Various

“ The time will never come, when the aid of loyalty will not be required to bind society to its chief: and if the time should ever come that its generous influence is no longer felt, it may safely be concluded that the sun of national prosperity has set, and that a night of darkness and suffering is at hand. Mankind cannot be attached, save in a passing moment of fervour, to an abstract principle, or a vast community without a head, or something which may supply its want to the senses. ”

“ Did you ever build one when you were a boy? And the lords of that palace are lords of the land, almost as far as you can see, and of those numberless flocks; and, better still, of a health which an antediluvian might have envied, and of nerves so seasoned with horse-breaking, cattle-driving, fighting with wild blacks—chases from them and after them, for life and for death—that if any passion vex the breast of those kings of the Bushland, fear at least is erased from the list. ”

“ The bowman prized his boat-hook into the rudder-chains, where the big hull swung round us on both sides like an immense wheel round its barrel, every stern-window with a face watching us—though one stroke of the loose rudder would have stove us to bits, and the swell was each moment like to make the men let go, as it hove us up almost near enough to have caught a hand from the lower-deck. ”

“ Let every Welshman, while he maintains intact and undiminished the real honour of his country, join with his Saxon neighbour, imitating his good qualities, correcting his evil ones by his own good example; and let their children, mingling in blood, obliterate the national distinctions that now are mischievously sought to be revived;—so shall the union of Wales with England remain unrepealed, and the common honour of the two countries, distinct yet conjoined, be promoted by their common weal. ”

“ Power! My dear Seward, who denies it? But great Power—true poetical Power—is self-collected—not turbulent though dealing with turbulence—in its own stately passion dominating physical nature in its utmost distraction—and in her blind forces seeing a grandeur—a sublimity that only becomes visible or audible to the senses, through the action of imagination creating its own consistent ideal world out of that turmoil—making the fury of falling waters appeal to our Moral Being, from whose depths and heights rise emotions echoing all the tones of the thundering cataract. ”

“ But while we fully admit that these extraordinary circumstances, unparalleled in the past history of the world, go far to extenuate the blame which must be thrown on the French writers for their extraordinary vanity, they will not entirely exculpate them. Ordinary men may well be carried away by such adventitious and flattering marks of their power; but we cannot accept such an excuse from the first men of the age—men of the clearest intellect, and the greatest acquisitions—whose genius is to charm, whose wisdom is to instruct the world through every succeeding age. ”

“ I overhauled her well as we got near, and a beautiful long schooner-model she was, with sharp bows, and a fine easy-run hull from stem to stern, but dreadfully dirty and spoilt with top-bulwarks, as if they meant to make her look as clumsy as possible; while the brig-rig of her aloft, with the ropes hanging in bights and hitches, gave her the look of a hedge-parson on a race-horse: at the same time, I counted six closed ports of a side, in her red streak, the exact breadth and colour of itself. ”

“ The natural gallantry of man, the feelings of chivalry, the respect due to the softer sex, are mingled in overwhelming proportions with the abstract passions of loyalty when a young and interesting woman, endowed with masculine energy, but adorned with feminine beauty, surrounded by the husband of her choice and the children of her love, is seen braving the risks and enduring the fatigues of a journey through lands recently convulsed by civil dissension, solely to win the love of her subjects, to heal the divisions of the great family of which she forms the head. ”

“ Lord Campbell, in his evidence, admits that the marriage law of Scotland has been perfectly well ascertained upon most points—that there can be no doubt what is, and what is not, a marriage; but that the real difficulty consists in getting at the facts. Armed with this testimony, we may fairly conclude that unintentional bigamy is impossible; but that bigamy, when it takes place, is the deliberate act of a party.
Bigamy is beyond all dispute a crime of a heinous nature. Its consequences are so obviously calamitous, that no power of oratory can make them appear greater than they are ”

“ We may regret that it is so: we may lament that we cannot find poets and romancers, who to the genius of Byron, or the fancy of Moore, unite the sturdy sense of Johnson, or the simplicity of character of Scott; but it is to be feared such a combination is as rare, and as little to be looked for in general life, as the union of the strength of the war-horse to the fleetness of the racer, or the courage of the mastiff to the delicacy of the greyhound. Adam Smith long ago pointed out the distinction between those who serve and those who amuse mankind ”

“ The squall burst into our wet topsails as loud as the thunder, with a flash almost like the lightning itself, taking us broad abeam; the ship groaned and shook for a minute ere gathering way and falling off, and when she rose and began to go plunging through the black surges, no brig was to be seen: every man on deck let his breath out almost in a cry, scarce feeling as yet but it was equal to losing sight for ever of our late shipmates, or the least hope of them. ”

“ It not unfrequently exists, in the highest degree, in those who have the strongest inward consciousness of the services they have rendered to mankind. No man was more unassuming than Kepler, but he wrote in reference to his great discoveries, and the neglect they at first met with, "I may well be a century without a reader, since God Almighty has been six thousand years without such an observer as me." Yet is this universally felt to have been no unworthy effusion of vanity, but a noble expression of great services rendered by one of his most gifted creatures to the glory of the Almighty. ”

“ Let the nobles and gentry spend their incomes in the country, not out of it; let them live even amid their mountains, and mix with their people; let them improve the towns by introducing English tradesmen as much as possible; let them try to get up a spirit of industry, perseverance, and cleanliness throughout the land;—so shall they discomfit the Chartists, and convert the democrats into good subjects. Let the clergy reform the discipline of the Welsh church; let them alter the financial inequalities and abuses that prevail in it, to an almost incredible extent ”

“ Yet this observation is only generally, not universally, true; and Sir Joshua Reynolds remains a memorable proof that it is possible for an artist to unite the highest genius and most imaginative power of mind to the wisdom of a philosopher, the liberality of a gentleman, the benevolence of a Christian, and the simplicity of a child.
We are not at all surprised at the intoxication which seizes the literary men and artists whose genius procures for them the favour or admiration of women. Everybody knows it is the most fascinating and transporting flattery which the mind of man can receive. ”

“ It was night as Vivian and myself rode slowly home. Night in Australia! How impossible to describe its beauty! Heaven seems, in that new world, so much nearer to earth! Every star stands out so bright and particular, as if fresh from the time when the Maker willed it. And the moon like a large silvery sun;—the least object on which it shines so distinct and so still.2 Now and then a sound breaks the silence, but a sound so much in harmony with the solitude that it only deepens its charms. Hark! the low cry of a night-bird, from yonder glen amidst the small gray gleaming rocks. ”

“ Inconsiderately, my dear sir, we seem indeed to ourselves to know what Death is; but this is from confounding the Thing and its Effects. For we see effects: at first, the stoppage of certain sensible actions—afterwards, the dissolution of certain sensible parts. But what it is that has happened—wherefore the blood no longer flows—the limbs no longer move—that we do not see. We do not see it with our eyes—we do not discern it by any inference of our understanding. It is a fact that seems to lie shrouded for ever from our faculties in awful and impenetrable mystery. ”

“ Much rather we must believe that, if it pleased, or shall ever please, the Creator to open in this Mind, in a new world, new modes of sensation, the susceptibility for these modes is already there for another set of senses. Now we are confined to an eye that sees distinctly at a few paces of distance. We have no reason for thinking that, united with a finer organ of sight, we should not see far more exquisitely; and thus, sir, our notices of the dependence in which the Mind now subsists upon the body do of themselves lead us to infer its own self-subsistency. ”

“ In the midst of all this, the church in Wales is itself divided into high and low, into genteel and vulgar; the dignitaries hold to the abuses of the system,—and some, less burdened with common sense than the rest, gabble about "Wales and the Welsh," as if any fresh fuel were wanted to feed the fire already burning beneath the surface of society! ”

“ It was a noble spectacle to behold a young Queen, at a time when scarce a monarch in Europe was secure on his throne, setting out with her illustrious consort and family to make a royal progress through her dominions, and selecting for the first place of her visit the island which had so recently raised the standard of rebellion against her government, and for the next the city which had first in the empire responded to the cry of treason raised in Paris, on the overthrow of the throne of Louis Philippe. ”

“ Had he sent from his side, into noble warfare, some boy fresh to life, new to sin, with an enthusiasm pure and single-hearted as his own young chivalrous ardour—then, with all a soldier's joy, he had yielded a cheerful tribute to the hosts of England; but here he recognised, though perhaps dimly, not the frank military fervour, but the stern desire of expiation—and in that thought he admitted forebodings that would have been otherwise rejected—so that, at the close of the letter, it seemed not the fiery war-seasoned Roland that wrote, but rather some timid, anxious mother. ”

“ Charles Dickens is a man of original and genial genius—his popularity is a proof of the goodness of the heart of the people;—and the love of him and his writings—though not so thoughtful as it might be—does honour to that strength in the English character which is indestructible by any influences, and survives in the midst of frivolity, and folly, and of mental depravations, worse than both. ”

“ Joined with all this, there is a mean and petty spirit of deceit and concealment too often shown even in the middle classes; and there is also the old Celtic vice of feud and clanship, which tends to divide the nation, and to impede its advancement in civilisation. Thus the old feud between North and South Wales still subsists, rife as ever; the northern man, prejudiced, ignorant, and indolent, comes forth from his mountains and looks down with contempt on the dweller in the southern vales, his superior in all the arts and pursuits of civilised life. ”

“ The only thing that preserves Wales from rapidly verging to the condition of Ireland, is the absence of large towns with their contaminating influences, and the purely agricultural character of the greatest portion of the people. But even the mountaineer and the man of the plain may be corrupted at last, and he may degenerate into the wretched cottier—the poor slave, not of a proud lord, but of a profligate republic. ”

“ SEWARD.
Ay, sir; methinks the Hell of Virgil—and his Elysian Fields are examples of a high, solemn, and beautiful Poetry. But they have a much deeper interest for a man studious, in earnest, of his fellow-men. Since they really express the notions under which men have with serious belief shadowed out for themselves the worlds to which the grave is a portal. The true moral spirit that breathes in his enumeration of the Crimes that are punished, of the Virtues that have earned and found their reward, and some scattered awful warnings—are impressive even to us Christians. ”

“ It is not the man of brave and bold designs baffled, or the utopian enthusiast disappointed of the fulfilment of his golden dreams, or the adherent of one absorbing political idea looking at it lying broken to pieces at his feet: in all of these there is a dash of noble and disinterested sentiment, and the politician defeated in his conflict with the world has still the consolation of an honest if mistaken heart, into which he can retire without the sting of self-reproach. ”

“ Had a king been there, still more one of unpopular manner or retired habits, when all the thrones of Europe were falling around us, the event might have been very different, and England, with all its glories, have been sunk in the bottomless pit of revolution. The feelings of loyalty to a Queen, especially if she is young and handsome, and unites the virtues to the graces of her sex, are very different from those which, under the most favourable circumstances, can be awakened in favour of a king. ”