Various

“ I would rather see the black flag which they hoist sometimes in a besieged town as a symbol of death, to designate to the bombs the edifices consecrated to humanity, and which even the balls of the enemy respect. Do you wish, then, that the symbol of your republic should be more menacing and more sinister than the colours of a besieged city?' 'No no!' cried some of the crowd, 'Lamartine is right: let us not keep that standard, the symbol of terror, for our citizens.' 'Yes, yes!' cried others, 'it is ours—it is that of the people—it is that with which we have conquered. ”

“ The night following, after a sultry hot day, the wind had varied a good deal, and the ship was running almost close-hauled on a warm south-easterly breeze, with somewhat of a swell in the water. Early in the first watch there was a heavy shower, after which I went on deck, leaving Westwood at his book. The half-moon was just getting down to leeward, clear of a ragged dark cloud, and a long space of faint white light spread away on the horizon, behind the sheets of the sails hauled aft; so that you just saw a sort of a glimmer under them, on the black heave of the swell between. ”

“ We must allow to Virtue, my dearest Seward, all that is her due—her countenance beautiful in its sweet serenity—her voice gentle and mild—her demeanour graceful—and a simple majesty in the flowing folds of her stainless raiment. So may we picture her to our imagination, and to our hearts. But we must beware of making such abstractions fantastic and visionary, lest we come at last to think of emotions of Virtue and Taste as one and the same—a fatal error indeed—and that would rob human life of much of its melancholy grandeur. ”

“ In this, as we have already intimated, lies the difference between the crowd of jesters and Charles Lamb. We quit their uproarious laughter for his more quiet and pensive humour with somewhat the same feeling that we leave the noisy, though amusing, highway, for the cool landscape and the soft greensward. We reflect as we smile; the malice of our nature is rather laid to rest than called forth; a kindly and forgiving temper is excited. ”

“ It is night; and Vivian has been admitted to an interview with his father. They have been together alone an hour and more, and I and my father will not disturb them. But the clock strikes—the hour is late—the ship sails to-night—we should be on board. And as we two stand below, the door opens in the room above, and a heavy step descends the stairs; the father is leaning on the son's arm. You should see how timidly the son guides the halting step. And now, as the light gleams on their faces, there are tears on Vivian's cheek; but the face of Roland seems calm and happy. ”

“ But I painted that ambition in its true colours: it was not the desire of a selfish intellect, to be in yourself a somebody—a something—raised a step or two in the social ladder, for the pleasure of looking down on those at the foot, but the warmer yearning of a generous heart; your ambition was to repair your father's losses—minister to your father's very foible, in his idle desire of fame—supply to your uncle what he had lost in his natural heir—link your success to useful objects, your interests to those of your kind, your reward to the proud and grateful smiles of those you loved. ”

“ The moment I shoved my head out of the booby-hatch, I saw it was like to turn out a regular gale from nor'-east. Both courses brailed close-up, and blowing out like rows of big-bladders; the three topsail-yards down on the caps to reef, their canvass swelling and thundering on the stays like so many mad elephants breaking loose; the wild sky ahead of us staring right through in triumph, as it were, and the wind roaring from aft in her bare rigging; while a crowd of men in each top were laying out along the foot-ropes to both yard-arms. ”

“ Why, my dear Seward, the Gem is the recognised most intense expression, from the natural world, of worth—inestimable priceless price—dependent on [Pg 242] rarity and beauty. The Flower is a like intense expression, from the same world, of the power to call forth love. The first image is felt by every reader to be high, and exalting its object; the second to be tender, and openly pathetic. Of course it moves more, and of course it comes last. The Poet has just before spoken of Milton and Cromwell—of bards and kings—and history with all her wealth. ”

“ I have entered with him into cottages, and turned the talk upon Roland. You know how your uncle is adored; you know what anecdotes of his bold, warm-hearted youth once, and now of his kind and charitable age, would spring up from the garrulous lips of gratitude! I made him see with his own eyes, hear with his own ears, how all who knew Roland loved and honoured him—except his son. Then I took him round the ruins— (still not suffering him to enter the house,) for those ruins are the key to Roland's character—seeing them, one sees the pathos in his poor foible of family pride. ”

“ Nothing has given more scandal to some of the gentle admirers of Lamb, than to find him boldly avowing his preference of Fleet Street to the mountains of Cumberland. He claimed no love for the picturesque. Shops, and the throng of men, were not to be deserted for lakes and waterfalls. It was his to live in London, and, as a place to live in, there was no peculiarity of taste in preferring it to Cumberland; but when he really paid his visit to Coleridge at Keswick, he felt the charm fully as much as tourists who are accustomed to dwell, rather too loudly, upon their raptures. ”

“ The little fellow wanted to see it too, so the young lady lifted him up in her arms, no small weight I daresay, and they both looked over the bulwark: the whole sky far out of the awning to westward being spotted with orange scales, turning almost scarlet, faster than the dusk from both ends could close in; the clear greenish tint of it above the openings of the canvass, going up into fathomless blue overhead, the horizon purple, and one or two still, black clouds tipped with vermilion against the far sky—while the Indiaman stole along, scarce plashing under her bends. ”

“ In matters merely worldly, what wonderful acumen! in the plain principles of right and wrong, what gross and stolid obtuseness! At one time, I am straining all my poor wit to grapple in an encounter on the knottiest mysteries of social life; at another, I am guiding reluctant fingers over the horn-book of the most obvious morals. Here hieroglyphics, and there pot-hooks! But as long as there is affection in a man, why, there is Nature to begin with! To get rid of all the rubbish laid upon her, clear back the way to that Nature, and start afresh—that is one's only chance. ”

“ Yet each nature seemed fitted so well—the first for power, the last for rank! It is marvellous with what liberality Providence atones for the partial dispensations of Fortune. Independence, or the vigorous pursuit of it; affection, with its hopes and its rewards; a life only rendered by art more susceptible to nature—in which the physical enjoyments are pure and healthful—in which the moral faculties expand harmoniously with the intellectual—and the heart is at peace with the mind: is this a mean lot for ambition to desire—and is it so far out of human reach? ”

“ Self-government is the dream of the enthusiast, the vision of the inexperienced: oligarchy is the history of man. In vain are institutions popularised, nobles destroyed, masses elevated, education diffused, self-government established: all that will not alter the character of man; it will not qualify the multitude for self-direction; it will not obviate that first of necessities to mankind—the necessity of being governed. What is the first act of every assembly of men associated together for any purpose, social, political, or charitable? ”

“ Inboard, the sight ranged nearly free fore-and-aft the ship, but seaward no eye could penetrate, more than a yard or two, the solid-looking barrier of vapour. A man standing on the taffrail might have seen the catheads the whole length of the deck, whilst at the same time, behind him, the end of the spanker boom, projecting over the water, was lost in the mist. I looked up at the perpendicular walls and the lofty arch overhead with feelings of awe, and, I may add, fear. Cursed, indeed, must be our craft, when the genius of the mist so carefully avoided the pollution of actual contact. ”

“ He would behold a people the more furious that there was no longer any enemies to combat; distrusting the men whom but yesterday it had intrusted with the lead,—constraining them in their liberty, insulting them in their dignity, disavowing their authority, substituting a revolution of vengeance and punishment for one of unanimity and fraternity, and commanding the government to hoist, in token of concord, the standard of a combat to the death between the citizens of the same country! ”

“ Were it not for Roland, and had I one grain less confidence in you, I could not entertain the thought of laying on your young shoulders so great a responsibility. But every new responsibility to an earliest nature is a new prop to virtue;—and all I now ask of you is—to remember that it is a solemn and serious charge, not to be undertaken without the most deliberate gauge and measure of the strength with which it is to be borne. ”

“ Imagine Romulus tracing the circuit on which the walls were to rise of his little Rome—the walls ominously lustrated with a brother's blood. War after war humbles neighbouring town after town, till the seas that bathe, and the mountains that guard Italy, enclose the confederated Republic. It is a step—a beginning. East and West, North and South, flies the Eagle, dipping its beak in the blood of battle-fields. Where it swoops, there fanning away the pride, and fame, and freedom of nations, with the wafture of its wings. Kingdoms and Empires that were, are no more than Provinces ”

“ The crowd which had been carried away by his words was met by another crowd which had not hitherto been able to penetrate into the hall, and which was more vehement in words and gesticulations. Menacing expressions, ardent vociferations, cries of suffocation, threatening gestures, discharges of firearms on the stair, tatters of a red flag waved by naked arms above the sea of heads, rendered this one of the most frightful scenes of the Revolution. 'Down with Lamartine! Death to Lamartine! ”

“ Many of his effusions in verse are touching and beautiful, though they do not possess the exquisite grace and delicate expression of Beranger. But his prose is poetry itself: so deeply is his mind imbued with poetical images—so sensitive is his taste to the grand and the beautiful—so enthusiastic is his admiration of the elevated, whether in nature or art, that he cannot treat even an ordinary subject without tinging it with the colours of romance. ”

“ From the least of these to Achilles fighting the River-God—which is an excess—all holds together—is of one meaning—and here, as everywhere, the least, and the familiar, and most homely, attests, vouches, makes evident, probable, and facile to credence, the highest, most uncouth, remote, and difficult otherwise of acceptation. Pitching the speculation lower, plenitude of the most robust, ardent, vigorous life overflows the Iliad—up from the animal to the divine—from the beautiful tall poplar by the river-side, which the wheelwright or wainwright fells. ”

“ There were thronging associations which I could not share, vibrating memories to which my voice was not attuned, bonds of affection which all-powerful love might transcend, and even disrupt, but whose precise nature it could not assume. There are some lovers who are jealous of such things—fellows who like to wholly monopolise a woman, and who are constantly on the watch, seizing and appropriating her every look, thought, and feeling, with somewhat of the same notion of an exclusive right, as that with which they pocket a tooth-pick. ”

“ To yield a throne to adverse fortune, is little to a great mind. To yield his renown and authority to triumphant adverse opinion and implacable history, is the most painful effort which can be required of a man, for it at once destroys and humbles him. But the King was not one of those hardy characters who enjoy, with sang-froid, the destruction of a people for the gratification of their pride. ”

“ He has all the genius that could comport with oddity, and all the oddity that could amalgamate with genius. With a range of thought most singularly contracted, considering the times in which he lived, and the men by whom he was surrounded, he has contrived, by a charming subtlety of observation, and a most felicitous humour, to make us in love even with that contractedness itself, which in another would be despised, as evidencing a sluggishness and obtuseness of mind. ”

“ The Duke de Montpensier his son, carried away, doubtless, by the energetic expression in the physiognomy, gesticulations, and words of M. Girardin, pressed his father with more vehemence than rank, age, and misfortunes should have permitted to the respect of a son. The pen was presented, and the crown torn from the monarch by an impatience which could not wait for his full and free conviction. The rudeness of fortune towards the King was forgotten in the precipitance of the council. On the other hand, blood was beginning to flow, the throne was gliding away. ”

“ No sooner had the revolution broken out than hundreds of adventurers swarmed into the land, with boasts of having suffered in freedom's cause: they claimed their reward in hard cash from your coffers. There was no crossing the streets of Carlsruhe for the crowds of uniformed, sabre-carrying clerks; and whilst this herd of idlers revelled on your money, your half-famished sons were exposing their breasts to the bullets of the enemy in freedom's cause. ”

“ The writers and cadets were in high feather at knowing they were in the same latitude as India, and appeared in all sorts of straw hats, white trousers, and white jackets. Ford had left off talking of going aloft for a while, to flourish about his swimming—when he looked over with the surgeon into the smooth of a hollow, and saw something big and green, like all immense cucumber, floating along within a fathom or two of the ship, deep down in the blue water. ”

“ My Dear Son,—I was not too sanguine as to the effect that your simple story would produce upon your cousin. Without implying any contrast to his own conduct, I described that scene in which you threw yourself upon our sympathy, in the struggle between love and duty, and asked for our counsel and support; when Roland gave you his blunt advice to tell all to Trevanion; and when, amidst such sorrow as the heart in youth seems scarcely large enough to hold, you caught at truth impulsively, and the truth bore you safe from the shipwreck. ”