Susanna Moodie

“ She lay kicking and foaming, and uttering words too dreadful for human ears to listen to; and Grace Marks came out from her hiding-place, and performed a thousand mad gambols round her: and we turned from the piteous scene,--and I, for one, fervently thanked God for my sanity, and inwardly repeated those exquisite lines of the peasant bard of my native county:
"Oh, Thou, who bidd'st the vernal juices rise,
Thou on whose blast autumnal foliage flies;
Let peace ne'er leave me, nor my heart grow cold,
Whilst life and sanity are mine to hold." ”

“ The night had been one of pouring rain, and the day dawned through a thick veil of misty clouds, on the morning of which we were to start from Toronto to visit the Falls of Niagara.
"It is always so," I thought, as I tried to peer through the dense mist that floated round the spire of St. George's church, in order to read what promise there might lurk behind its gray folds of a fine day. "What we most wish for is, for some wise purpose inscrutable to our narrow vision, generally withheld. But it may clear up after all. At all events, we must bide the chance and make the experiment." ”

“ It does not present such an imposing appearance from the water as Kingston, but it strikes you instantly as a place of far greater magnitude and importance. There is a fresh, growing, healthy vitality about this place, that cannot fail to impress a stranger very forcibly the first time he enters it. He feels instinctively that he sees before him the strong throbbing heart of this gigantic young country, and that every powerful vibration from this ever increasing centre of wealth and civilisation, infuses life and vigour through the whole length and breadth of the province. ”

“ A vast country lies stretched beneath your feet, and you look down upon an immense forest, whose tree-tops, moved by the wind, cause it to undulate like a green ocean. From this spot you may trace the four windings of the bay, to its junction with the blue waters of the Ontario. The last time I gazed from the top of this hill a thunder-storm was frowning over the woods, and the dense black clouds gave an awful grandeur to the noble picture.
The village of Rawdon lies on the other side of this table land, quite in a valley. ”

“ Let Canada still remain the bright future in your mind, and hasten to convert your present day-dream into reality. The time is not far distant when she shall be the theme of many tongues, and the old nations of the world will speak of her progress with respect and admiration. Her infancy is past, she begins to feel her feet, to know her own strength, and see her way clearly through the wilderness. Child as you may deem her, she has already battled bravely for her own rights, and obtained the management of her own affairs. ”

“ One side of the churchyard is skirted by a natural grove of forest trees, which separates it from the parsonage, a neat white building that fronts the water, and stands back from it at the head of a noble sweep of land covered with velvet turf, and resembling greatly a gentleman's park at home, by the fine groups of stately forest trees scattered over it, and a semicircular belt of the original forest, that, sloping from the house on either side, extends its wings until it meets the blue waters of the bay, leaving between its green arms a broad space of cleared land. ”

“ Invest sleep, however, with the same dismal garb; let your bed be a coffin, your canopy a pall, your night-dress a shroud; let the sobs of mourners, and the tolling of bells lull you to repose,--and few persons would willingly, or tranquilly, close their eyes to sleep.
And then, this absurd fashion of wearing black for months and years for the dead; let us calmly consider the philosophy of the thing, its use and abuse. Does it confer any benefit on the dead? Does it afford any consolation to the living? Morally or physically, does it produce the least good? ”

“ You cannot read the works of these humane men, because they bid you to step with them into these dirty abodes of guilt and wretchedness, and see what crime really is, and all the horrors that ignorance and poverty, and a want of self-respect, never fail to bring about. You cannot enter into these abodes of your neglected and starving brothers and sisters--these forlorn scions of a common stock--and view their cold hearths and unfurnished tables, their beds of straw and tattered garments, without defilement--or witness their days of unremitting toil, and nights of unrest ”

“ I have often imagined a hundred years to have passed away, and the lovely sloping banks of the Bay of Quinte, crowned with rural villages and stately parks and houses, stretching down to these fair waters. What a scene of fertility and beauty rises before my mental vision! My heart swells, and I feel proud that I belong to a race who, in every portion of the globe in which they have planted a colony, have proved themselves worthy to be the sires of a great nation. ”

“ And after all this fuss, and hurry, and confusion, the poor mad old king disappointed the speculators in sables, and lived on in darkness and mental aberration for two whole years. The mourning of some on that occasion was real, not imaginary. The sorrow with them was not for the kings' death, but that he had not died. On these public occasions of grief, great is the stir and bustle in economical families, who wish to show a decent concern for the death of the monarch, but who do not exactly like to go to the expense of buying new clothes for such a short period as a court mourning. ”

“ Of a bright summer evening (and when is a Canadian summer evening otherwise?) those plains swarm with happy, healthy children, who assemble there to pursue their gambols beyond the heat and dust of the town; or to watch with eager eyes the young men of the place engaged in the manly old English game of cricket, with whom it is, in their harmless boasting, "Belleville against Toronto-Cobourg; Kingston, the whole world." ”

“ Flowers--those precious gifts of God--do not delight in darkness and shade, and this is one great reason why they are so scarce in the woods. I saw more beautiful blossoms waving above the Niagara river, from every crevice in its rocky banks, than I over beheld during my long residence in the bush. These lovely children of light seem peculiarly to rejoice in their near vicinity to water, the open space allowed to the wide rivers affording them the air and sunshine denied to them in the close atmosphere of the dense woods. ”

“ To judge Canada by the same standard, she appears to be a giant for her years, and well worthy the most serious contemplation. Many are the weary, overtasked minds in that great, wealthy, and powerful England, that turn towards this flourishing colony their anxious thoughts, and would willingly exchange the golden prime of the mother country for the healthy, vigorous young strength of this, her stalwart child, and consider themselves only too happy in securing a home upon these free and fertile shores. ”

“ This is to allow the pious Catholic time for crossing himself and saying a short prayer.
How much of the ideal mingles with this worship! No wonder that the Irish, who are such an imaginative people, should cling to it with such veneration. Would any other creed suit them as well? It is a solemn thing to step into their churches, and witness the intensity of their devotions. Reason never raises a doubt to shake the oneness of their faith. They receive it on the credit of their priests, and their credulity is as boundless as their ignorance. ”

“ True grief has no need of such miserable provocatives to woe.
The barbarians who cut and disfigured their faces for the dead, showed a noble contempt of the world, by destroying those personal attractions which the loss of the beloved had taught them to despise. But who now would have the fortitude and self-denial to imitate such an example? The mourners in crape, and silk, and French merino, would rather die themselves than sacrifice their beauty at the shrine of such a monstrous sorrow. ”

“ Old age is selfish, and Saunders obstinately refused to comply with their wishes. The grave that held the remains of his wife and son, was dearer to him than all the comforts promised to him by the impatient lovers in that far foreign land. Jeanie wept, but Saunders, deaf and blind, neither heard nor saw her grief, and like a dutiful child she breathed no complaint to him, but promised to remain with him until his head rested on the same pillow with the dead. ”

“ Vice may have her admirers when she glitters in gold and scarlet; but when exposed in filth and nakedness, her most reckless devotees shrink back from her in disgust and horror. Vice, without her mask, is a spectacle too appalling for humanity; it exhibits the hideousness, and breathes of the corruption of hell.
If these reprobated works of fiction can startle the rich into a painful consciousness of the wants and agonies of the poor, and make them, in spite of all the conventional laws of society, acknowledge their kindred humanity, who shall say that their books have been written in vain? ”

“ That the welfare of the most humble should be as dear to the country to which he belongs as the best educated and the most wealthy, seems but reasonable to a reflective mind, who looks upon man as a responsible and immortal creature; but, that perfect equality can exist in a world where the labour of man is required to procure the common necessaries of life--where the industry of one will create wealth, and the sloth of another induce poverty--we cannot believe. ”

“ I would rather be out on the bay, in a gale of wind in a small boat, than overtaken by a snow storm on its frozen highways. Still it is a pleasant sight of a bright, glowing, winter day, when the landscape glitters like a world composed of crystals, to watch the handsome sleighs, filled with well-dressed men and women, and drawn by spirited horses, dashing in all directions over this brilliant field of dazzling white. ”

“ With what a mournful dignity it invests our fallen nature! Sin has marred the Divine image in which we were made, but the soul in its intense longing after God and good bears, in its sorrowful servitude to evil, the impress of the hand that formed it happy and free. Yes, even in the most abject and fallen, some slight trace of good remains--some spark of the Divine essence that still lingers amid the darkness and corruption of guilt, to rekindle the dying embers, and restore them once more to life and liberty. ”

“ Let poverty and bigotry do their utmost to keep such spirits, while living, in the shades of obscurity, death, the great equalizer, always restores to its possessors the rights of mind, and bids them triumph for ever over the low prejudices of their fellow-men, who, when reading the works of Burns, or gazing on the paintings of Raphael, reproach them with the lowliness of their origin; yea, the proudest who have taste to appreciate their glorious creations, rejoice that genius could thus triumph over temporary obstacles. ”

“ Toronto exceeded the most sanguine expectations that I had formed of it at a distance, and enabled me to realize distinctly the rising greatness and rapid improvement of the colony. It is only here that you can form any just estimate of what she now is, and what at no very distant period she must be.
The country, for some miles round the city, appears to the eye as flat as a floor; the rise, though very gradual, is, I am told, considerable; and the land is sufficiently elevated above the lake to escape the disagreeable character of being low and swampy. ”

“ You can scarcely adopt a better plan of judging of the wealth and prosperity of a town, than by watching, of a Sabbath morning, the congregations of the different denominations going to church. Belleville weekly presents to the eye of an observing spectator a large body of well-dressed, happy-looking people,--robust, healthy, independent-looking men, and well-formed, handsome women;--an air of content and comfort resting upon their comely faces,--no look of haggard care and pinching want marring the quiet solemnity of the scene. ”