Various

“ Nature and I have been familiar many a long year. I love the breezy hill, and the free large moor, that takes up the winds and tosses them down the grooved sides, to go off in their own communing with the waterfalls. I love, too, the quiet brook, and rivers stealing their way by green meadows, and the elms, that stand like outposts on the banks, keepers of the river. Have we not, in our discussion, too much omitted to speak of landscape,—even including the sea-shores? And in landscape we certainly have painters that please. ”

“ I am free, Adam,—you are bound,—yet are both our lives every instant at the command and absolute disposal of Him who gave them, that we might be on trial here for a little while. For aught I know, I may even yet die before you, and with greater pain and grief; but both of us must die, and much of my life is gone for ever. As your frail fellow-mortal, then, I beseech you to listen to me! Our mode of leaving life is ordered by God, even as our mode of living in it. To some he hath ordained riches, others poverty ”

“ We will not venture to hint that there lives a human being better than himself, but perhaps there live a few nearly, if not quite as good.
Mr Warren does justice to the masses: but he is much too honest and too upright—being himself one of the masses—to uphold their privileges at the sacrifice of other men’s lawful and just rights. He does not do it; and the English people, who love fair play, will honour him for his work.
We honour him too, and cordially shake him by the hand! He has not done worse than Maga expected from his industry and genius. ”

“ Gratian.—Patrons of art are too often mere lovers of furniture,—have not seriously considered art, nor cultivated taste. And if it be a fault, it is not altogether their own; it is in character with genius to be in advance, and to teach, and by its own works. It is that there is a want of cultivation, of serious study, among artists themselves. If the patron could dictate, he would himself be the maker, the poet, the painter, the musician,—excellence of every kind precedes the taste to appreciate it. It makes the taste as well as the work: my friend Aquilius has made me a convert. ”

“ Now, if what we have said be true,—and if it be not, we shall be glad to be informed of our error—we hold it to be an utter impossibility for Maga either to look coldly upon Mr Warren’s literary career, or to stand mutely by with her hands behind her, when all honest people are vociferously applauding that gentleman upon his first appearance in an entirely new character. If we don’t clap our hands, who shall applaud? Nobody will respect the mother who thinks her child less worthy than the world esteems him. ”

“ For my own part, life has so many terrors, and horrors too, that I should prefer mitigating their effect, by having more constantly before me the agreeabilities—pleasant domestic scenes, soft landscapes, or such gay scenes and figures as my favourite Teniers occasionally painted, or the sunny De Hooge; or why not bring forward some of our pleasant home-scene English painters? Did you not see, and quite love, that little delight of a picture, the hay-making scene in the Vicar of Wakefield, by our own, and who will be the wide world’s own, Mulready? ”

“ Painters seem to have taken it into their heads that any thing, which presents a good means for exhibiting light and shade and colour, makes a picture. If an incident or a scene be not worth seeing, it is not worth painting.
Gratian.—That is never more true than when they are figure pieces. Our likings and our antipathies are stronger in all representations of the ways and manners of men, than in all the varieties of other nature. We can bear a low and mean landscape, but degraded humanity seldom is, and never ought to be pleasing. ”

“ If the code of morals maintained by Mr Cobden is of so truly philanthropic and catholic a nature—if “buying in the cheapest and selling in the dearest market” is to be adopted throughout the world as a universal and unexceptionable rule—then, in the name of common sense, let the free-traders be consistent to their creed, let emancipation become a dead letter, and let the slave markets of Africa be thrown open to every customer! ”

“ Every actor in the history vindicates these ways: every fact as it arises does the same. The old Saxon Ayliffe, who, from his entrance till his exit, maintains the justice of God’s doings, and walks peacefully and unruffled over burning plough-shares, because he sublimely feels the practical influence of his faith, is one champion. Hylton, the indefatigable clergyman, doing good for his Master’s sake, reproving the high-born, sympathising with the lowly, preaching and acting reconciliation everywhere, is another champion. The Earl of Milverstoke is a champion too. ”

“ It would be an unpardonable affectation of modesty indeed, if Maga suffered any considerations whatever to interfere between herself and the cordial recognition of a success achieved by a favourite child, and acknowledged by all the world. Is the parent alone to hold her peace, when crowds are flinging up their caps rejoicing at the triumph of the son? Is nature to resign her dearest prerogative, in order to comply with the unnatural requirements of a dastard hypocrisy? ”

“ The unconquerable Mr Hylton returned to Milverstoke. He sees the Earl, who spurns him from his door as a reward for his unjustifiable interference between justice and the murderer of his son: he sees the Earl’s daughter, and pleads with her on behalf of the doomed: he sees Captain Lutteridge,—he leaves no stone unturned, to secure, if not the pardon of his client, at least the remission of the punishment to which, in his inmost heart, he believed him most unjustly sentenced. His success is far from equal to his zeal. The proud Earl’s heart is obdurate. ”

“ For how can we ever expect that such an armament will prove effectual in checking that wicked traffic, whilst, at the same time, we are directly encouraging it, by augmenting the consumpt of its produce in free and scrupulous Britain? Shame, on such contemptible and deceptive policy! Shame on the men who, with liberalism on their lips, are all the while engaged in riveting the fetters of the bondsman! And shame to all of us, if we permit our oldest and most attached colonies to lapse into decay, and thousands of our fellow-subjects to be consigned to ruin! ”

“ In nothing, however, is the contrast between Mr Warren in 1830, and the same gentleman in 1839, so remarkable as in the conception of Mr Gammon. The character is a perfect emanation of instructed genius; the admixture of good and evil—good in evil, and evil in good—could have been portrayed only by one knowing thoroughly “all qualities with a learned spirit of human dealings.” None but a creator, conscious of his strength, and fortified by the convictions which knowledge and experience give, would have conceived—or if conceived, dared—to exhibit the incomparable portraiture of which we speak. ”

“ Do you not credit his mind’s painting for other scenes, in colour and design, than any he ever saw? The fabulous is in him, and he must create, or look on nothing. He will take no sheep for a dragon, nor farmer Plod-acre for an enchanter, nor the village usher for an armed knight. The overseer will not be his redresser of wrongs. There is vision in his day-dream, but it is painting to the mind’s eye; and imagination must be the great enchanter to conjure up a new country, raise rocks, and build him castles ”

“ He is so close to the real tragedies of life, and his moral is so distinct, that he seems to have aimed at teaching rather than pleasing. And perhaps, if the truth were known, it might be that he has in no small degree improved the world in its humanities. He has pictured vice odious in the eyes of the pure, but not so as to quench their pity; and has made it so wonderfully human, that we shudder as we acknowledge the liabilities of our nature. He exhibited strongly that man is the instrument of his own punishment, and that there was no need of painted monsters and demons to persecute him. ”

“ Trust them, they prefer the company of the wealthy and the well-to-do, as they love cheese and beer more profoundly than all the moral beauty that the earth contains. Catch them giving sixpence to a beggar on a snowy day, or uttering a syllable of human kindness, which costs them nothing, to a houseless wanderer, no one being by. We hold it to be a great jewel in the coronet of Mr Warren, that he sets his face manfully, in the present instance, against the fashion which all honest men and true must deprecate. ”

“ Either would inevitably produce a universal war; and while we deprecate so tremendous a calamity to the world, and rely on the rational and honourable qualities of the Emperor, to rescue both Russia and Europe from so desperate a struggle, we feel that it is only wise to be prepared for all the contingencies that may result from the greatest mass of power that the world has ever seen, moved by a despotic will, and that will itself subject to the common caprices of the mind of man. ”

“ In order that we may understand the true position of the colonies, and the situation in which they have been placed, confessedly by no fault of their own, it will be necessary to ascertain what is the present cost of production of sugar there, under the curtailed and crippled system of free-labour, as compared with that of the slave-growing colonies. We apprehend that it will not be denied by any, that the soil, climate, and natural position of Jamaica and of British Guiana are in no way inferior to any in the known world for the growth and cultivation of the sugar-cane. ”

“ Be not shocked, Gratian, at the confession, but the truth is, that I see very many outward scenes, that not only give me no pleasure but pain. Shall I confess a still more shocking heterodoxy; I have but little love for the scenery of the country!—am very often displeased with what offers itself, and becomes the common picture. Even in what is denominated a beautiful country, I look more for its suggestive materials in form and colour than for whole scenes. If pictures are to be no more than what we see—even landscapes, the art is not creative ”

“ If she is so sprightly with a load of years upon her, she may live for ever. Honest contemporaries are right; she may—she WILL! But, as we said, folks of a certain age have whims. Men who have prospered under one system are not eager to adopt and try another. The guardianship of Maga, in Maga’s eyes, casts a halo around the doings of her children. Mr Warren had achieved noble triumphs, walking hand-in-hand with her month after month and year after year. If he should deny himself the aid and run alone, might he not fall? ”

“ This strange power, attributed to himself by the headsman, is referred to further on in the volume, when a horse shies and is seized with staggers at the mere glance of Berthold’s eye. That the gaze of the public executioner might have a strong effect upon men, in an age when he was regarded with a feeling of superstitious horror, would have nothing to surprise; nor is it astonishing that an old woman, already suspected of witchcraft, should be terrified and tongue-tied by a hint of tar-barrels from the mouth of the hangman’s son. ”

“ I have seen so many of the Italian pictures of a gloomy cast, that, for my part, I have rather enjoyed the cheerful domestic scenes of life and landscape of the best Flemish masters, and English too.
Curate.—Art has no power of injunction, or the hand of many an artist would be stayed from perilling a profanation. Minds of all grades have been employed in the profession. The Italians have not been exempted from a corruption of taste and of power. Yet, without question, the grandest and the most touching creations of art have been the work of Italian hands, and the conceptions of Italian minds. ”

“ England was the old ally of Russia,—France was the new enemy. The nation hated the arrogance and the atheism of France, and resolved on the overthrow of the Czar. In Russia the monarch is so far removed from his people, that he has no refuge among them in case of disaster. Paul was believed to be mad, and madness, on a despotic throne, justly startles a nation. A band of conspirators broke into his palace at midnight, strangled the master of fifty millions of men, and the nation, at morning, was in a tumult of joy.
His son, Alexander, ascended the throne amid universal acclamation. ”

“ It is hardly necessary here to do more than remind our readers of the great and generous effort made by this country for the abolition of slavery in our colonies. For that purpose the nation agreed, without a murmur, to pay the large sum of twenty millions sterling—a sacrifice to principle and philanthropy which every one must allow to be unparalleled in the annals of the world. At the same time we must not allow our praise or admiration of this act to hurry us into extravagance or exaggeration. ”

“ All who had ever known Ayliffe entertained for him a deep respect. He was of a very independent spirit, somewhat taciturn, and of a retiring, contemplative humour. His life was utterly blameless, regulated throughout by the purifying and elevating influence of Christianity. The excellent vicar of the parish in which he lived reverenced him, holding him up as a pattern, and pointing him out as one of whom it might be humbly said, Behold an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile. ”

“ The life of the Russian emperor was a cloudy one. The external splendour of royalty naturally captivates the eye, but the realities of the diadem are often melancholy. It would be scarcely possible to conceive a loftier preparative for human happiness than that which surrounds the throne of the Russias. Alexander married early. A princess of Baden was chosen for him, by the irresistible will of Catherine, at a period when he himself was incapable of forming any choice. ”