Various

“ Would any one believe that you, Fatello the millionnaire, press a marriage between your sister, the wealthy Mademoiselle Gonfalon, and myself, the needy Baron Steinfeld—and that it is I, the ruined spendthrift, from whom the obstacles to the match proceed? Neither in romance nor in real life has the case a precedent. And you may be assured the world will not applaud your wisdom, nor Mademoiselle Sebastiana feel grateful for your zeal. ”

“ Why, then, should the future be revealed, it might be asked, if the revelation should serve nothing to mankind? With such deep and awful mysteries we have not to deal: we cannot answer: we are of the blind who cannot lead the blind. At all events, if these documents be forgeries—mere devices fabricated after facts—and that they cannot be so entirely, will be seen hereafter—certainly a degree of genius that is almost incomprehensible presided over their fabrication, with this strange stamp of vague oracular language, which is only comprehensible in its after-application. ”

“ For why should we separate ourselves, with all our faculties, perceptive and inventive, from our intimate and purposed connexion with the great universe? It is nature, because it is every where man's doing, to write and act plays, to compose music, and to paint pictures, raise noble edifices, and make marble seem to live in statues. And besides, as man himself is the chief work of nature, so is that which he does, even out of a partial imitation of other nature, the more natural, as it to a certain degree recedes from its model, and participates in and adopts the feeling of him that makes it. ”

“ Art is but nature discovered—the hidden brought to light, and home to us, and acknowledged and felt—more or less felt as we cultivate reciprocally the mind through the senses, and the senses through the mind. With this view, all the artificial enchantments of life are nature—all arts, all sciences: for how could they be to embellish society,—indeed without which there would be no society—had they not an independent existence somewhere in the great storehouse of infinity, and were they not bountifully thrown out to us as truths to gather, as fruits to nourish and to gratify? ”

“ I am fairly at a loss which I should first grapple with—and, alas! unlike the spider, I have no hole where I can hide myself, and let the web do the weaver's work. But I will imitate the spider as far as I can; and while the rest hum and struggle away their impatient, unnoticed hour, I will retreat into the inner labyrinth of my own life.
The illness of my uncle, and my renewed acquaintance with Vivian, had naturally sufficed to draw my thoughts from the rash and unpropitious love I had conceived for Fanny Trevanion. ”

“ Such a sight is a startling shock to that unconscious habitual materialism with which we are apt familiarly to regard those we love: for, in thus missing the mind, the heart, the affection that sprang to ours, we are suddenly made aware that it was the something within the form, and not the form itself, that was so dear to us. The form itself is still, perhaps, little altered; but that lip which smiles no welcome, that eye which wanders over us as strangers, that ear which distinguishes no more our voices,—the friend we sought is not there! ”

“ Would the world lose any thing of social happiness or moral refinement by this intellectual equality of the two sexes? You vex the memory of a young girl with dictionaries and vocabularies without end; you tax her memory in every conceivable manner; and at an after-age you give the literature of sentiment freely to her pillage; but that which should step between the two—the culture of the reason—this is entirely forbidden. If she learns a dozen modern languages, she does not read a single book in any one of them that would make her think. ”

“ Like all original writers, Mrs Hemans has her own mode and her own province. In reading the poetry of Wordsworth, we feel as if transferred to the mountainous solitudes, broken only by the scream of the eagle and the dash of the cataract, where human life is indicated but by the shieling in the sheltered holm, and the shepherd boy, lying wrapt up in his plaid by the furze-bush, with his "little flock at feed beside him." ”

“ Sigismund Fatello preserved, whilst the baron waded through the intricacies of his artificial and complicated denial, a half-smile of polite but total incredulity.
"My dear baron," said he, gravely, when Steinfeld at last paused, "I am sure you are too honourable a man to trifle with the affections of any woman. I know you as the very opposite character to those heartless and despicable male coquets, who ensnare susceptible hearts for the cruel pleasure of bruising or breaking them, and sacrifice, in their vile egotism, the happiness of others to the indulgence of paltry vanity. ”

“ Stranger (after a pause.) —I remember you; your name is Caxton.
Pisistratus.—And yours?
Stranger.—Poor-devil, if you ask my pockets—pockets, which are the symbols of man; Dare-devil, if you ask my heart. (Surveying me from head to foot) —The world seems to have smiled on you, Mr Caxton! Are you not ashamed to speak to a wretch lying on the stones?—but, to be sure, no one sees you.
Pisistratus (sententiously.) —Had I lived in the last century, I might have found Samuel Johnson lying on the stones.
Stranger (rising.) —You have spoilt my sleep; you had a right, since you paid for the lodging. ”

“ EASTLAKE'S LITERATURE OF THE FINE ARTS.
We are surrounded by an external world, which it has pleased the great Maker of the universe to clothe with infinite beauty, cognisable to us through the senses, yet scarcely ours, until, by a more intimate appropriation through the mind, we have added ourselves to it, made it a part of, and in some no inconsiderable degree subject to, the will of our own nature. The inventive faculties of the mind gather all within their reach, which it is their province to combine, and remodel, and revivify with human feeling ”

“ We hold that a real taste for the Fine Arts is the acme of a nation's civilisation, and a greater, a more general happiness, the certain result. We hold, too, that it is a creature of growth—that it may spring up where once sown and tended with care, in apparently the most unpromising soils. The revival of arts and of letters took place in "Agresti Latio." And how is the whole world benefited by that era of cultivation! There is no country under the sun that so much stands in need of an education in the Arts as our own. ”

“ No, no, baron—you have quite mistaken me. As the nearest connexion and natural guardian of Mademoiselle Gonfalon, it is my duty to watch over her, and not to allow her feelings to be trifled with. For some time past, I have suspected her affections were engaged, but it never occurred to me they were fixed upon you. Well—last night I go to a ball, and, actuated by suspicions to which it is unnecessary to recur, I listen to your conversation with my sister-in-law. To a plain man like myself, it bore but one interpretation—that you have sought and won her heart. ”

“ At the very moment he indulged these visions of a bright future, a single word, whispered in his ear by a physician of high repute, crumbled the entire fabric. That word was Consumption, and when he heard it he knew his doom was sealed. His father, his elder brother, his sisters, all had been carried off, in the prime of their strength, by the insidious disease, whose germ, implanted in their system before they saw the light, was ineradicable by the resources of art. The shock was severe—it could not be otherwise—for most of the things were his for which men prize life. ”

“ We have the cathedral-pomp, and the dark superstition, and the might that stands in the place of right,—all the fire and air, with little of the earth and water of our elemental nature. The lays of Wilson reflect the patriarchal calm of life in its best, and purest, and happiest aspects—or, indeed, of something better than mere human life, as the image of the islet in the sunset mirror of the lake is finer and fairer than the reality. ”

“ It may easily be imagined that Steinfeld, brave as he unquestionably was, did not feel particularly pleased at finding himself called upon to risk his life in a profitless duel, at the very moment when that life had acquired fresh value in his eyes, through his acquisition of a pretty wife and a handsome fortune. The former, it is true, the baron, whose utter selfishness made him incapable of love in the higher sense of the word, prized only as a child does a new plaything, or an epicure a fresh dish presented to his sated palate. ”

“ Our libraries—we speak plurally, in the magnificence of the great idea—our picture-galleries, statue-galleries, should tax the skill of purveyors and architectural competitors without end. None that have ever yet been built or supplied with treasures would suffice, for they are for cramped positions. We would have no lack of space, and would not mind building a room for a single work. The idea of magic to construct, only shows the real want of man. Magic is but a prenomen to genius. ”

“ When an author, careless of description, or not called to it by his genius, is exclusively bent on portraying character and passion, and those deeper opinions and reflections which passion stirs from the recesses of the human mind, the drama seems the only form natural for him to employ.
The opinion we have ventured to express on the inevitable decease of the acting drama—of tragic representations—as a general amusement of an age increasing in refinement, will probably subject us, in certain quarters, to an indignant reproof. Shakspeare, and the legitimate drama! ”

“ But the baron was a man of vast self-command; one of those cool-headed cool-hearted egotists who rarely act upon impulse, or compromise their interests by ill-timed impetuosity. The first choleric movement, prompting him to throw Fatello down stairs, was checked with wonderful promptitude, and with little appearance of effort. In reality, however, the effort was a violent one. As a soldier at the triangles bites a bullet with the rage of pain, so Steinfeld clenched his hands till the strong sharp nails almost cut into the palm. ”

“ The young bird and young mouse create even disgust from this too visible blood-redness.
What is beauty? is quite another question from that of whether there is a line of beauty. Lines may be pleasing or displeasing, in a degree independent of the objects in which they happen to be. Lines that correspond in symmetry, as well as colours which agree in harmony, may exist in disagreeable objects, leaving yet the question of beauty to be answered; though beauty, whatever it is, may require this correspondence of parts, this order, this sympathy in symmetry. ”

“ Mrs Hemans built on surer foundations, and with less perishable materials. The consequence is, that her reputation has been steadily on the increase. Of no one modern writer can it be affirmed with less hesitation, that she has become an English classic; nor, until human nature becomes very different from what it now is, can we imagine the least probability that the music of her lays will cease to soothe the ear, or the beauty of her sentiment to charm the gentle heart. ”

“ A line of itself is nothing—it has no vital being, no form, until it bear relation to some other, or, by its combination with another, becomes a figure; and because it is a figure, it pleases, and we in some degree sympathise with it, as a part, with ourselves, of things created. Thus the curve, or Hogarth's line of beauty, which we assume to be made up of straight lines, whose joining is imperceptible, is the first designated figure of such lines, and in it we first recognise form, the first essential of organic being and beauty. ”

“ We doubt if any one colour, as we doubted of any one line, is the colour of beauty; and as to red representing life, possibly by resemblance to blood, speaking to the eye of Art, we should not say that redness is the best exponent of the beautiful flesh of human life. ”

“ No capital or labour was spared to augment the surface capable of yielding sustenance to man; and I feel satisfied that, if the extent of bog-land now existing in Ireland were in the central provinces of China, five years would not elapse without its being made fertile and productive. Ought the people of England or of Ireland to show inferiority to the Chinese in the most requisite of all labour? Ought the government, in deference to some abstract principle, to refuse the fulfilment of the first natural duty—the providing food for its subjects? ”

“ If not the reflection of human nature as it actually is, it is the delineation of the fata morgana of a noble mind—of something that occurs to us "in musings high," and which we sigh to think of as of something loftier and better, to which that nature would willingly aspire. We can readily conceive, that to a woman of the exquisite taste possessed by Mrs Hemans, any attempt at the startling or bizarre, either in conception or subject, was a thing especially to be avoided. ”

“ One great spectacle in nature alone, seems strangely to have lost its fascination upon our poetess—she never kindled to the sea. She seemed to view it as the image only of desolation and of ruin; to have associated it only with tempests and wreck, and have seen in it only the harmless waste of troubled waters. ”

“ Percheron took Comtois aside to inform him that the clubs had decided on an outbreak. Comtois does not at first relish the idea, and is anxious to return to his hammer and pebbles, but Percheron, who, by reason of his superior intelligence, is one of six workmen to whom the plan has been communicated, bewilders the simple giant by the sunny prospects he exposes. This time it is the people who will reap the profits of the revolution. No more kid gloves and varnished boots; the blouse will be the passport to the good things of this life. No more wages. All Frenchmen are to be partners. ”

“ The public is left to, at best, an incipient taste; which, to judge from the kind of productions that find the readiest market, is not good—at all events is not high, and scarcely improving. The love is at present for picture imitation, that lowest condition in which art may be said to flourish. We want an education in its principles, that its just aim and proper influence may be understood. The Fine Arts should be a part of our literature, and thus become a branch of general education. We hail with pleasure every work of the kind we see announced ”

“ At this time a great conspiracy against the white flower moves in the dark, by the designs of an accursed band; and the poor old blood of the Cap leaves the great city, and the sons of Brutus increase mightily. Hark! how the servants of the Lord cry aloud to him! The arrows of the Lord are steeped in His wrath for the hearts of the wicked. Woe to Celtic Gaul! The cock will efface the white flower; and a powerful one will call himself king of the people. There will be a great commotion among men, for the crown will be placed by the hands of workmen who have combated in the great city. ”

“ Pisistratus.—It is in you: a man who can walk from Paris to Boulogne with twelve sous in his pocket, and save four for a purpose—who can stake those four on the cool confidence in his own skill, even at billiards—who can subsist for three days on three rolls—and who, on the fourth day, can wake from the stones of a capital with an eye and a spirit as proud as yours, has in him all the requisites to subdue fortune. ”

“ It is this nature which makes beauty perfect—which renders the music of Handel better than the sounds of winds and waters, and of a higher nature than they, as it is of a more [754] extensive power, in all variety of movement, to touch our feelings, and stir us at will. And such is poetry, which influences us where fact fails. And all this not by mere imitation, which some are so fond of thrusting forward as the means; for there is nothing quite like to itself. ”

“ When the aged poor, the sick poor, the widows and orphans, and the unemployed poor, become immediately a charge on the land and capital of the country, it becomes the obvious and undoubted interest of every proprietor and capitalist, first, to throw all obstacles in his power in the way of early marriages, and excessive reproduction of the species; and, secondly, to exert himself to procure for the existing population as much as possible of remunerative employment. ”

“ We have changed all that: we have had too many instances of women of talent and of genius to doubt their ability to excel—we make no exception—in any branch of literature whatever. We give them, on the other hand, no monopoly of elegance or grace, or delicacy of touch, as some affect to do. These qualities they are very likely to display; but they will be superior in them to authors of the male sex, only just so far as they are superior to those authors in genius and talent. There is still a practice in many critics to detect the style feminine from the style masculine. ”

“ It was natural to suppose that a lover, whose position on the brink of ruin made him scruple to ask the hand of his mistress of her nearest male relative and protector, and who found his embarrassments suddenly smoothed over and made light of by the very person who might be expected to exaggerate them, would be the last man to place fresh stumbling-blocks on the path to happiness thus unexpectedly cleared before him. ”

“ We say "not very unlike each other," because they strictly resemble each other only in humanity. The brute may have the one—imitation, as in the monkey; but he imitates without sympathy, therefore we love him not: and it is this lack which makes his imitation mostly mischievous, for evil acts are the more visible,—the good discernible by feeling, by sympathy. The sympathy of the symmetry of nature is its sentiment, and may therefore be at least an ingredient in beauty, and thus exhibited in lines. ”