Various

“ It was about eight o'clock on a fine summer's morning that the Empecinado and his companions reached Castrillo. As they entered the town, an old mendicant, who was lying curled up like a dog in the sunshine under the porch of a house, lifted his head at the noise of the horses. As his eyes rested upon Diez, he made a bound forward with an agility extraordinary in one of his years, and fell almost under the feet of the Empecinado's horse, making the startled animal spring aside with a violence and suddenness sufficient to unhorse many a less practised rider than the one who bestrode him. ”

“ Thou, too, O Vanity! art responsible for greater evils:—Time misspent, industry misdirected, labour unrequited, because uselessly or imprudently applied: poverty and isolation, families left unprovided for, pensions, solicitations, patrons, meannesses, subscriptions!
True talent, on the contrary, in London, meets its reward, if it lives to be rewarded; but it has, of its own right, no social pre-eminence, nor is it set above or below any of the other aristocracies, in what we may take the liberty of calling its private life. ”

“ Yes, if there be truth in tones that strike the heart to thrill it—in thoughts that write their meaning in the watchful eye, in words that issue straight from the fount of love, in acts that do not bear one shade of selfish purpose. It was not a labour of time to learn that the existence of the child, her peace and happiness, were merged in those of the fond parent. ”

“ Does the organization of the man, or something else within him, think?—does the organization of that worm, or something else within it, feel?—they are virtually the same questions, and equally idle. Phenomena are the sole subjects of science. Like attraction in the planet, like life in the vegetable, like sensation in the animal, so thought in man is an ultimate fact, which we can merely recognize, and place in its order in the universe. ”

“ You think so, because you feel like a young man, dear Ammalát: you are used to rule your Tartars like slaves, and you fancy that you can conduct yourself with the same ease among the free mountaineers. The hand of fate weighs heavily upon us;—we are defeated and flying. Hundreds of brave mountaineers—your noúkers and my own—have fallen in fight with the Russians; and the Tchetchenetz has seen turned to flight the face of Sultan Akhmet Khan, which they are wont to behold the star of victory! ”

“ After a sufficiently tedious interval, the long succession of wasteful extravagance is cleared away with the upper tablecloth; the dowagers, at a look from our hostess, rise with dignity and decorously retire, miss modestly bringing up the rear—the man at the foot of the table with the handle of the door in one hand, and a napkin in the other, bowing them out.
Now the host sings out to the Honourable Sniftky to draw his chair closer and be jovial, as if people, after an oppressively expensive dinner, can be jovial to order. ”

“ Our knowledge is fully commensurate to our sphere of activity, nor need it, nor can it, pass beyond that sphere. We know that the law of property now forms the basis of society; we know that an attempt to abrogate it would be the signal for war and anarchy, and we know this also, that at no time can its opposite principle be established by force, because its establishment will require a wondrous harmony in the social body; and a civil war, let the victory fall where it may, must leave mankind full of dissension, rancour, and revenge. ”

“ The labourer has done his work, and whistles his way back. The minister has much of good and wise to say to his young family. They hear the business of the day; their guardian draws the moral, and bids them think it over. Upon my arm I bear his child, the fairest object of the twilight group. She tells me histories of this charmed spot, and the good old tales that are as old as the gray church beneath us: she smiles, and speaks of joys amongst the hills, ignorant of the tearful eye and throbbing heart beside her, that overflow with new-found bliss, and cannot bear their weight of happiness. ”

“ Man is, in relation to the science that would survey society, a creator. In short, that stability in the order of events, that invariable recurrence of the same linked series, on which science depends for its very existence, here, in some measure, fails us. In such degree, therefore, as humanity can be described as progressive, or developing itself, in such degree is it an untractable subject for the scientific method. We have but one world, but one humanity before us, but one specimen of this self developing creature, and that perhaps but half grown, but half developed. ”

“ It is pleasant to find in some extreme, uncompromising, eccentric work, written for the complete renovation of man, a new establishment of truth, little else, after all its tempest of thought has swept over the mind, than another confirmation of old, and long-settled, and temperate views. Our sober philosophy, like some familiar landscape seen after a thunder storm, comes out but the more distinct, the brighter, and the more tranquil, for the bursting cloud and the windy tumult that had passed over its surface. ”

“ Ammalát raised himself in the saddle, without waiting till it fell; but at the very instant his horse stumbled with all his four legs together, and striking the dust with his nostrils, rolled prostrate. All uttered a cry of terror; but the dexterous horseman, standing up in the stirrups, without losing his seat, or even leaning forward, as if he had been aware that he was going to fall, fired rapidly, and hitting the rouble with his ball, hurled it far among the people. ”

“ What do you think, Mr Stukely?"
"I have nothing to say of the poor, sir, but praise."
Mr Fairman looked hard at me, and smiled unpleasantly.
"It is the scenery, I suppose. That will make you praise every thing for the next day or so. It will not do, though. We must walk on our feet, and be prosaic in this world. The poor are not as poets paint them, nor is there so much happiness in a hovel as they would lead you to expect. The poets are like you—they have nothing to say but praise. Ah, me! they draw largely on their imaginations." ”

“ Thousands are to be found, anxious and able to take your place; while hardly one misses you, or turns his head to look after you should you lose your own: you live but while you labour, and are no longer remembered than while you are reluctant to repose.
Talent of all kinds brings forth perfect fruits, only when concentrated upon one object: no matter how versatile men may be, mankind has a wise and salutary prejudice against diffused talent; for although knowledge diffused immortalizes itself, diffused talent is but a shallow pool, glittering in the noonday sun, and soon evaporated ”

“ Well, M. Moutonnet has no fear of that—he has no passions—he knows nothing but his trade, and obedience to his spouse. He finds that a man can be very happy, though he does not know how to carve a turkey, and lets himself be governed by his wife. Madame Moutonnet is long past forty, but it is a settled affair that she is never to be more than thirty-six. She never was handsome, but she is large and tall, and her husband is persuaded she is superb. She is not a coquette, but she thinks herself superior to every body else in talents and beauty. ”

“ Honour to Joe Stimpson and his missus! They have the true ring of the ancient coin of hospitality; none of your hollow-sounding raps: they know they have what I want, a home, and they will not allow me, at their board, to know that I want one: they compassionate a lonely, isolated man, and are ready to share with him the hearty cheer and unaffected friendliness of their English fireside: they know that they can get nothing by me, nor do they ever dream of an acknowledgment for their kindness ”

“ Peace, eternal and blessed, birthright and joy of angels, whither do those glimpses hover that we catch of thee in this tumultuous life, weak, faint, and transient though they be, melting the human soul with heavenly tranquillity? Whither, if not upon the everlasting hills, where the brown line divides the sky, or on the gentle sea, where sea and sky are one—a liquid cupola—or in the leafy woods and secret vales, where beauty lends her thrilling voice to silence? ”

“ Mademoiselle Celanire goes up to her father. She is distressed at the way her piano is treated; she has no opportunity of playing her air; but she hopes to make up for it by singing a romance, which one of their old neighbours is going to accompany on the guitar.
It is not without some difficulty that M. Lupot obtains silence for his daughter's song. At sight of the old neighbour and his guitar a smothered laugh is visible in the assembly. It is undeniable that the gentleman is not unlike a respectable Troubadour with a barrel organ, and that his guitar is like an ancient harp. ”

“ You ought not to talk such nonsense, dear Ammalát:—and nothing but fever can excuse you. We are created that we may live longer than our fathers. For wives, if one has not teazed you enough, we will find you three more. If you love not the Shamkhál, yet love your own inheritance—you ought to live, if but for that; since to a dead man power is useless, and victory impossible. ”

“ Well, then, one morning M. Lupot soliloquized—"I have a good fortune, a charming family, and a wife who has never been in a rage; but all this does not lead to a man's being invited, courted, and made much of in the world. Since I have cut the hotpress-wove and red sealing-wax, I have seen nobody but a few friends—retired tradesmen like myself—who drop in to take a hand at vingt-et-un, or loto; but I wish more than that—my daughter must not live in so narrow a circle; my daughter has a decided turn for the arts; I ought to have artists to my house. ”

“ He can't find words enough to express his satisfaction at having such geniuses in his house. For their sakes he neglects his old friends—he scarcely speaks to them. It seems the new-comers, people he has never seen before, are the only people worthy of his attentions. Madame Lupot is tired of getting up, curtsying, and sitting down again. But her daughter is radiant with joy; her husband goes from room to room, rubbing his hands, as if he had bought all Paris, and got it a bargain. And little Ascanius never comes out of the bed-room without his mouth full. ”

“ If he is a theologian the first moment he gives himself up to meditation, he is on the road to the Baconian method the very day he begins to labour. The rudest workman uses the lever; the mathematician follows and calculates the law which determines the power it bestows; here we have industry and then science, but what room for the intervention of theology?
Or does M. Comte mean this only—which we presume to be the case—that these methods of thought are, in succession, predominant and brought to maturity? If so, what necessity for this metaphysic apparatus for the sole purpose of transition? ”

“ The very subjects chosen for their novels, by the most popular of their female writers, shows a state of feeling in the authors more dreadful to contemplate than the mere coarse raw-head-and-bloody-bones descriptions of our chroniclers of Newgate. A married woman, the heroine—high in rank, splendid in intellect, radiant in beauty—has for the hero a villain escaped from the hulks. There is no record of his crimes—we are not called upon to follow him in his depredations, or see him cut throats in the scientific fashion of some of our indigenous rascals. ”

“ He sees the whole efforts of a press, brimful of power and talent, directed against every thing that has hitherto been thought necessary to the safety of society, or the happiness of domestic life—marriage deliberately written down, and proved to be the cause of all the miseries of the social state: and strange to say, in the crusade against matrimony, the sharpest swords and strongest lances are wielded by women. ”

“ In London, every man is responsible for himself, and his position is the consequence of his conduct. If a great author, for example, or artist, or politician, should choose to outrage the established rules of society in any essential particular, he is neglected and even shunned in his private, though he may be admired and lauded in his public capacity. Society marks the line between the public and the social man; and this line no eminence, not even that of premier minister of England, will enable a public man to confound. ”

“ But the interest those works excite arises from no such legitimate source—not from the development of our common nature, but from the creation of a new one—from startling contrasts, not of two characters but of one—tenderness, generosity in one page; fierceness and murder in the next. But though our English tastes are so far deteriorated as to tolerate, or even to admire, the records of cruelty and sin now proceeding every day from the press—our English morals would recoil with horror from the deliberate wickedness which forms the great attraction of the French modern school of romance. ”

“ Instead of measuring his bumps, like a landsurveyor, we dissect his brain, like an anatomist; we estimate him, whether he be high or low, in whatever department of life, not by what he says he can do, or means to do, but by what he has done. By this test is every man of talent tried in London; this is his grand, his formal difficulty, to get the opportunity of showing what he can do, of being put into circulation, of having the chance of being tested, like a shilling, by the ring of the customer and the bite of the critic ”

“ The inhabitants of the secluded village were already a-foot when we proceeded from the parsonage, and men and women from adjacent villages were on the road to join them. The deep-toned bell pealed solemnly, and sanctified the vale; for its sound strikes deeply ever on the broad ear of nature. Willows and yew-trees shelter the graves of the departed villagers, and the living wend their way beneath them, subdued to seriousness, it may be, by the breathless voice that dwells in every well-remembered mound. There is not one who does not carry on his brow the thoughts that best become it now. ”