“ In the death-like stillness of the church, the visitor who, for the first time, contemplates this tomb and its gloomy guard, is struck by a feeling of awe, approaching to terror. The statues, with life-like individuality of attitude and expression—each solemn, mournful, dignified, and graceful; and all seeming to dilate before the eye into enormous dimensions, and, as if framed to scare intruders, endowed by [Pg 591] a power more than mortal, to keep watch and ward round the mighty dead. ”

“ No spot in the world—neither the Parisian Boulevards, nor our own Regent-street—can boast of such an accumulation of valuable wares from afar, as the great bazaar at Constantinople. Hundreds and thousands of miles of rocky road and sandy desert have been traversed by the moaning camels who have carried those silks and precious stones from Persia, with the caravan. From the wild regions of the mysterious central Africa, that ivory, so cunningly worked, in the next row, has been brought—the coal-black people only know how—until the Nile floated it down to Lower Egypt. ”

“ What is odd or quaint, strange or startling, rarely possesses much claim to the picturesque and refined. Scrape the rust off an antique coin, and, while you make it look more shining, you invariably render it worthless in the eyes of a collector. To polish up a fact which derives its value either from the strangeness of its nature, or from the quaintness of its narration, is like the obliterating process of scrubbing up a painting by one of the old masters. ”

“ The evening that they have got some new heads, the warriors dance with delight,—their heads dangling by their sides;—and they turn round in the dance, and gaze upon their heads,—and shout,—and yell with triumph! At night they still keep the heads near them; and in the day they play with them, as children with their dolls, talking to them, putting food in their mouths, and the betel-nut between their ghastly lips. After wearing the heads many days, they hang them up to the ceilings of their rooms. ”

“ When the sun is in the right position, the rainbows play about the fall like the glancing of supernatural wings, as if angels were taking a shower-bath. If you have "the head and the legs of a chamois," you may climb entirely above this magnificent scene, and look out over the cliff right down into the point where the cataract shoots like the lightning, to be again shot back in ten thousand branching jets of diamonds. ”

“ It may be that London will share the fate of Babylon, and nothing be left, to mark it, save mounds of crumbling brickwork. The Thames will continue to flow as it does now. And if any work of art should rise over the deep ocean, time, we [Pg 648] may well believe, that it will be neither a palace nor a temple, but some vast aqueduct or reservoir; and if any name should flash through the mist or antiquity, it would probably be that of the man, who in his day, sought the happiness of his fellow men, rather than glory, and linked his memory to some great work of national utility or benevolence. ”

“ THE TEMPLE OF POU-TOU.
Pou-tou is an island of the great archipelago of Chusan, on the coasts of the province of Tche-kiang. More than 100 monasteries, more or less important, and two of which were founded by Emperors, are scattered over the sides of the mountains and valleys of this picturesque and enchanting island, which nature and art have combined to adorn with their utmost magnificence. All over it you find delightful gardens, full of beautiful flowers,—grottoes cut in the living rock, amidst groves of bamboo and other trees, with aromatic banks. ”

“ Her jewels were both numerous and curious: the head ornaments resembling a white lion with a fly on his side, a golden fern-branch with a lizard, ladybird, and a snail upon it, an Irish dart of gold set with diamonds, a golden rose with a fly and spider upon it, a golden frog set with jewels, a golden daisy, and emerald buttons, gown studs of rubies and pearls, and a chain of golden scallop shells, with chains of agate and jet. A sumptuous magnificence was the characteristic of the costume of this reign. ”

“ Then those soft Cashmere shawls have made a long and treacherous journey to Trebizond, whence the fleet barks of the cold and stormy Euxine at last [Pg 615] brought them up the fairy Bosphorus to the very water's edge of the city. From the remote active America; from sturdy England; from Cadiz, Marseilles, and all along the glowing shores of the Mediterranean, safely carried over the dark and leaping sea, by brave iron monsters that have fought the winds with their scalding breath, these wares have come, to tempt the purchasers, in the pleasant, calm, subdued light of the bazaars of Stamboul. ”

“ It is through these cool and fragrant avenues you reach the building, which is surrounded by galleries, and has less the air of a temple than of a rural abode charmingly situated in the midst of a park or garden.
The principal temple of Pou-tou is reached by a long avenue of grand secular trees, whose thick foliage is filled with troops of crows with white heads; and their cawings and flapping of wings keep up a continual clamour. At the end of the avenue is a magnificent lake, surrounded with shrubs that lean over its waters like weeping willows. Turtle and gold-fish gleam through them ”

“ There are no buttresses or masonwork in sight at a little distance; shafts are sunk in the solid rock of the mountains, down which the wires that sustain it are dropped. There it stretches, a mere black line, nearly three hundred feet in the heavens, from summit to summit. It looks like a spider's web flung across a chasm; its delicate tracery showing clear and distinct against the sky. While you are looking at the fairy creation suspended in mid-heaven, almost expecting the next breeze will waft it away, you see a heavy waggon driven on it ”

“ Madam,—Having received information, by repeated advices, both public and private, that you have, of late, performed many wonderful cures, even where the best physicians have failed, and that the means used appeared to be very inadequate to the effects produced, I cannot but look upon you as an extraordinary and highly-favoured person; and why may not the same most merciful God, who enables you to restore sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, and strength to the lame, also enable you to raise the dead to life? ”

“ Child, an American authoress, "been one of the greatest wonders of the south-west. Multitudes have heard it, rising, as it were, from the water, like the drone of a bagpipe, then floating away, away, away, in the distance, soft, plaintive, and fairy-like, as if Æolian harps sounded with richer melody through the liquid element; but none have been able to account for the beautiful phenomenon. There are several legends touching these mysterious sounds; but in these days few things are allowed to remain mysterious." ”

“ Its name means, in Irish, "The Path of the Deer." Perhaps, in no part of the kingdom, is there to be found a place so utterly desolate and gloomy. A mountain has been divided by some convulsion of nature, and the narrow pass is overhung on either side, as seen in our engraving, by perpendicular cliffs clothed in wild ivy and underwood, with, occasionally, a stunted yew-tree or arbutus growing among them. At every step advance seems impossible—some huge rock jutting out into the path, or sweeping round it, seeming to conduct only to some barrier still more insurmountable ”

“ There were E O and Rouge et Noir tables, tee-totums, and skittles; concerts of rough music, viz. salt-boxes and rolling-pins, gridirons and tongs, horns, and marrow-bones and cleavers. The carousing booths were filled with merry parties, some dancing to the sound of the fiddle, others sitting round blazing fires smoking and drinking. A printer's devil bawled out to the spectators, "Now is your time, ladies and gentlemen,—now is your time to support the freedom of the press! Can the press enjoy greater liberty? Here you find it working in the middle of the Thames!" ”

“ You cannot tell whether the creature is looking at you or not; he seems to be taking what may be called a general view of things—looking at nothing in particular, or rather, to save time, looking at several things at once. Perhaps both eyes are gazing upwards at your face; a leaf quivers behind his head, and in a moment one eye turns round towards the object, while the other retains its upward gaze: presently a fly appears; one eye rapidly and interestedly follows all its movements, while the other leisurely glances hither and thither, or remains steady. ”

“ The Chinese are industrious and economical, but their cupidity, their immoderate love of lucre, and their decided taste for stockjobbing and speculation, easily tempts them to gambling, when they are not engaged in traffic. They seek eagerly for strong excitements, and when once they have got into the habit of gambling they seldom or never recover from it. They cast aside every obligation of station, duty, and family, to live only for cards and dice; and this fatal passion gains such an empire over them, that they proceed even to the most revolting extremities. ”

“ The force of the recoil from the plunge of so large a body of water, at such a height, is so great, that large stones, thrown into the stream above the fall, may be heard amidst the din striking into the basin, and then are instantly seen careering in the arch of flashing waters. The same is the case with bushes and pieces of wood, which the boys are always active in throwing in, for the curiosity of visitors, who stand below, and see each object invariably carried aloft with the cataract, in its rebounding atmospheric gambols. ”

“ The criminal who obtains this favour assembles all his family and his friends, puts on his richest apparel, makes an eloquent speech on his situation, and then, with a most contented look, he bares his belly, and in the form of a cross rips open the viscera. The most odious crimes are effaced by such a death. The criminal thenceforward ranks as a brave in the memory of men. ”

“ There is nothing more amusing to the traveller on the continent, than to observe the extraordinary variety of those head-appendages, many of them heirlooms for generations in some families, all more or less prized according to the richness of materials employed upon them, and the peculiarity of shape. There is no article of dress more important to the Normande, whatever may be her means, than the cap which so jauntily and triumphantly asserts the dignity of the wearer. ”

“ If we go to any ditch or pool which the summer sun has covered with a mantle of stagnant greenness, and lift from it a minute drop of water, such as would adhere to the head of a pin, we shall find it, under a high magnifying power, swarming with living beings, moving about with great rapidity, and approaching or avoiding each other with evident perception and will. ”