Various

“ I am old and ill, and must arrange my affairs. The task is painful both for you and for me. I will not refer to my anger at my son's marriage; your misfortune disarmed me—I called you to my side, and I desired to behold and to love in your son William, the heir of my fortune, the pivot of my dreams of future ambition. Alas! madam, fate was cruel to us! My son's widow and orphan shall have all that can insure them an honourable existence; but, sole master of a fortune due to my own exertions, I adopt my nephew, and look upon him henceforward as my sole heir. ”

“ Jack swore he heard the chain at the shark's snout rattle, as he was slueing round his head within half a fathom of old Dido, and just as he pounced upon the bloody devil's back-bone; the next moment it was clear water below his feet, and he saw the white bells rise from a lump of green going down under the ship's bends, as large as the gig, with its belly glancing like silver. If so, I daresay the cook's legs would have stuck on his own hook before they were swallowed; but, anyhow, the old nigger was ready to believe in the devil as long as he lived. ”

“ For ourselves, we will at once frankly confess that we have no faith in any model colonies, in ideals of any description, or in any "Art of colonisation." What has been done, may be done again; what America is doing every day on the banks of the Mississippi, England may do in her Australian continent. With regard more particularly to the last and most important matter that can affect a new settlement, the mode of dealing with the land, it appears to us that the duties of Government are few, simple, and imperative—as simple in their character as they are indispensable. ”

“ If the usurpations of the crown threatened to alienate the nobles, they promised to conciliate the humbler classes.
On the other hand, every noble was a soldier. The wars in which the emperor was engaged, while they forced him occasionally to cultivate the good-will of the aristocracy, on which he was chiefly dependent for his military resources, fostered military habits of submission, and feelings of feudal allegiance to the sovereign. Military service was the road to distinction—military glory the ruling passion. The crown was the fountain of honour, to which all who sought it repaired. ”

“ The recognised rights of Hungary were considered but as forced concessions, which must be destroyed at any price—even at the price of her blood. Could there be surer means of attaining that end than dividing and weakening her by civil war? It was not understood that honest conduct towards a loyal nation would more certainly secure her attachment, than attempts to revive a power that could not be re-established. Neither was it understood that the interests of Hungary demanded that she should seek, in a cordial union with constitutional Austria, securities for her independence and her liberties. ”

“ The Germans, the Italians, the Majjars or Hungarians, the Sclaves, and the Wallacks, are distinct and alien races—without community of origin, of language, of religion, or of sentiments. Except the memory of triumphs and disasters common to them all, their allegiance to one sovereign is now, as it was three centuries ago, the only bond that unites them. Yet, in all the vicissitudes of fortune—some of them disastrous—which this empire has survived, these nations and races have held together. ”

“ The blood of the people is flowing in torrents—thousands of your majesty's faithful subjects are, some massacred, others wandering about without shelter, and reduced to beggary—our towns, our villages, are nothing but heaps of ashes—the clash of arms has driven the faithful people from our temples, which have become deserted—the mourning church weeps over the fall of religion, and the education of the people is interrupted and abandoned. ”

“ He could always tell whether or not labour for hire was too scarce or too plentiful in the colony. If it were too plentiful, he would know that the price of new land was too high—that is, more than sufficient: if it were hurtfully scarce, he would know that the price was too low, or not sufficient. About which the labour was—whether too plentiful or too scarce—no legislature, hardly any individual, could be in doubt, so plain to the dullest eye would be the facts by which to determine that question. If the lawgiver saw that the labour was scarce, and the price too low, he would raise the price ”

“ Remember, too, in connexion with what I have written, that Ireland is the most ultramontane of all nations under heaven, and you will be able to estimate the value of government measures for its relief! May God open the eyes of all who seek the prosperity of the British empire to the primary importance of a wholesome national religion, retaining its hold on the national heart, and moulding the national conscience to the grand political wisdom of the proverb—"My son, fear the Lord and the king, and meddle not with them that are given to change." ”

“ Thus the colossal genius of Burke stood before the world, in that war of elements, trampling the irreligion of France beneath his feet, like the Archangel thrusting Satan to his bottomless abyss. The spectacle was not lost. It was that beautiful and sublime exhibition of moral grandeur that quickened the noblest minds in Europe to imitative virtue, and produced the school of the Reaction. It was rather the spirit of British faith, and law, and loyalty, personified in him. The same spirit had been felt in France before: it had moulded the genius of Montesquieu, abstractly ”

“ It is impossible that a Conservatism, of which such is the sovereign genius, should achieve anything for the restoration of such a country as France. I have, indeed, predicted the restoration of the Bourbons, according to de Maistre's principles, by the sheer tenacity of life which belongs to a hereditary claim, and by which it outlasts all other pretensions. But I cannot think that either he or his disciples have done much to bring it about; and still less do I imagine that their system, as a system, can give permanence to the monarchy or prosperity to the state. ”

“ On him alone were soldiers quartered, and he had to furnish them, not only with lodgings in the midst of his family, but with fuel, cooking, stable-room, and fodder, at about one halfpenny a-day, often not paid, and to sell his hay to the government, for the use of the troops, at a fixed price, not equal to one-fourth of its value in the market. At the same time, a noble who tilled the ground like the peasant—who was perhaps not more intelligent, not more industrious—had a hereditary privilege of exemption from all these burdens, and enjoyed a share in the government of the country. ”

“ My lord, she is a countrywoman of yours, an Englishwoman, of beauty such as is seldom seen either in England or in France; good as, besides her, only the angels in heaven can be! She had just completed her eighteenth year when I left her, fatherless, motherless, and already widowed of an adored husband; she is feeble, delicate, almost ill, and yet she must live;—who would protect that little child? Oh! my lord, there are very unhappy beings in this world! ”

“ It is at this period that men have double the strength, for they have twice the hope, and exhilaration, and enterprise, that they have at any other epoch of their lives. That slender hoard, too, which will so soon be wasted in this country, which a few pleasures will drain, would carry them creditably into another, and lay the foundation for the utmost prosperity their birth and condition has led them to wish for. To the distant colony let them not devote their ill-fed and ill-taught children; but, going thither themselves, rear a healthy race for whom they will have no cares. ”

“ We may smile at her proverbial slowness; we may marvel at the desperate efforts she has made to stand still, while every one else was pressing forward; the curiously graduated system of education, by which she metes out to each class the modicum of knowledge which all must accept, and none may exceed—her protective custom-houses, which destroy her commerce—her quarantines against political contagion, which they cannot exclude—her system of passports, with all its complications and vexations, and the tedious formalities of her tardy functionaries,—may sometimes be subjects of ridicule. ”

“ The court of Hungary had long been the resort of men of learning and science; the chivalry of Europe had flocked to her camps, where military ardour was never disappointed of a combat, or religious zeal of an opportunity to slaughter infidels. In 1526, Ludovic, King of Hungary and Bohemia, with the flower of the Hungarian chivalry, fell fighting with the Turks at the disastrous battle of Mohacs—the Flodden field of Hungary. The monarchy was then elective, but when the late king left heirs of his body the election was but a matter of form. ”

“ Before the vainglorious taunt of Bossuet had passed from the memory of living men, all those causes were at work in France, which bred the whirlwind of infidelity, and which insured a revolution, not of fanaticism, but of atheism. The real power of the two churches, in moulding the character of a people, and retaining the loyalty of its noblest intellect, became, then, singularly apparent. In France, it was superstition to believe in God. In France, philosophers were afraid to own a great First Cause. In France, noblemen were ashamed to confess a conscience. ”

“ Persons who assert that Nicholas has no ambition, that all thirst of conquest is foreign to his character, are perhaps right; but greatly do those err who believe that he contents him with playing the part of the first Tory in Europe, and thinks only of closing the Russian frontier to liberal ideas, of drilling his guards and passing brilliant reviews. The works done, doing, and planned, at Nicolajeff, Sevastopol, Gumri, Erivan, prove the potent monarch to have ulterior views. For himself, he may be content not to enlarge the enormous territory within whose limits his voice is law. ”

“ Nor will England fail to reap her own reward from this enterprise. In every part of the world an Englishman will find a home. It will be as if his own native soil had been extended, as if duplicates of his own native land had risen from the ocean. A commercial intercourse of the most advantageous character will spring up; the population and the wealth of the old country will find fresh fields of employment in the new; the old country will itself grow young again, and start in the race with her own children for competitors. ”

“ Hungary, (to which we propose chiefly to direct our attention,) whose blood has been shed like water in defence of the house of Hapsburg—whose chivalry has more than once saved the empire—whom Napoleon, at the head of a victorious army in Vienna, was unable to scare, or to seduce from her allegiance to her fugitive king—whose population is more sincerely attached to monarchy than perhaps any other people in Europe, except ourselves, is in arms against the emperor of Austria. ”

“ Guided by the instinct of a woman's heart, and yielding to its impulse, she set at naught the remonstrances of her Austrian counsellors, and relied on the loyalty of the Hungarians. Proceeding to Presburg, she appeared at the meeting of the diet, told the assembled nobles the difficulties and dangers by which she was surrounded, and threw herself, her child, and her cause, upon their generosity. At that appeal every sabre leapt from its scabbard, and the shout, "Moriamur pro rege nostro, Maria Theresâ!" called all Hungary to arms. ”

“ The love of national independence, that repelled foreign aggression, has become a longing for personal liberty, that refuses to submit to arbitrary power. The road to distinction no longer leads to the court, but to the popular assembly; for the rewards conferred by the voice of the people have become more precious than any honours the sovereign can bestow. The duty of allegiance to the crown has become a question of reciprocal obligations, and has ceased to rest upon divine right. ”

“ These persevering efforts to extend the power of the crown by subverting national institutions, and thus to obliterate so many separate nationalities, have aroused for their defence a spirit that promises to perpetuate them.
Feelings of community of race and language, which had slumbered for many generations, have been revived with singular intensity. Italy for the Italians—Germany for the Germans—a new Sclavonic empire for the western Sclaves—the union of all the Sclave nations under the empire of the Czar—are cries which have had power to shake thrones, and may hereafter dismember empires. ”