradise of mortals, that delicious dream of life, when age is too far distant to be seen, and childhood fast receding from our vision!—when Nature pauses briefly between refinement and sensuality—first imparting to our wondering senses what we are and what we shall be, before she consigns us to the dangerous guardianship of chance and of our passions!
That is the crisis when lasting traits of character begin to bud and blossom, and acquire sap ”

“ Over such a person as Hartpole, the victory of Miss Otway’s beauty was complete; and the result of that unfortunate passion convinces me that a man (unless his judgment be superior to his sensibility) cannot commit an act of greater folly than to encourage an attachment to any woman whom he thinks every body else must admire as well as himself. George at first was inclined to resist his passion, but he did not fly from the cause of it, and he therefore fell a victim to romantic love as he had before done to romantic gratitude. ”

“ I therefore knew him intimately, and he entrusted me with his passion. (Miss Francis’s mother was then alive, and sedulously attended her.) Wild and thoughtless myself, I told him, if he could win the young lady, to marry her; adding, that no doubt Fortune must smile, whether she chose or not, on so disinterested a union; he being no beauty himself, and having no chance of getting a moneyed wife by his attractions, as young ladies seldom fall in love with the unsophisticated goodness of a lover: an ordinary picture without either frame or gilding is seldom seen in a fashionable drawing-room. ”

“ Paris found out the weak point of Achilles, and finished him: but Mars is immortal; and though Diomed knocked him down, neither his carcase nor character is a jot the worse. Besides, though Achilles killed Hector, it certainly was not Lord Wellington who killed Buonaparte.
A remark of mine which, though of no value, is however rather a curious one, I cannot omit—namely, that every man who has been in the habit of scribbling rhyme of any description, involuntarily betrays his age and decline by the nature of his composition. ”

“ No pick-pockets were heard of; no disputes of any description arose; the very lowest orders of the French canaille appear on such occasions cleanly dressed, and their very nature renders them polite and courteous to each other. They make way with respect for any woman, even from a duchess to a beggar; and it is a very paradise for old ladies, who are just as politely treated as young ones.
At night, stretching across the whole of the Place Louis Quinze, was a transparent painting of Napoleon’s return from Elba, the mimic ship being of equal dimensions with the real one. ”

“ As men become stricken in years, a species of venerable insipidity insinuates itself among their feelings. A great proportion of mine had turned sour by long keeping, and I set out on my travels without one quarter of the good-nature which I had possessed thirty years before. My palate was admirably disposed at the time to feast upon novelties, of which I had made up my mind to take a full meal, and thought I should be all the better prepared by a few months of salubrious air and rural tranquillity. ”

“ Nature, indeed, seemed to have created her solely for the blandishments of affection; and her whole form appeared susceptible of being dissolved in love.
In a word, at twenty, Myrtle Yates was wholly irresistible; not a youth of her country, who had a heart, could boast of its insensibility; and perhaps she owed to the bewildering number of those admirers the good fortune of not devoting herself to any of them.
Yet Hartpole’s attachment to Myrtle Yates was neither deep nor lasting. He considered her too attractive—perhaps too yielding ”

“ Nothing, in fact, is better calculated to influence the conduct of society, than the biography of those whose career has been conspicuously marked either by eminent virtues or peculiar events. The instance of George Hartpole may serve to prove, were proof wanting, that matrimony, as it is the most irrevocable, so is it the most precarious step in the life of mortals; and that sensations of presentiment and foreboding (as I have already more than once maintained) are not always visionary. ”

“ No part of this world, I believe, combines corporeal and intellectual luxuries to an equal extent with Paris; and I am sure no place can afford them on such easy terms. There is a variety for the eye, the mind, and the palate quite inexhaustible, and within the reach of all purses.—However, no persons but those some time resident in the metropolis of France can even imagine its conveniences or its pleasures, and their cheapness: nor can there be any city where strangers are more kindly used, or more sedulously protected. ”

“ The recollection of one early incident of our lives never fails to introduce another; and the marked occurrences of my life from childhood to the wrong side of a grand climacteric are at this moment fresh in my memory, in all their natural tints, as at the instant of their occurrence.
Without awarding any extraordinary merit either to the brain, or to those human organs generally regarded as the seat of recollection, or rather retention of ideas, I think this fact may be accounted for in a much simpler way—more on philosophical than on organic principles. ”

“ The judge does justice to other people, and the bishop does justice to himself; but both are equally ignorant of the mysteries of futurity, and must alike wait until they pass the dim boundary of this world before they can gain any practical information as to the next. When a military captain is ordained a clergyman, (as is somewhat the fashion during the peace establishment,) does he become one atom wiser or more knowing as to futurity than when he was in the army?—probably, on the other hand, he thinks much less about the matter than when standing upon the field of battle. ”

“ Indeed, it could have no resting-place; for, in this point of view, Maria was blameless. But in the eye of my friend she had guilt—the guilt of being attractive. He conceived that every body must love her as he did himself, and fancied that a female universally admired could not be universally ungrateful.
This melancholy and morbid state of mind appeared to me likely to increase from residence in a metropolis, and I hastened his departure for Shrewl Castle, to take upon himself the office of high sheriff. ”

“ This intimacy at Mount Kennedy gave rise to an occurrence the most extraordinary and inexplicable of my whole existence—an occurrence which for many years occupied my thoughts, and wrought on my imagination. Lord Rossmore was far advanced in years, but I never heard of his having had a single day’s indisposition. He bore, in his old age, the appearance of robust health. During the viceroyalty of Earl Hardwick Lady Barrington, at a drawing-room at Dublin Castle, met Lord Rossmore. ”

“ I had been in this nobleman’s office on my first arrival in Paris, had marked his countenance, and have already given my judgment of him. He had originally been a monk, (I believe a Jesuit,) and was on all hands admitted to be a man of the utmost talent, but at the same time without moral principle;—a man who, in order to attain his ends, would disregard justice, and set opinion at insolent defiance. But, above all, Fouché’s reigning character was duplicity: in that qualification of a statesman he had no rival. Napoleon knew him thoroughly ”

“ It is a struggle that cannot continue. There is a “tide” in the affairs of empires as well as of individuals: every fever has a crisis. Ireland is in one now. I am no factionist, I am no fanatic: I am the partisan only of tranquillity in the country where I drew my first breath.
I learn from Ireland with great pleasure—indeed, I read of general satisfaction being experienced at one of the ablest lawyers and most decisive, moderate, and unbiassed public functionaries of England having been presented as a head to my profession:—’tis a good beginning:—ça ira! ”

“ It must have been remarked by every person who has observed the habits and manners of provincial towns, that the distinctions of society are frequently suspended by the necessary familiarities of a contracted circle, and that inferior females frequently excite (especially among youthful military) sensations of tenderness which in a metropolis would never have been thought of—at least in the same point of view. And here the evil genius of Hartpole first commenced her incantations for his ruin. ”

“ He said this was always their ancient mode when they had the honour of a société distingué; and we were obliged to humour him. He was delighted; and then, assuming a more serious air,—“But,” said he, “I have a very particular reason for inviting you to my cottage: it is to have the honour of introducing you to a lady who, old as I am, has consented to marry me the ensuing spring. I know,” added he, “that I shall be happier in her society than in that of any other person; and, at my time of life, we want somebody interested in rendering our limited existence as comfortable as possible.” ”

“ Nobody can deny the miraculous labour which that work must have required: yet now, when enthusiasm has somewhat abated, and no danger exists of being clapper-clawed by the Doctor himself, some ungrateful English grammarians have presumed to assert that, under the gaberdine of so great an authority, any body is lawfully entitled to coin any English word he chooses out of any foreign language he thinks proper; and that we may thus tune up our vocabulary to the key of a lingua franca, an assemblage of all tongues, sounds, and idioms, dead or living. ”

“ The French singing however is execrable; their tragedy rant; but their prose comedy nature itself!
In short, the French beyond doubt exceed all other people in the world with regard to theatrical matters: and as every man, woman, and child in Paris is equally attached to spectacle, every house is full, every company encouraged,—all tastes find some gratification. An Englishman can scarcely quit a Parisian theatre without having seen himself or some of his acquaintances characteristically and capitally represented: the Anglais supply certainly an inexhaustible source of French mimicry ”

“ The first Sunday after the receipt of our permission we repaired to the emperor’s chapel, to see that wonderful man, and to hear mass chanted in the first style of church music. Napoleon had already entered: the chapel was full; but we got seats very low down, near the gallery in which the emperor sat; and as he frequently leaned over the front, I had opportunities of partially seeing him. In the presence of so celebrated a man as Bonaparte, all other things sank into comparative insignificance, and the attention of the spectator was wholly absorbed by the one great object. ”

“ My first return to parliament, in the year 1790, for the city of Tuam, was altogether at my own expense. I had before stood a contested election for Ballynakill, formerly my father’s borough. I was under no tie nor obligation to the government: I had not then, nor have I ever had, any patron; I never, in fact, solicited patronage: I never submitted to the dictation of any man in my life: my connexion with government therefore was my own choice, and the consequent support I gave to Lord Westmoreland’s administration of my own freewill. ”