Various

“ Let no man venture to say that Chess is an ignoble subject. It is, if properly considered, as recondite a science as mathematics. Kings, conquerors, and sages have not thought it beneath them to ponder over the chequered board; and it may be that the noble game has contributed in no light degree to the success of their most triumphant efforts. We know of no absorption more complete than that which possesses the mind of a true votary of chess. Watch him as he is contemplating his moves, and his countenance is a perfect study for the physiognomist. ”

“ As the hot sun blazed out above us, and the blue water came plunge up over the rail, blazing and flashing, first one side dipped, then the other, I could fancy the passengers on the Indiaman's poop in a light breeze with a suspicious lateen-rigged sail creeping up on her quarter. I thought I saw Violet Hyde's eyes sparkle against the glare of light, and her lips parting to speak—till I actually stamped on the deck, my fists clenched, and I made three strides to the very taffrail of the schooner. ”

“ Mr Webster is getting quite into the Ostade manner. His colouring, too, is admirable. No. 54 is a boy in a chimney corner, supping pottage, with an old woman knitting opposite to him. Both faces are excellent, and full of character. A Cherry Seller is a perfect bijou—the woman weighing out the fruit; the boys, looking on with eager eyes and watering mouths; the fruit itself, with its Dutch nicety of finish:—altogether it is a most desirable picture, such as one can hardly pass, even for the twentieth time, without pausing for another view. ”

“ I accordingly agreed with Jones to hold on with everything as long as possible, in spite of the way she was sometimes flung off with the crest of a wave, as it were, making a clear dive with her nose under water through a white seething sea that seemed to swell round the whole horizon: the black bank of cloud off our weather-beam towered like icebergs against the cold green sky to south-east, the stars glittering and twinkling over it, with little hazy rings round them, after a fashion that one of us liked no more than the other. ”

“ As in the last result everything advances to its end, 'the terrible spirit of innovation which overruns the world', as the Emperor said, and to which he had opposed the barrier of his genius, has resumed its course. The institutions of the conqueror fail: he will be the last of great existences on the earth. Nothing hereafter will overshadow society, parcelled out and levelled: the shadow of Napoleon alone will be seen on the verge of the old world which has been destroyed, like the phantom of the deluge on the edge of its abyss. ”

“ Next day, in fact, we were both of us quietly at anchor outside of the shipping in Table Bay; Cape Town glittering along on the green flat amongst the trees to southward, with the hills on each side of it like some big African lion lying on guard close by; while Table Mountain hove up, square-shouldered, blue to the left, four thousand feet high, as bare and steep as a wall, with the rocks and trees creeping up from the foot, and the wreaths of light cloud resting halfway, like nothing else but the very breakwater of the world's end. ”

“ Here Mr Daniel Snout, who was in a state of beastly intoxication, swayed himself up bodily into the schooner's taffrail, and sat with his arms folded, his long legs swinging over the stern, and his head trying to keep steady, as he scowled solemnly aloft over the frigate's mizen-royal-masthead; while the third lieutenant, Mr Hammond, and the master's mate he had aboard with him, could be heard laughing at his back, as if they had gone mad—Hammond being a wild sprig of an Irishman, who would go any length for a piece of fun. ”

“ Where are the picture galleries, or the great libraries, the great institutions, erected by the wealth of the Jew? As to the genius which endows mankind, for generations to come, with noble inventions, or leaves its name behind in a track of glory to posterity, who ever heard of it among the Jews? Shopkeepers of London have planted its vicinity with great establishments, castles of charity, magnificent monuments of practical religion, to which all the works of Jewish bounty are molehills. ”

“ The Jew gives no pledge to any country; he is no possessor of land, no leader of science, no professor of the liberal pursuits, no manufacturer, no merchant, no sailor, no soldier; as if some irresistible destination prohibited him from ever finally settling in any land, his property is always ready to take wing. Must we not ask, Is this fugitive the man who has a right to share [74] the privileges of the Englishman, bound, as we are, to the soil by nature, and bound to its defence and prosperity by the indissoluble obligation of nature? ”

“ Look away yonder, sir!"
It had got to a clear, dry, north-easterly gale, that shook our canvass every time she lifted, singing through the ropes, and bitter cold. Long and heavy as the roll of the sea was, the sky was as keen and clear as glass all round about and aloft, save the mist kicked up by the spray off a wave here and there. If a rag of white cloud appeared, it was blown away, and you saw the black wrinkled side of one wave at a time, a mile wide, you'd have said, freckled all over with spots of foam, and its ridge heaving against the eye of the blast. ”

“ We may regret, and many of us do unquestionably most bitterly feel, the anomalous position in which we are placed. A more cruel, a more galling thought can hardly be imagined than the conviction which is very general abroad, and which is also ours, that the present Parliament does not represent the feelings or the desires of the people; that it is not consulting their welfare or protecting their interests; and that the duration of that Parliament alone prevents a vigorous and successful effort in the cause of British industry. Yet still, while we feel all this, let us not be unjust to others. ”

“ Who ever heard of the Jew taking any part in those noble struggles which have saved the honour or secured the rights of any nation on earth? His business is gain, and it is the only business that he ever follows; from the man with ten firms and five hundred clerks, with a counting-house in every village from the Rhine to the Neva, down to the seller of old clothes, and the pedlar in dilapidated slippers, who ever heard of a Jew thinking of anything but to make money? ”

“ His fidelity was not to prosperity, but to adversity; his bond was not to the powerful, but to the unfortunate; reversing the revolutionary maxim, he brought the actions of public men to the test, not of success, but of disaster. He often irritated his friends when in power by the independence of his language, but he never failed to command the respect of his enemies when in adversity, by his constancy to misfortune. "Vive le roi quand-même," ever became his principle when the gales of adversity blew, and the hollow-hearted support of the world began to fail. ”

“ You saw the fleecy rags of scud actually settling together under the dark vapour moving above them, and heard nothing but the vast washing welter of the billows rising and seething for miles round, as if the world were water, while the schooner rolled helplessly away, with her storm-staysails flapping, into the trough. The midshipman almost gasped as he looked to me—not from fear, but as much as to say, "What next?" Our strange mate stood against the fife-rail of the mainmast, apparently too intent on the sky and sea for speaking. ”

“ We certainly cannot admire the burly figure and swarthy complexion of Mr Landseer's Duke, which gives us the idea of a younger and more robust man than him it is intended to represent. We should be disposed to object to the strained appearance of the downward-pointing hand; but the gesture is said to be one habitual to the original, and of course the painter was right to preserve character, even at the cost of grace. The less prominent portion of the picture is the most to our taste—the peasants and child, the dogs and game, and the plough horses with their old driver. ”

“ It may, doubtless, be retarded by remissions of rent not sufficient to cover the farmer's losses, but great enough to induce him to renew his efforts for another year with the like miserable result; until at length the tiller of the soil is made bankrupt, and the landowner occupies his place. We can hardly trust ourselves to depict the effect of such a social revolution. All the misery which has been already felt—and that is far greater than our rulers will permit themselves to believe—would be as nothing compared with the calamitous consummation of Free Trade. ”

“ The whole picture is deficient in originality. The eye wanders over it, seeking some feature of special interest or striking beauty whereon to dwell, and finds none. Mr Pickersgill has good qualities, but the spark of fancy and genius which alone can complete the great painter, is, we fear, wanting in his composition.
We turn with pleasure to Leslie's pictures. Were we disposed to find fault with this very agreeable artist, our objections could only be technical. With want of imagination, and feeling for beauty, none can tax him. ”

“ With such a neat thing of a sea-boat under you, you might do anything you please; so cruise to windward or leeward in chase, find her out, and take out Westwood bodily—lose him afterwards in the Hoogley, if you like—carry away those old spars of hers, and send up new ones—only don't lose the schooner, I beg; so good bye to you, my dear fellow, lest we should not meet on this side the Line again!"—"Good bye, my lord!" said I cheerfully, and hurried on deck, understanding all he wanted as well as if I'd been ordered to set her jib that moment and heave up anchor. ”

“ I do not believe that human figures ever expressed anything so menacing and so terrible. These grenadiers, covered with wounds, so long the terror of Europe, who had seen so many thousand bullets fly over their heads, who seemed to smell of fire and powder—these very men, deprived of their leader, were forced to salute an old king, enfeebled by time and not combats, guarded by an army of Russians, Austrians, and Prussians, in the conquered capital of Napoleon! ”

“ Is it not I, Madam, who have written the pamphlet of Buonaparte and the Bourbons; the articles on the arrival of Louis XVIII. at Compiègne; the relation of the Royal Council at Ghent, and the History of the Life and Death of the Duke de Berri? I know not that I have written a single page where the name of our ancient kings is not either mentioned or alluded to, and where they are not environed by the protestations of my love and fidelity—a thing which marks strength of principle the more strongly, asMadame knows that, as an individual, I put no faith in princes. ”

“ The sight of the sea ridging up with a dim glimmer against the dark, kept your eye fixed to it: first you thought it would burst right aboard, crash down upon the decks; then she lifted with it, swelling broad under her, while the long steady sweep of the gale drove just over the bulwarks with a deep moan: for half a minute, perhaps, a shivering lull, when you heard the bulkheads and timbers creak and strain below from stem to stern, and the bilge-water yearning, as it were, to the water outside. ”

“ In a political point of view, what security could we have for confiding in the Jew,—for intrusting our finances, our liberties, our councils, the guardianship of our country, to the Jew? The especial and perpetual object of his existence is money. Now, while every man knows that money is the great corrupter of the human mind, that, except in minds fully fortified by principle, it overwhelms all other objects, and that, in all the convulsions of the greatest war of Europe—the war of the French Revolution—the secrets of every Continental cabinet were at the mercy of the purse ”

“ Is it meant to tell the people of England, that what common sense rejects, is to be forced on general weariness; that what manly principle repels, is to be gained by vulgar perseverance; and that which public judgement denounces, is to be made law by the united effect of disgust and disdain producing indifference? We trust that the common sense of England will speak such a language to the Legislature, as to extinguish the prestige that obstinacy in the wrong is more effective than honesty in the right; that to be sickened of a struggle, is a legitimate reason for abandoning the contest ”

“ Monuments are for little men, for the great a stone and a name. At least they should have suspended the coffin from the summit of the triumphal arch which records his exploits: nations from afar should have beheld their master borne aloft on the shoulders of his victories. Was not the urn which contained the ashes of Trajan placed at Rome, beneath his column? Napoleon at Paris will be lost amidst the crowd of unknown names. ”

“ The spectacle is at once animating and mournful: animating as evincing of what high resolves, of what heroic constancy, noble minds are capable even in the extremity of disaster: mournful, as exhibiting so bright a contrast to the tergiversation of later times, and suggesting the mournful reflection that, in these days of economists and material enjoyment, the days of chivalry are gone for ever.
It is well known that Chateaubriand was esteemed not only a Liberal, but an ultra-Liberal, by the extreme Royalist party whom Charles X. summoned to his councils on his accession to the throne ”

“ One of the foremost pictures in the Exhibition—certainly the one about which most curiosity has been excited—is Edwin Landseer's Dialogue at Waterloo. We are unfeigned admirers of Mr Landseer's genius, but we do not think this one of his happiest efforts. There is much fashion in these matters; people are very apt to be led away by a name, and to fall into ecstasies before a picture simply because it is by a great painter. ”