Various

“ And were to deliver a speech full of sordid and base sentiments, you would be hissed. But let any other woman, with half your powers, arise and utter sentiments sweet and womanly, or honest and lofty—and applause would flow from every lip, and tears rush to many a worldly eye. The true proof of the inherent nobleness of our common nature is in the sympathy it betrays with what is noble wherever crowds are collected. Never believe the world is base;—if it were so, no society could hold together for a day. ”

“ In the trellis'd vine-clad arbour I will hold a feast to-night.
Call the friends who love me dearly, call the men of sense and soul,
Call the hearts whose blithe blood billows, like the juice that brims the bowl:
Let the wife who loves her husband, with her eyes of gracious blue,
Give the guests a fair reception—serve them with a tendance true;
With bright wine, bright thoughts be mated; and if creeping tears must be,
Let them creep unseen to-morrow, Rhine, when I am far from thee! ”

“ Here Riccabocca lifted one hand from his face, and grasped Harley's arm, as if mutely beseeching him to pause. The heart of the man struggled hard with his pride and his philosophy; and it was long before Harley could lead him to regard the worldly prospects which this last communication from his wife might open to his ruined fortunes. Not, indeed, till Riccabocca had persuaded himself, and half persuaded Harley, (for strong, indeed, was all presumption of guilt against the dead,) that his wife's protestations of innocence from all but error had been but ravings. ”

“ But Helen still leant on the arm of Mrs Riccabocca, and, in the walk back, it seemed to Leonard as if the winter had resettled in the sky.
Yet he was by the side of Violante, and she spoke to him with such praise, of Helen! Alas! it is not always so sweet as folks say, to hear the praises of one we love. Sometimes those praises seem to ask ironically, "And what right hast thou to hope because thou lovest? All love her." ”

“ The maxim which in our day is felt to contain the consummation of despotism, L'Etat—c'est moi, was once the motto of every throne, the essential character of dominion, the crown jewel, the substance of the sceptre. Whether that maxim is to be revived—whether the struggle between popular power and the throne is once more to be tried—whether the monarchies of Europe, unwarned by the rents already made in their ramparts by the comparatively slight incursions of the popular surge, are prepared to defy the ocean in its strength, must be left to the future. ”

“ Why does he live? why does he continue his miserable existence? is the only reflection which the sufferings of another man excite in our moody philosopher. For every lamenting wretch he has daggers, bowels of poison—no pity. If mankind could commit one simultaneous, universal act of suicide, it would be a most sublime deed—perhaps the only real act of wisdom and sublimity mankind has it in its power to perform.
Well, this absurd and horrible, this very ridiculous and most afflictive of morbid conditions, our clear-minded authoress never seems to have passed through. ”

“ This was one of Helen's habits that irritated the nerves of Lady Lansmere. She despised young ladies who were fond of work. She did not comprehend how often it is the resource of the sweet womanly mind, not from want of thought, but from the silence and the depth of it. Violante was surprised, and perhaps disappointed, that Harley had left the house before dinner, and did not return all the evening. ”

“ But if you trust on each representation to the fiery impulse of the moment, you will sometimes find it glow too much, and sometimes it will probably be hidden in smoke. The genius feels the passion and grandeur of a great Shaksperian creation, perhaps as entirely as Shakspeare himself, but it is only the artist who can place it before others. A poet could see the Venus of Canova in a block of marble, but it was the hammer and chisel of the sculptor which gave it its immortal form. ”

“ Leonard smiled with a beating heart, as he saw again the dear, prudent, warning look, and involuntarily drew closer to Helen. She seemed more restored to him and to her former self.
"Helped me much by his instructions; more, perhaps, by his very faults. You cannot guess, Helen—I beg pardon, Miss Digby—but I forgot that we are no longer children: you cannot guess how much we men, and, more than all perhaps, we writers, whose task it is to unravel the web of human actions, owe even to our own past errors; and if we learned nothing by the errors of others, we should be dull indeed. ”

“ It was impossible totally to overlook a power which had subverted one Constitution, and erected another—which had dethroned one dynasty, and enthroned another—which had begun its existence under theories of divine right, and signalised the maturity of its generation by establishing the most perfect national freedom which man had ever seen.
But, in continental Europe, the people formed no more an object, in the general polity of nations, than a submarine mountain takes its place in a map of the ocean. ”

“ The more foolish of them, and the vainest, persist in their fancied superiority, or attempt to drag down others to the miserable level to which they feel they have sunk themselves. The wiser and honester shake off these sable stains, measure their stature with that of the great and good, and give up the race before they have either become broken-winded or are made a laughing-stock to the spectators. I took a pair of scissors and deliberately reduced the small-clothes of Hamlet into shreds. ”

“ Harley.—"You puzzle me: what can they be?"
Violante.—"Pity and admiration; we pity the weak, and admire the brave."
Harley inclined his head, and was silent.
Lady Lansmere had suspended her conversation with Riccabocca to listen to this dialogue. "Charming!" she cried. "You have explained what has often perplexed me. Ah, Harley, I am glad to see that your satire is foiled: you have no reply to that."
"No; I willingly own myself defeated-too glad to claim the Signorina's pity, since my cavalry sword hangs on the wall, and I can have no longer a professional pretence to her admiration." ”

“ MISS MITFORD'S "RECOLLECTIONS." [1]
No one can have glanced at Our Village, or any of the charming sketches of Miss Mitford, without having been struck by the peculiar elegance, the raciness, the simplicity of her style. It is as free in all its movements as that pet of hers, the Italian greyhound she has made so familiar to us all—as free and as graceful. A beautiful style is no singularity in our days, and there are many orders of such beauty; nevertheless, Miss Mitford has a dialect of her own. ”

“ When numbers are reading this same book at the same time, the poet shares in the advantages of the orator: he adresses an audience who kindle each other's passions, each one of whom contributes something to the enthusiasm of the multitude, and receives back in his bosom the gathering enthusiasm of the crowd. When novelty, or any other circumstance, directs all eyes to the same page, that page is no longer read with the same calmness, the same perspicuity and judgment, that we bring to any other composition. The enthusiasm of friends, of neighbours, of the whole country, is added to our own. ”

“ May we be allowed to express, with all humility—although in doing so we may be subjected to the charge of being behind the march of modern intellect—our very serious doubts whether the class which Lord John Russell proposes to enfranchise, is, on the whole, adequate to the proper discharge of the electoral duties? It may be a prejudice upon our part, but we cannot think that a scavenger or a dustman is as likely to form a correct opinion of the qualities which ought to recommend a candidate as the man who has enjoyed the advantages of a superior education. ”

“ In the name of everything sacred and dear to us—in the name of intelligence, education, and common sense, we answer, No! We have but to look across the Channel to see what are the effects of universal suffrage; and surely there is no man in this country infatuated enough to wish that our free constitution should be exchanged for alternate anarchy and despotism. That is not the wish of the nation—nay more, we venture to say that it is not the wish of the nation that any experiment should be made tending in the least degree towards any such consummation. ”

“ The public appetite is not to be sated, as in days gone by, with mere melodramic romance, and tales of the wild and wonderful—there must be a relish of cantharides in the dish in order to make it palatable. We seldom hear anything nowadays of our old friends, the benevolent robber, the mysterious monk, the misanthropical count, or the persecuted damsel—these characters belonged to past times; our caterers for the public taste deal exclusively with the present. The nobleman of these fictions, whether he be old or young, is invariably a profligate and a seducer. ”

“ I pass over the preparations, the journey, the disappointment at the sight of the ugly street and hideous building in which our fortunes were to be tried. At six I was dressed and on the stage, Miss Claribel in her dressing-room, my mother in a stage-box; not a soul in the pit, nobody at the door; two orange-women standing beside their baskets near the orchestra, and the whole house, as seen by me through a hole in the green curtain, deserted and uncomfortable in the extreme. The manager, a most polite little gentleman, who was great in comedy, and enacted the part of Osric, was at my side. ”

“ Lord John Russell's new measure of Representative Reform has resolved itself into the shape of a negation. It is, perhaps, the most abortive and unsatisfactory scheme that was ever presented to the nation. It is not good enough to be accepted by one section of politicians, at least as a permanent gift—not so utterly bad as to excite the anger of another, though it may well challenge their contempt. ”

“ Could mere friendship for Riccabocca be a sufficient inducement to a man, who, whatever his weaknesses or his errors, seemed to wear on his very forehead a soul above deceit, to stoop to paltry means, even for a worthy end? At this question, a new thought flashed upon Randal—might not Lord L'Estrange have speculated himself upon winning Violante?—would not that account for all the exertions he had made on behalf of her inheritance at the court of Vienna—exertions of which Peschiera and Beatrice had both complained? ”

“ If the anticipations of those agitators had been fulfilled—if they had carried, as they proposed, a sweeping measure of reform, based upon household or universal suffrage—and if, in consequence, the majority of the House of Commons had consisted of men professing the opinions of Mr Cobden, and resolute to put them into practice, into what a state of anarchy and abject terror would this country now have been thrown! Without a fleet to scour the Channel, without an army to defend our shores, we should have been at the mercy of almost any assailant. ”

“ The monarch had, undoubtedly, the right to choose, but it was the right to choose between submitting to the captain of the ship and going over the side. He might appoint his cabinet, but he must appoint it from the men whom the political class offered; he could not stray into the world for a better selection; he could not follow the man of talents, or the man of integrity, into the less nobly born and less dexterously combined orders of society: there stood the aristocratic recruits for his government, and unless he took them as they were, he was a general without an army. ”

“ We hold it to be the foulest blot in the working of the British Constitution; and we say advisedly, that nothing can be done to purify the system, short of an enactment enforcing rigorous pains and penalties, both on those who are proved to have tendered, and on those who are proved to have accepted, a bribe. There is no other way of dealing with corruption. Under the ballot—which many of the Radical reformers represent as a sure and certain check, but which we hope, for the sake of manhood and truth, will never be enacted—bribery could most easily be reduced to a system of organised betting. ”

“ And the Countess, it must be owned, was more emphatically cordial to her than she had ever yet been to Captain Digby's orphan. But perhaps the real difference in the heart of either girl was this, that Helen felt awe of Lady Lansmere, and Violante felt only love for Lord L'Estrange's mother. Violante, too, was one of those persons whom a reserved and formal person, like the Countess, "can get on with," as the phrase goes. Not so poor little Helen—so shy herself, and so hard to coax into more than gentle monosyllables. And Lady Lansmere's favourite talk was always of Harley. ”

“ The multitude of aged trees, which encircle the city as with a girdle of foliage—the lofty white houses, terminating in flat roofs surrounded by turrets—the numerous temples, with their gilded canopies—the Boodhala, crowned by the palace of the Dalai Lama—all unite to give Lhassa a majestic and imposing appearance. ”

“ But doubtless the sympathy with distress is apt to be heartiest and warmest on the part of those who themselves have experienced the woes they witness. It is very touching to contemplate Mrs Moodie walking twenty miles through a bleak forest—the ground covered with snow, and the thermometer far below zero—to minister to the necessities of one whose sufferings were greater even than her own. ”