Various

“ The overthrow of Marlborough effected an object quite unlooked for by his eager and shortsighted enemies. The efforts of faction, aided by a palace intrigue, showed what had been due to the greatness of one man. Instantly, as if by enchantment, the fabric of victory raised by his all-potent arm was dissolved. Spain was lost, Flanders reconquered, Germany threatened! The arch of the Grand Alliance fell to pieces. These show in brighter colours than ever the greatness and patriotism of Marlborough. ”

“ The sun of tawny, torrid Spain, on whose flag it once never set, is not to be trifled with; and its coup is, indeed, frequent and fatal in summer, the season selected perforce for the bull-fight. In winter the bulls fall off, from the want of artificial green crops, which are hardly known in the Peninsula; they only recover their prime condition, courage, and fierceness, when refreshed, like giants, by a free range over the rich pastures which the spring of the south calls into life and luxuriance. ”

“ Is it wrong to depict, in prose or verse—for the lesson may be conveyed in either—the ignorance of the people of Europe in past ages, and the exceeding presumption and monstrous latitude of their teachers? If so, it would be better for us at once to get rid of history. A work of fiction, which does nothing more than reproduce historical truths, can never, in our opinion, be condemned for giving a faithful picture of the manners of the time; and that Mr Longfellow's is a faithful picture, no one who has studied the manners and perused the literature of the middle ages will deny. ”

“ A unanimous cry of indignation arose from every part of the Continent; a crusade commenced, in all quarters, from the experienced suffering of mankind; from the east and from the west, from the north and from the south, the liberating warriors came forth, and the strength of an injured world collected by a convulsive effort at the heart, to throw off the load which had oppressed it. Securely cradled amidst the waves, England, like her immortal chief at Waterloo, had calmly awaited the hour when she might be called on to take the lead in the terrible strife. ”

“ Europe beheld with astonishment the arms of Prussia united with those of Russia to destroy the barrier of the Continent against the Muscovite power on the Sarmatian plains; the Leopards of England joined to the tricolor standard to wrest Antwerp from Holland, and secure the throne of the Netherlands to a son-in-law of France; and the scarlet uniforms blended with the ensigns of revolution to beat down the liberties of the Basque provinces, and prepare the heiress of Spain for the arms of a son of France, on the very theatre of Wellington's triumphs. ”

“ Such is the nature of the poem, which does undeniably exhibit many proofs of genius, accomplishments, power of expression, and learning; but which, nevertheless, we cannot accept as a great work. It is like an ornament in which some gems of the purest lustre are set, side by side with fragments of coloured glass, and even inferior substances. The evident presence of the latter sometimes shakes our faith in the absolute value of the jewels, which are deserving of better association ”

“ Every commercial crisis which paralysed industry, every social struggle which excited hope, every successful innovation which diminished security, added to the stream of hardy and enterprising emigrants who crowded to its shores; New Zealand was added to the already colossal empire of England in Oceania; and it is apparent that the foundations have been laid in a fifth hemisphere of another nation, destined to rival, perhaps eclipse, Europe itself in the career of human improvement. For the first time in the history of mankind the course of advancement ceased to be from East to West ”

“ Nor, if he could have fallen in love, was Violante the one to attract that sullen, secret heart; her instinctive nobleness, the very stateliness of her beauty, womanlike though it was, awed him. Men of that kind may love some soft slave—they cannot lift their eyes to a queen. They may look down—they cannot look up. But, on the one hand, Randal could not resign altogether the chance of securing a fortune that would realise his most dazzling dreams, upon the mere assurance, however probable, which had so dismayed him ”

“ No man, when called to account in Parliament for any of his acts which had brought the country to the very verge of hostility, could defend himself with more intrepidity, or carry away the House by a more eloquent and intrepid assertion of the principles, or appeal to the feelings, which find a responsive echo in the most moving, because the noblest and most disinterested, chords of the British heart.
Yet, with all this, he was one of the most dangerous Ministers that ever held the portfolio of the Foreign Office in Great Britain ”

“ Disastrous beyond all precedent, or what even could have been conceived, have been the effects of this new revolution in Paris on the whole Continent; and a very long period must elapse before they are obviated. The spectacle of a government, esteemed one of the strongest in Europe, and a dynasty which promised to be of lasting duration, overturned almost without resistance by an urban tumult, roused the revolutionary party everywhere to a perfect pitch of frenzy. ”

“ Mr Lake Price has certainly shown good taste in suppressing the more revolting and painful details of bull-fights. The bloody minutiæ of the spectacle would have spoiled his pictures. In painting bull-fights, as in painting battles, the artist must leave to imagination by far the greater part of the gaping wounds and streaming blood, and horrible mutilations. No field of severe battle was ever painted, we apprehend, exactly as it appeared to him who walked over it just as the fight was done. The fidelity of a daguerreotype would be inadmissible in such cases. ”

“ But although the dangers of revolutionary convulsion have been adjourned, at least, if not entirely removed, by the general triumph of military power on the Continent, and its entire re-establishment in France, other dangers, of an equally formidable, and perhaps still more pressing, kind, have arisen from its very success. Since the battle of Waterloo all the contests in Europe have been internal only. There have been many desperate and bloody struggles, but they have not been those of nation against nation, but of class with class, or race with race. No foreign wars have desolated Europe ”

“ The chief efforts of governments in every country have been directed to the preservation of that peace which the collisions of so many interests, and the vehemence of such passions, endangered: war was repeatedly threatened, but it was so, not by sovereigns, but by the people. The sovereigns were successful; but their being so only augmented the dangers of their position, and increased the peril arising from the ardour of the social passions with which they had to contend; for every year of peace added to the strength of their opponents as much as it diminished their own. ”

“ But the melancholy on his countenance was ineffably sweet and serene, and on his ample forehead there was that power, so rarely seen in early youth—the power that has conquered, and betrays its conquests but in calm. The period of doubt, of struggle, of defiance, was gone for ever; genius and soul were reconciled to human life. ”

“ Without scrupulous fidelity here, history may degenerate into a libel, and a lie—a lie of unspeakable baseness, for it is regarding the dead, who cannot burst indignant from the tomb in which they were laid with honour, it may have been amidst the tears and sighs of a proud and bereaved nation;—a lie of unspeakable wickedness, for it is designed to live, and, living, to lie to all future ages, in proportion to the strength of the pen which writes it. These are truths to which the heart of mankind instantly responds ”

“ We reckon it amongst the remarkable and hopeful signs of the times, that young men of family and fortune voluntarily abandon the luxurious ease of home for such breakneck and laborious expeditions as that whose record is before us. Whatever the faults of the nobles of Great Britain, effeminacy is certainly not of the number. May the day be far distant when this is otherwise, and when we cease to possess, in a bold and manly aristocracy, one important guarantee of our national greatness. ”

“ France was conquered, but the principles of her Revolution were not extirpated; they had covered her own soil with mourning, but they were too flattering to the pride of the human heart to be subdued but by many ages of suffering. The lesson taught by the subjugation of her power, the double capture of her capital, was too serious to be soon forgotten by her rulers; but the agony which had been previously felt by the people, had ended with a generation which was now mouldering in its grave. It is by, the last impressions that the durable opinions of mankind are formed ”

“ The door flew open as did that of the mystic cavern at the sound of 'Open, Sesame;' and Giacomo, almost weeping with joyous emotion, exclaimed in Italian, "The good Lord! Holy San Giacomo! thou hast heard me at last! We are safe now." And dropping the blunderbuss with which he had taken the precaution to arm himself, he lifted Harley's hand to his lips, in the affectionate greeting familiar to his countrymen. ”

“ Their rapture is wrought to its pitch, when the horse, maddened with the wounds and terror, the crimson seams streaking his foam-and-sweat whitened body, flies from the still pursuing bull: then are displayed the nerve and horsemanship of the picador. It is a piteous sight to behold the mangled horses treading out their protruding and quivering entrails, and yet carrying off their riders unhurt. ”

“ The change in the ruling passions of mankind has clearly appeared in the annals of nations, in the thirty years which followed the fall of Napoleon. Governments have often great difficulties to contend with, but it has been not with each other, but with their subjects; many of them have been overturned, not by foreign armies, but by their own. Europe has been often on the verge of a general war, but the danger of it arose not, as in former days, from the throne, but the cottage; the persons who urged it on were not kings or their ministers, but the tribunes of the people. ”

“ The first successful stand against the deluge of revolution was made in Great Britain; and there it was withstood, not by the bayonets of the soldiers, but by the batons of the citizens. The 10th April was the Waterloo of chartist rebellion in England; a memorable proof that the institutions and traditionary influences of a free people, suited to their wants, and in harmony with their dispositions, can, in such felicitous circumstances, oppose a more successful barrier to social dangers than the most powerful military force at the command of a despotic chief. ”

“ So my client would rather take a few thousands less from a man who don't set up to be his rival. Balance of power in counties as well as nations."
Randal was silent.
"Well," said Levy, with great kindness of manner, "I see I pain you; and though I am what my very pleasant guests would call a parvenu, I comprehend your natural feelings as a gentleman of ancient birth. Parvenu! Ah! is it not strange, Leslie, that no wealth, no fashion, no fame can wipe out that blot. They call me a parvenu, and borrow my money. ”

“ Lord Bolingbroke said of him, that "he was the greatest general and greatest minister that this country or any other had produced—the perfection of genius, matured by experience." If we may presume to say it, he appears to have been one of those raised by Providence as a great instrument, for a great exigency in the affairs of mankind. It is true that Marlborough had his faults, and grave ones; but the genius of history is, in such a case, equally outraged by an attempt at suppression or exaggeration. ”

“ Marlborough found him the centre of a galaxy of glory of almost every description of military, political, and intellectual distinction. He was blazing in the zenith of his power and success: he was making France the world, and installing the Roman Catholic religion in a black and bloody predominance. "Unbroken good fortune," says Mr Alison, "had attended all his enterprises, since he had launched into the career of foreign aggrandisement." But how did Marlborough leave him? Let the dying monarch speak for himself. ”

“ Randal had hitherto supposed that this notorious tuft-hunter—this dandy capitalist—this money-lender, whose whole fortune had been wrung from the wants and follies of an aristocracy, was naturally a firm supporter of things as they are—how could things be better for men like Baron Levy? But the usurer's burst of democratic spleen did not surprise his precocious and acute faculty of observation. He had before remarked, that it is the persons who fawn most upon an aristocracy, and profit the most by the fawning, who are ever at heart its bitterest disparagers. ”