Various

“ Issuing originally from the East, that boundless cradle of the human race, we soon find him contending with the German for his morass, with the Spaniard for his gold—traversing the sands of Africa, and pillaging the plains of Greece—founding a kingdom in the midst of Asiatic luxury, and bearing his conquering lance beneath the Capitol of Rome. But a mightier spirit soon rose to rule the storm. In vain the courage of the Gaul, allied with the power of Carthage, and directed by the genius of Hannibal, maintained for years a desperate and doubtful contest in the heart of Italy. ”

“ Should he have another companion to speak with; another, with whom, perhaps, to get over the evil days; to whom to communicate his secret of producing water from diamonds? For the first time since he left the cavern, he spoke aloud—he called—he called in the great silence of the earth, but nothing answered him. If any one were still alive, he might be afraid of another living creature—had not he himself left pistols loaded for his poor Ellen, to defend her life and her children, if any human being should come near her? ”

“ The tortures of the body were added to the tortures of the mind. My limbs grew distorted and withered. I became the outcast of humanity I now am; and then it was I vowed a vow to pursue, even unto death, all those hideous lemans of Satan, who, like her who cursed us, sell their wretched souls but to work evil, and destruction, and death to their fellow-creatures. And I have kept my vow!”
In spite of herself, Magdalena had been obliged to listen to the witchfinder’s tale, which, with his face pressed against the iron bars of the grating, he poured, with harsh voice, into her unwilling ear. ”

“ The history of all the wars of England with France, is one of French defeat. We have beaten the French by land, we have beaten them by sea; and, with the blessing of Heaven on the righteous cause and our own stout hands, we shall always beat them. We have beaten them on the soil of the stranger—we have beaten them on their own. From the fourteenth century, when English soldiers were masters of the half of France, down to Waterloo, we have always beaten France; and if we beat her under Napoleon, there can be no fear of our not beating her under a race so palpably his inferiors. ”

“ Thus it is, Eusebius, that folly, the vile insect, flies about—just drops a few eggs in the very nest of conscience, and is off, and a corruption of the flesh followeth. Those, therefore, who take out license to shoot folly as it flies, should be made to look after the eggs likewise.
Alas, Eusebius, that any thing should take the name of this nice sense that is not replete with goodness, that is not the true ductor substantium! The prophet of an evil which wounds his very soul will take offence if it come not to pass and spare not. ”

“ But a solemn appeal to her testimony had been made by the witchfinder; and her father, whose sense of justice considered that a matter of accusation of so heavy and serious a nature as that of witchcraft, should be investigated in all its bearings, had commanded her presence. Her heart, full of the purest milk of human kindness, revolted, however, from witnessing the progress of such terrible proceedings—the justice of which her simple mind, tutored according to the dark prejudices of the age, never once doubted, but which curdled her blood with horror. ”

“ Every effort of heroism, every prodigy of valour, which the love of liberty and of country ever produced, there displayed themselves in spite of a thousand contrary and fatal passions: discords between the cities, discords in the cities, enterprises of the nobles against the people, licentiousness of democracy, hereditary enmities of race. What men were those Bitunyes who in one day burned twenty of their towns! What men were those Camutes, fugitives, pursued by the sword, by famine, by winter, and whom nothing could conquer! ”

“ Within a very few years, every public servant is usually emasculated by that unlimited voluptuousness which equally the Moslem princes and the common Prophet of all Moslems countenance as the proper object of human pursuit. Here is the mortal ulcer of Islamism, which can never cleanse itself from death and the odour of death. A political ulcer would or might have found restoration for itself; but this ulcer is higher and deeper:—it lies in the religion, which is incapable of reform: it is an ulcer reaching as high as the paradise which Islamism promises, and deep as the hell which it creates. ”

“ Without this we magnify the present; we imagine that the future will be like unto it; we form our ideas, we base our calculations upon it alone; we forget the maxim of the Eastern sage, that “this too shall pass away.” It is by the study of history that we overcome this otherwise inevitable tendency; we learn from it, that other nations have been as great as we, and that they are now forgotten—that a former civilization, a fair and costly edifice which seemed to be perfect of its kind, has crumbled before the assaults of time, and left not a trace behind. ”

“ My mother was not guilty—she was all innocence and truth!”
“I am thy guilty mother, Karl,” repeated the kneeling woman, “who has striven, by long years of penitence and prayer, to expiate the past. Alas, in vain! for Heaven refuses the expiation, since it has reserved the wretched penitent this last, most fearful blow of all!”
“Thou!—oh no!—say it not! Thou my mother!” cried the witchfinder. ”

“ Gaul yields, but only from exhaustion, after a century of partial contests, and nine years of a general war under Cæsar: in fine, the names of Caractac and Galgac render illustrious the last and fruitless efforts of British liberty. It is every where the unequal combat of a military spirit, ardent and heroic, but simple and unskilful, against the same spirit disciplined and persevering. Few nations show in their annals so beautiful a page as that last Gaulish war, written nevertheless by an enemy. ”

“ What a contrast to the Mississippi, which flows along, broad, powerful, and majestic, like some barbarian conqueror bursting forth at the head of his stinking hordes to overrun half a world! The Red River on the other hand, which we are accustomed to call the Nile of Louisiana—with about as much right and propriety as the Massachusetts cobbler who christened his son Alexander Cæsar Napoleon—sneaks stealthily along through forest and plain, like some lurking and venomous copper-snake. ”

“ It is obvious that nothing but the exertion of distinguished skill in the ways of courts, could have accomplished the objects which no other man of his time attained with such complete success. In a court of contention and favouritism, he retained supreme influence to the last; released from the labours of office, he possessed more than the power of a minister—and nominally a subject, he was scarcely less than emperor. Boundless wealth, the highest rank, and every honour which the empire could lavish on its first noble, were the prizes of Potemkin. ”

“ Conscience says, “Do you mean to say you should be sorry to find out the real owner?” “Really, conscience,” you reply, “there can be no harm in being sorry; but you are becoming very impertinent, and asking too many questions.” Here conscience nods—is asleep—is in a coma, Eusebius—fairly mesmerized by you, and follows you at your beck wherever you choose to lead her. And so you take her to your stable to look at Rover: and you want a suggestion how you can stop Rover’s wandering propensities; and conscience, being in a state of clairvoyance, bids you tie him up. ”

“ Her most difficult scene of action, however, is in the bosom of pretension; for there the trumpet of self-praise is ever sounding to overwhelm her voice, and she is kept at arm’s-length from the touch of the guilty hearts, by the padding and the furniture that surround them. But oh! the hypocrites of this life—they almost make one weary of it; they who walk with their hands as if ever weighing, by invisible scales, with their scruples of conscience their every thought, word, and action. ”

“ We know how dreadful the carnage was in that celebrated battle—the most glorious of the victories of Hannibal—the most disastrous of the defeat of Rome. When the Carthaginian general, moved with pity, called to his soldiers ‘to halt, and to spare the vanquished,’ without doubt the Gauls, bloodthirsty in the destruction of their mortal enemies, carried to that butchery more than the ordinary irritation of wars, the satisfaction of a vengeance ardently wished for, and long deferred. There 70,000 Romans perished; the loss on the side of the conquerors was 5500, of which 4000 were Gauls. ”

“ With the crooked end of a pike’s head, one of them tore back her hood; while another, with the staff of his pike, forced her hands asunder. Magdalena’s careworn and prematurely withered face was exposed to the gaze of all, distorted with emotion.
“Less rudely, varlets!” cried the Ober-Amtmann, with a feeling of sudden forbearance towards the wretched woman which surprised all present; for they could not but marvel at the slightest symptom of consideration toward such an abhorred outcast of humanity as a convicted witch; and as such the miserable Magdalena was already regarded. ”

“ The matting that covered the floor was new and of an elegant design—the sideboard solid and handsome, although prodigiously old-fashioned—tables, chairs, and sofas were of French manufacture. On the walls were suspended two or three engravings; not the fight at New Orleans, or Perry and Bainbridge’s victories over the British on Champlain and Erie, but curiosities dating from the reigns of Louis the Fifteenth and Sixteenth. There was a Frenchified air about the whole room, nothing of the republic, the empire, or the restoration, but a sort of odour of the genuine old royalist days. ”

“ Here indeed is a noble field for history—many such exist not in the world; it joins the colours of romance to the truth of narrative—it embraces within its range all countries, from the snow-clad mountains of the north to the waterless deserts of the south. ”

“ Men’s bosoms are like their dwellings—mansions, magnificent and gorgeous—full of all noble and generous thoughts, with room to expand—or dwellings of pretensions, show, and meanness—or hovels of all dirt and slovenliness; yet is there scarcely one in which conscience does not walk in and out boldly, or steal in cautiously, though she may not always have room to move her arms about her, and assert her presence. ”

“ To the stake with the sorceress!—to the stake!” was the only reply returned to his cries by the crowd.
In truth the miserable man bore all the outward signs of a person who, in those times, might be supposed to be smitten by the spells of witchcraft. His eyes rolled in his head. His every feature was distorted in the agony of his passion. His mouth foamed like that of a mad dog. His struggles became desperate convulsions. ”

“ But the frantic Claus heeded not the violence of the waters, and dashed through the town-gate towards the bridge with desperation. The frightened horse shied at the foaming stream, struggled, snorted; but the cripple seemed to possess the resistless power of a demon—a power which gave him sway over the brute creation. He urged the unwilling animal, with almost superhuman force, on to the tottering bridge.
The guards who had galloped after him, stopped suddenly as they saw the roaring torrent. None dared advance, none dared pursue. ”

“ Without any provocation on the part of England, any actual claim, or any desire whatever of war, this country finds itself suddenly made an object of perpetual insult on the part of all the active mind of France. The cry from every organ of public opinion seems to be, war with England, whether with or without cause. A violent clamour is raised for our national ruin; the resources of France are blazoned in all quarters ”

“ The God of nature and the wilderness—the God of the tempest and the storm—was a nobler idea than the immortalized humanities of Greek and Roman mythology, though both had wandered equally far from the true God of Mercy and of Peace. ”

“ Nothing has ever surprised us more, we will frankly own, than this coincidence of authors in treating the Byzantine empire as feeble and crazy. On the contrary, to us it is clear that some secret and preternatural strength it must have had, lurking where the eye of man did not in those days penetrate, or by what miracle did it undertake our universal Christian cause, fight for us all, keep the waters open from freezing us up, and through nine centuries prevent the ice of Mahometanism from closing over our heads for ever? ”

“ THIERRY’S HISTORY OF THE GAULS.A
’Tis a pleasant thing to turn from the present, with its turmoil and its noise, its clank of engines and its pallid artizans, its political strife and its social disorganization, to the calm and quiet records of the past—to the contemplation of bygone greatness: of kingdoms which have passed away,—of cities whose site is marked only by the mouldering column and the time-worn wall—of men with whose name the world once rang, but whose very tombs are now unknown. If there is any thing calculated to enlarge the mind, it is this ”