Various

“ As I reached the streets once more, I heard the trumpets of the Life Guards, and the band of a battalion returning to their quarters. The infantry were the Coldstream. They had been lining the streets for the king's procession to open the sitting of Parliament. This was the 13th of December—the memorable day to which every heart in Europe was more or less vibrating; yet which I had totally forgotten. What is man but an electrical machine after all? ”

“ This fleecy tissue pursued its deliberate progress from coast to coast, like a cortege of cobwebs carrying a deputation from the power-looms of Arachne in Italy to the rival silk-looms at Catania. We pass the dry beds of mountain torrents at every half mile, ugly gashes on a smooth road; and requiring too much caution to leave one's attention to be engaged by many objects altogether new and beautiful. ”

“ Then again, when one half of the earth is turned into a field of battle, and the other into a cemetery, mankind will cry out for peace; and again, when refreshed, will rush into still more ruinous war:—thus all things run in a circle. But France has found out the secret for this age, and—vae victis!—the pestilence will be tame to the triumph of her frenzy, her rapine, and her revenge. ”

“ Children come to be looked on, not as objects of affection, but as instruments of gain; not as forming the first duty of life and calling forth its highest energies, but as affording the first means of relaxing from labour, and permitting a relapse into indolence and sensuality. The children are, practically speaking, sold for slaves, and—oh! unutterable horror!—the sellers are their own parents! Unbounded is the demoralization produced by this monstrous perversion of the first principles of nature. ”

“ Those writers, however, how observant and benevolent soever, give a partial, and in many respects fallacious view, of the general aspect of society. After reading their doleful accounts of the general wretchedness, profligacy, and licentiousness of the working classes, the stranger is astonished, on travelling through England, to behold green fields and smiling cottages on all sides; to see in every village signs of increasing comfort, in every town marks of augmented wealth, and the aspect of poverty almost banished from the land. ”

“ Tom and Jerry were in all their glory. I looked round the boxes, and soon saw the charming Arthurine, apparently perfectly comfortable, chatting with old Moreland as gravely, and looking as demure and self-possessed, as if she had been a married woman of thirty.
"That is a prudent young lady," said Richards; "she has an eye to the dollars, and would marry Old Hickory himself, spite of whisky and tobacco pipe, if he had more money, and were to ask her." ”

“ And there is exuberant SELF-POWER, that, from the innermost mind, oozing up, out, distilling, circulating along nerve and vein, effects a magical metamorphosis! turns the nymph into a squire of arms; usurping even the clamorous and blood-sprinkled joy of man—the tempestuous and terrible CHASE, which, in the bosom of peace, imaging war, shows in the rougher lord of creation himself, as harsh, wild, and turbulent! ”

“ The terror of the population, rushing through the falling streets, gathered in the churches, or madly attempting to escape into the fields, may be imagined; but the whole scene of horror, death, and ruin, exceeds all description. The ground split into chasms, into which the people were plunged in their fright. Crowds fled to the water; but the Tagus, agitated like the land, suddenly rose to an extraordinary height, burst upon the land, and swept away all within its reach. ”

“ In the broad bold forehead, the strong sense—in the relaxed mouth, the self-indulgent and reckless enjoyment—in the quick, small eye under those magnificent black brows, the man of sagacity, of sarcasm, and of humour; and in the grand contour of a countenance and head, which might have been sculptured to take its place among the sages and sovereigns of antiquity, the living proof of those extraordinary powers, which could have been checked in their ascent to the highest elevation of public life, only by prejudices and passions not less extraordinary. ”

“ Never mind, we shall soon be at Messina. And now we approach a point from which the lofty Calabrian coast opposite, and the flinty wall of the formidable Scylla, first present themselves, but still as distant objects. In another half hour we are just opposite the redoubtable rock; and here we turn abruptly at right angles to our hitherto course, and find ourselves within the straits, from either side of which the English and the French so often tried the effect of cannon upon each other. ”

“ O, these Parisians! Make me monkey-keeper, blessed Virgin, to the beast garden of the Escurial; but spare me for the rest of my days the honour of being seneschal to the finikin household of a queen on her travels!"
Impossible to forbear a laugh at the fervent hatred depicted in the warworn features of the Castilian captain, "I' faith, my clear Nignio," said Gonzaga, "for the squire of so gallant a knight as Don John of Austria, your notions are rather those of Mahound or Termagaunt! What would his highness say, were he to hear you thus bitter against his Dulcinea?" ”

“ There is such a prodigious difference between the condition of mankind and the progress of corruption in the agricultural or pastoral, and manufacturing or densely peopled districts, that those accustomed to the former will not believe any statements made regarding the latter. They say they are incredible or exaggerated; that the persons who make them are têtes montées; that their ideas are very vague, and their suggestions utterly unworthy the consideration either of men of sense or of government. With such deplorable illusions does ignorance repel the suggestions of knowledge ”

“ The soldiery, the monks, the state annuitants, the crowds of domestics, dependent on the families of the grandees, all are necessarily unproductive. The money which they receive is simply consumed. It makes no return. Thus poverty became universal; and nothing but the singular fertility of the peopled districts of Spain and Portugal, and the fortune of having a climate which requires but few of the comforts essential in a severer temperature, could have saved them both from being the most pauperized of all nations, or even from perishing altogether, and leaving the land a desert behind them. ”

“ The man who has the good fortune to see our New York belles in their morning or home attire, must have a heart made of quartz or granite if he resists their attractions. Their graceful forms, their intellectual and somewhat languishing expression of countenance, their bright and beaming eyes, their slender figures, which make one inclined to seize and hold them lest the wind should blow them away, their beautifully delicate hands and feet, compose a sum of attraction perfectly irresistible. ”

“ Nay, what is still more gratifying, the returns of the sanatary condition of the whole population, though still exhibiting a painful difference between the health and chances of life in the rural and manufacturing districts, present unequivocal proof of a general amelioration of the chances of life, and, consequently, of the general wellbeing of the whole community.
How are these opposite statements and appearances to be reconciled? Both are true—the reconciliation is easy. The misery, recklessness, and vice exist chiefly in one class—the industry, sobriety, and comfort in another. ”

“ This is the third night that I have sat in this hovel, at this table, unable to go to rest, and looking for the despatch from hour to hour.—You see, sir, that our life is at least not the bed of roses for which the world is so apt to give us credit. It is like the life of my own hills—the higher the sheiling stands, the more it gets of the blast. ”

“ Wholly and justly disclaiming the imputation which would pronounce Portugal a dependent on England, it is impossible to turn a page of her history without seeing the measureless importance of her English connexion. Every genuine source of her power and opulence has either originated with, or been sustained by, her great ally. Among the first of these has been the wine trade. In the year 1756—the year following that tremendous calamity which had sunk Lisbon into ruins—the wine-growers in the three provinces of Beira, Minho, and Tras-os-Montes, represented that they were on the verge of ruin. ”

“ The opinion of England decides the opinion of Europe. Tell, then, your countrymen, in vindication of Clairfait and his troops, that after holding his ground for nine hours against three times his force, he retreated with the steadiness of a movement on parade, without leaving behind him a single gun, colour, or prisoner. Tell them, too, that he was defeated only through the marvellous negligence of a government which left him to fight battles without brigades, defend fortresses without guns, and protect insurgent provinces with a fugitive army. ”

“ London appeared to me more crowded than ever; the streets longer, and buildings dingier; and the whole, seen after the smokeless and light-coloured towns of the Continent, looked an enormous manufactory, where men wore themselves out in perpetual blackness and bustle, to make their bread, and die. But my heart beat quickly as I reached the door of that dingiest of all its dwellings, where the lord of 120hundreds of thousands of pounds burrowed himself on the eyes of mankind. ”

“ If this is the progress of crime during the days of its prosperity, what is it likely to become in those of its decline, when this prodigious vent for superfluous numbers has come to be in a great measure closed, and this unheard-of wealth and prosperity has ceased to gladden the land? ”

“ But Europe was already divided among powerful nations. Those nations were governed by jealous authorities, powerful kings for their leaders, and powerful armies for their defence. All was full; there was no room for the contention of a tribe of ecclesiastics, although the most daring, subtle, and unscrupulous of the countless slaves and soldiers of Rome. The world of America was open. There a mighty power might grow up unseen by the eye of Europe. A population of unlimited multitudes might find space in the vast plains; commerce in the endless rivers ”

“ The good of the church was the plea which purified all imposture; the power of Rome was the principle on which this tremendous system of artifice was constructed; and the reduction of all modes of human opinion to the one sullen superstition of the Vatican, was the triumph for which those armies of subtle enthusiasm and fraudulent sanctity were prepared to live and die.
The first act of Pombal was to remove the king's confessor, the Jesuit Moreira. The education of the younger branches of the royal family was in the hands of Jesuits. ”

“ But as no human crime can be so fatal to the security of a state as regicide, no imputation can fall on the memory of a great minister, compelled to exercise justice in its severity, for the protection of all orders of the kingdom. ”

“ Those whom nature has made their protectors, have become their oppressors. The thirst for idleness, intoxication, or sensuality, has turned the strongest of the generous, into the most malignant of the selfish passions.
The habits acquired by such precocious employment of young women, are not less destructive of their ultimate utility and respectability in life. Habituated from their earliest years to one undeviating mechanical employment, they acquire great skill in it, but grow up utterly ignorant of any thing else. ”

“ Whether her young soldier was shot in the attempt to escape from St Lazare, or thrown into some of those hideous dungeons, where so many thousands were dying in misery from day to day, was entirely beyond my power to tell. It was better that she should be roving over the bright hills, and breathing the fresh breezes of Switzerland, than listening to my hopeless conjectures at home; trying to reconcile herself to all the chances which passion is so painfully ingenious in creating, and dying, like a flower in all its beauty, on the spot where it had grown. ”

“ We left a very meagre dessert of cherries beginning to ripen at Naples; the very next day, a superabundance of very fine and mature ones were to be had on all the stalls of Palermo. This must be the result of industry and care in a great measure; for on leaving that city, after a séjour of three weeks, for Messina, Catania, and Syracuse, although summer was much further advanced, we relapsed into miserably meagre supplies of what we had eaten in perfection in the capital; yet Syracuse and Catania are much warmer than Palermo.
The vegetables here are of immense growth. ”

“ It is the vexation of this conviction that hath brought my face to the meagreness and sallow tint that accused the scorching sun of Barbary. I love the rush of battle. The clash of swords or roaring of artillery is music to me. There is joy in contending, life for life, with a traitor, and marshaling the fierce battalions on the field. ”

“ Or that the moral heart of the poem—that root in the human breast and will, from which every true poem springs heavenward—is here the zeal of the spirits for morally reforming Swanhilda; is, therefore, that deep-seated attraction, which, as we have averred, essentially allies the inclination of the Fairies to the moral conscience in our own kind.
One end, therefore, grounds the whole story, although two and more are proposed by Sweetflower. It is one that satisfies the moral reason in man; for it is no less than to cleanse and heal the will, wounded with error, of a human creature. ”

“ But, though a Republican soldier, to my surprise he was no Republican. His enquiries into the state of popular opinion in Europe, showed at once his sagacity, and the turn which his thoughts, young as he was, were already taking.—But the diadem is trampled under foot in France for ever; and with cannon-shot in his front every day of his life, and the guillotine in his rear, who can answer for the history of any man for twenty-four hours together? ”

“ Happy the man—if not in his own generation, yet most assuredly in the time to come—whose natural hesitation or fastidiousness has prompted him to weigh his words maturely, before launching them forth into the great ocean of literature, in the midst of which is a Maelstrom of tenfold absorbing power! ”

“ If we examine who it is that compose this dismal substratum, this hideous black band of society, we shall find that it is not made up of any one class more than another—not of factory workers more than labourers, carters, or miners—but is formed by an aggregate of the most unfortunate or improvident of all classes, who, variously struck down from better ways by disease, vice, or sensuality, are now of necessity huddled together by tens of thousands in the dens of poverty, and held by the firm bond of necessity in the precincts of contagion and crime. ”

“ But the steam-engine, amidst its other marvels, has entirely destroyed, within the sphere of its influence, this happy and necessary exemption of infancy from labour. Steam is the moving power; it exerts the strength; the human machine is required only to lift a web periodically, or damp a roller, or twirl a film round the finger, to which the hands of infancy are as adequate as those of mature age. Hence the general employment of children, and especially girls, in such employments. ”

“ Each observer tells truly what he sees in his own circle of attention; he does not tell what, nevertheless, exists, and exercises a powerful influence on society, of the good which exists in the other classes. If the evils detailed in Lord Ashley's speeches, and painted with so much force in the Perils of the Nation, were universal, or even general, society could not hold together for a week. ”

“ By this brilliant triumph of the royalists, six thousand men-at-arms, their standards, banners, and artillery, were lost to the States. The cavalry of Spain, under the command of Ottavio Gonzaga, performed prodigies of valour; and the vanguard, under that of Gaspardo Nignio, equally distinguished itself. But the heat of the action fell upon the main body of the army, which had marched from Namur under the command of Don John; being composed of the Italian reinforcements dispatched to him from Parma by desire of the Pope, under the command of his nephew, Prince Alexander Farnese. ”