Various

“ The slaughtered knight, the widow, and the dog, tell the tale, and tell it well too. The widow is the best figure. We have had enough of battle and all its horrors; let us turn to tranquillizing nature, where the undisturbed lichen may grow upon the rocks, and the branches of unpruned trees throw out their sheltering leafage, and the innocent insects know it is their home; and even in the seeming silence, if you listen, may you hear the still voice of a busy creation, a world of a few summer hours—yet seemeth it to them an eternity of enjoyment. ”

“ This mutual threshing had lasted a good quarter of an hour, when a sign from Stringstriker directed the bride-groom to scatter the yew-leaves. In an instant the table was covered with them; and the guests, as if bewitched, dispersed in grotesque groups, and remained transfixed. Every eye was on the busy dwarfs. Klaus's godfather, crossing his legs, seated himself upon the table, and began to scrape his fiddle. The earth mannikins then arranged themselves in order, swung their broad hats gracefully, and, one stepping upon the shoulder of another, built up a living pyramid above the bride. ”

“ We do not, as soon as the curtain rises, believe ourselves transported to Rome, nor do we take the actor upon his word, and believe him to be Caesar the moment he proclaims his imperial dignity. The illusion of the theatre springs directly from the passion with which we are infected, not from the outward pomp and circumstance of the stage. These, even on the most ignorant of spectators, produce barely the sentiment of wonder and surprise, never a belief in their reality. The real illusion of the drama begins, so to speak, not at the beginning, but at the end ”

“ France, of late years, is partially an exception, for France now extends the range of her professions; but in all the rest, the existence of the lawyer closely resembles the existence of the quadruped in the mill. In England all is of a different and a higher order. The bar itself is but a step; distinction in the courts is only the first stage of an ascent which may raise the individual to eminence in government, as well as dignity in the high places of his profession—it is the preparative for wearing those honours which form a family, and give a pledge to fortune. ”

“ If Klaus entered the tavern—so lately his own property—the boors shrunk from him as though he were a leper—the landlord lazily shoved a dirty glass before him, and looked at the piece of money which he got in exchange, a dozen times before he put it into his till. The most abandoned criminal, who had undergone his ten years of imprisonment and hard labour, could not have been treated more ignominiously. Had Klaus not lived on in a sort of mental intoxication, he must have committed murder or manslaughter, if, in his desperation, he had not even laid unholy hands upon himself. ”

“ After all, the use of the marvellous in poetry is not so much itself to impress us with awe and astonishment, as to supply novel and striking situations for the display of human feelings. When Johanna, for instance, describes the visitation by the Virgin, and declares her sacred mission, we listen unmoved. Not so, when, having felt the touch of human passion, she sighs to re-enter into the common rank of mortals, and laments the dreadful honour that has been imposed upon her. Yet this latter sentiment, so natural and so affecting, could not be separated from the previous fable. ”

“ Courts and campaigns are not human life. Kings and ministers, in their court pageantry, are scarcely more entitled to the name of human beings. They are factitious forms, showy spectacles, glittering effigies. But strip off the state costume; stand beside them while they are unconscious of a spectator; enter into their minds; seize their motives; measure their impulses: it is only then that we discover their affinity to the family of man, and by their vigour and virtue model our own.
The life of the Earl of Eldon is an important addition to public biography. ”

“ We are not perhaps at Rome, nor is that Mark Antony—for we never knew Mark Antony to recognise him—but this mimic world has assumed an independent life and reality of its own. When, indeed, the passion subsides, and the eloquence of the poet is mute, things revert to their matter-of-fact condition, the actor is again there, and the boards of the stage again become visible. ”

“ But adversity has now reinstated her in all the primitive austerity of her heart; the weakness she has so severely expiated, has left her; she has no heart now but for her country. In vain Lionel promises all—for Lionel, as well as Dunois, loves her; she answers only by denouncing the enemies of France.
A battle is joined under the walls of the tower in which she is imprisoned; she has been bound in fetters of threefold strength; Lionel has gone forth to lead his army, and the fierce Isabeau is her jailer. She holds a drawn dagger over her head. If the king of France conquers, Johanna dies. ”

“ There is no demon, not even the demon of melancholy, which dares to encounter the presence of a little child. There is in the innocent fresh breathing of these creatures, something mortal to evil spirits, and a cradled infant in the house is sure talisman against all demoniac possession.
What is it, in fact, which man requires, in order to escape from this athumia, this exhaustion of the heart? Hope—a future. He must have a faith in the future. This is the nourishment of his soul; without it he cannot live, he despairs and dies. ”

“ If our flashy prints are the index of the public taste in this country, we have little of which to boast; and we undoubtedly keep our artists from rising to any worthy aim, by showing them how satisfied we can be with mediocrity, and even some degrees below it. There is, in etching, a lightness and playfulness of execution which excuses, if it does not quite reconcile us to a bad subject. We lose the idea of effort in the freedom. To present to the eye a laboured nothing, is to disgust by the sense of labour alone. ”

“ We have no desire to bind a poet to history, merely because it is history. He has his own ends to accomplish, and by those shall he be judged. As, assuredly, we should not accept it as the least excuse for the least measure of dulness, on the part of the poet, that he had followed faithfully the historical narrative, so neither do we impose upon him a very close adherence to it. We censure the course which Schiller has here pursued, not because he has marred history, but because he has marred his own poem. ”

“ In the mines of the Upper Lusatian Belief, the tale of THE DWARF'S WELL strikes into a vein which our author has promised us, but of which we have not heretofore handled the ore. Here we shall see the imagination touching in some deeper sterner colours to the sketches flung forth by the fancy; and in the spirit of unreal creation, a wild self-will which rejoices to waft into the presence of the beautiful, and of unbridled laughter, cold blasts from the region of pure affright. ”

“ When a poor man suddenly becomes rich, there is no lack of good words thrown away; but when a rich man suddenly comes to beggary, all that is said is—that he is a deplorable wretch—that everybody expected it—and that it serves him right. Klaus led a horrid life. He was shunned by universal consent. The youngest urchins of the parish threw dirt at him, made faces, called him Lying Klaus, and trotted after him, imitating the gait and gestures of an ill-conditioned dwarf. ”

“ Lord Auckland started from the principle—and in that doubtless he was right—that the security sought for Western India could be found only in a regular treaty of alliance with an Affghan government—firm at least by its tenure, if circumstances forbade it to be strong by its action. But where was such a government to be found? Who, in the distracted state of Affghan society, was the man presumptuous enough to guarantee any general submission to his authority? And, if no man could say this for himself, could we say it for him? ”

“ Surely the poet does not proceed on the principle of saying half, and permitting us to say the other half—out of compliment, perhaps, to our understanding, and as a little bribe to our vanity. The more vivid and powerful his expressions, the more must he leave, or rather the more must he give, indirectly as well as directly, to the imagination of the reader. He will sometimes even bestow what he himself never possessed. The great poet, in pouring out his feelings, must always give something less and something more than was in him at the time. ”

“ Riding off with his cavalry from Persia to Candahar, Ahmed these robbed a caravan! Upon which every body cried out to him, "Go it!" and his lucky connexion by birth with the best of the Dooraunee blood did the rest. A murder, a flight, and a robbery, or pretty nearly in the words of our English litany, "Battle, and murder, and sudden death," together with a silver spoon in his mouth at his natal hour, had made Ahmed a shah; and this Ahmed was the grandfather of our own pet Soojah. In such a genealogy there is not much for a poet-laureate to found upon, nor very much to make a saint out of. ”

“ Undoubtedly, in the mixed qualities of human nature, there might now and then be formidable displays; the development of the heart might often startle the eye which looked to it for healthy action; the machinery of the mind would require to be examined with the hand of charity as well as the hand of science: but the general result must be knowledge—always interesting, and often of the highest value; for the tendency of manners is, to disappoint that research. The habits, the associations, almost the general peace of society, unite in covering the actual nature of man with a uniform aspect. ”

“ The spectator does not refer to any faint conception in his own mind of a Brutus, or a Mark Antony, and then derive his pleasure from watching how closely the mimic representation imitates the original. Very often the scene must present something entirely new to the imagination, and yet the pleasure is not diminished on this account. A simple man, who has never seen the interior of a palace, never looked on royalty, never beheld even a veritable courtier, feels no embarrassment when he is suddenly called to witness the pomps and miseries of "imperial tragedy." ”

“ The Dwarfs were set off also, and for some time they roared together; that is to say, Klaus roared, but the voicelets of the Dwarfs sounded only like a light whisper. Their laughing, however, did not prevent the smoking of their twirling-stick pipes, which they seemed to take much delight in; each Dwarf, it must be known, carrying in his mouth the strangest little twirling-stick, the four little arms of which reeked like pipe-heads. ”

“ Bequeath me your head at your death, you shall have all you ask, and I'll be satisfied.'
"'Go to the devil, you bandy-legged monster!' screamed Michael in his fury, poking his lamp at the same time under the Dwarf's beard, so that the vapoury phantom was nigh being in a blaze.
"'Don't put yourself out, Mike; don't put yourself out!' said Klaus patronizingly, seating himself upon a chest, and then tuning his fiddle. 'Getting into a passion won't bring the shiners back! What do you say, gossip, to a tune? Will you dance if I play? ”

“ In after life, the child, then in womanhood, walked one morning into the chancellor's drawing-room, and claimed the fulfilment of his promise. It was duly performed, and she married.
There is perhaps no subject of human interest more entitled to an anxious and solemn curiosity, than the sentiments of a man of powerful and fully furnished mind in the immediate prospect of death. The coming change is so total and so tremendous, alarm and a sense of the unknown are so natural, that to find unpresuming confidence, and virtuous constancy of heart, in that awful time, cheers human nature. ”

“ What say you to it?'
"'Eh! what?' said Nicholas, in doubt.
"'Give me the shoes!' repeated Stringstriker.
"'Now look you, godfather!' said Klaus determinedly, 'what if I accept your proposal! Here are your shoes, and you are welcome to them. But I ask you, is life worth having, if I am to be for ever a poor eschewed, scoffed, and scorned castaway? The devil a bit you care for what the world says; but one of us, who is a mere man, spitted upon by a whole village, feels what it is to be poor and contemned. ”

“ Klaus stopped his violin; and, in the next instant, Simon lay dead upon the floor. Will it be believed that the rascally Dwarf had fiddled every hair of the poor devil's head, and brought them all down to his feet in the shape of ducats! Simon's skull was as smooth and clean as if it had been shorn.
"The Dwarf put his fiddle up; quietly possessed himself of the money-bags, and then grinned at the corpse before him.
"'Well, you old fool!' said he. 'Have I shaved your ugly jobber-nowl clean enough? I don't want any of your tiresome barbers to do my work! Are we quits, gossip? ”

“ The nation, freed from this nightmare, started up in fresh vigour, and began, with a unanimity in its heart, and irresistible strength in its hands, that illustrious battle for Europe, which accomplished the liberation of mankind.
The attorney-general had now given such undeniable proofs of fitness for the highest rank of his profession, that office seemed to fall to him by right of universal acknowledgment; and on a vacancy in the Common Pleas, he was promoted to the chief-justiceship in 1799, and at the same time raised to the peerage by the title of Baron Eldon. ”