Various

“ The men on board the frigate, watched the “Infernal” till its dim sail was lost in a pitch-dark night. Then came a fierce and sudden blaze—a torrent of fire like the great eruption of Vesuvius, and a concussion that made the vessel tremble from its keel to its topmost spar. Tenfold night succeeded—and silence; and every eye was vigilant to discover the returning boats. Some leaned over the sides of the vessel, holding lights to guide them; others placed their ears near the water, to detect the sound of their oars. They never reappeared; not a single man of them returned. ”

“ In Heaven’s name, you are mistaken!’ cried Vassigny. But his tone of voice, and the wild expression of his features, fully confirmed the Count’s words.
“‘You have seen Madame de Marsanne this morning,’ repeated the Count. ‘I know, sir, that as a man of honour, you are incapable of betraying a lady’s secret; but I prefer the evidence of my eyes even to your word.’
“‘Well, sir, my life is yours—take it!’ cried Vassigny, casting towards heaven a glance of rage and despair. Marsanne gazed at the young man for a brief space, and then resumed. ”

“ In a naval combat one great object of victory is to capture the vessel itself—a prize in which all are interested. If it were not the custom to spare the vanquished crew—if, on the contrary, it were the custom to put them to death, no enemy would surrender his ship; he would rather set fire to it, or sink it, and sink with it in the waves. Were not the conquered secure of their lives on the surrender of their vessel, they would have no motive whatever for suffering it to become the rich prize of their adversary. ”

“ Great was the curiosity displayed to know the contents, and great was the glee and satisfaction as curious little devices or bonbons, wrapped up in love-verses, were extracted from the elegant little receptacles; and not till the music struck up, and Bruin led Anita Mendoza as his partner to the head of the country-dance, was the usual routine of the ball room resumed. All pretensions to etiquette had vanished; and good-humour, mirth, and jollity reigned triumphant throughout the evening. ”

“ We are still most vividly alive to the advantages of a system which we ourselves founded, upon principles of mutual support among all classes of the community—under which we have risen and thriven—and which has not been sacrificed on account of any alleged fault or deficiency in its working, or from any intelligible motives of public policy, but simply to gratify the whim and feed the vanity of a minister who considers himself wiser than a nation, and who never can be happy without change. A monetary crisis and a panic are new things to us ”

“ Next day, however, the violence of the Khamseen rendering it utterly impossible to proceed, Sidney and Aali had time to recruit their strength.
On the sixth day after quitting Saba Biar, not long after midnight, the fugitives rode out of Hannunis towards Gaza. The air was still like a furnace, but it was gradually cooling; and as the dawn approached it became delightfully refreshing. A light breath of air from the north-west brought with it the freshness of a sea-breeze. When the sun arose, every one was in high spirits. ”

“ Have I not done right, my love?”
“Stop, father! stop!” cried Anita, labouring under the utmost agitation, “we have other friends as well as Señor Le Brun, and God knows we will need them all. What if the man who disregards the petitions of innocence for mercy, and despises the rights of property and laws of justice, with respect to the old and harmless, should as suddenly turn round on the young and active, should he become afraid of its power, or jealous of its exercise? Mr Thorne, who is bold, generous, and a foreigner, is here in the next room, let us ask his advice and assistance. ”

“ Alas! that is too true, my dearest child—let me perish sooner than risk the honour of my children. Felipe Le Brun, Anita, is I believe the only man who can save us. He has influence with the government, all my floating capital is in his hands: I have long known, and placed confidence in him: it is he who has informed us of our present danger, and is prepared to assist us out of it. He has long loved you, Anita, and I believe he is not indifferent to you. ”

“ Sir Robert Peel tells us, with a smile of peculiar complacency, that the hoarding up of so much bullion is a safeguard against a panic, because it renders any run upon the banks for gold a matter of absolute impossibility. With only thirty-two millions of paper extant for the common circulation of the nation, we shrewdly suspect that any apprehensions of a run upon the banks are as visionary as the dreams of El Dorado. No one knows better than Sir Robert Peel that the paper currency of a country must be sorely depreciated indeed before any such event can take place ”

“ Now I hold this Frenchman to be quite a genius in his way. He sees the leading foible of the people with whom he has to deal, and humours them to the top of their bent. Many a cadaverous Cockney has he dismissed from his apartment exulting and frolicsome in spirit, and convinced in his inmost soul that he has now some tangible connexion with the aristocracy, and may possibly be able to persuade some country chambermaid that he is the scion of a noble house. ”

“ Is it wise to delay all relief until the Gazette is full, and to keep credit suspended at the very moment when it is most urgently and clamantly required? And what kind of law, we ask, is that which in prosperous times—that is, whenever gold is abundant—confessedly puts no check whatever upon speculation, but which, at the least turn of the tide, is an absolute engine of destruction? Look at it in any view, and we maintain that a more miserable instance of legislation upon false and contracted principles was never yet invented by the brain of a political economist. ”

“ Parliament, as we understand, is about to separate, without doing any thing whatever to remedy this monster grievance. Let the Whigs look to it. They are now to all intents and purposes the aiders and abettors of Sir Robert Peel. They hang upon his words, adopt his principles, and applaud his maxims to the skies. They hear from every quarter of the country the cry of unparalleled distress. An evil much greater than the scarcity is pressing upon the industrious classes, interfering with labour, checking trade, and depreciating the value of every kind of property. ”

“ You are a dweller in cities—you are lying, in some holiday and summer month, listlessly upon the beach—the great ocean is spread before you, illimitable—and it almost terrifies the imagination to think of men passing out there, in that wild waste of waters, given up to the two unthinking and gigantic powers of wind and wave, that have no more respect for man or his structures than if they were still in the liberty of chaos. ”

“ The point for immediate consideration simply resolves itself into this: are we to leave untouched upon the statute-book, a law which can at any time expose us to the inevitable hardship of a monetary crisis like the present?—Are we to continue and approve of an Act, the operation of which is, in certain circumstances, to drain dry the fountain of our currency, and that at the very time when an expansion of the currency is required? We do not want to hear from Sir Robert Peel, any more than from an itinerant lecturer, his definition of the nature of a “pound.” ”

“ Oh, Tom Thorne! Tom Thorne! how could you resist so many dimpling smiles and sweet compliments? How could you flirt away the forenoons in the circles of beauty, look the language, breathe the gay atmosphere, reflect the glad glances, enjoy the warm enlivening glow of youthful feelings, bask in the sunshine of favour streaming upon you from the 49 eyes of youth, innocence, and beauty, and then cool down your feelings with cigars and brandy? ”

“ The mansion-house is an ordinary kind of tumble-down old affair, with turrets like pepper-boxes on the corners, and the fragment of an abbey behind it. There is no timber worth speaking of in the policy, except half-a-dozen great useless yew-trees, beneath which they show you a carved stone, that covers the dust of stout old Lord Alexander, whose body was brought home from the bloody field of Flodden;—and yet this absurd agriculturist has the coolness to propose to the company that they shall make a deviation of nearly half-a-mile, for the sake of avoiding this remnant of the darker ages! ”

“ The arrival of Hernan Cortés, come to lay an empire at his feet, had scarcely roused him from his indifference, when, in that brilliant and martial court, crowded with nobles and grandees, there appeared an unknown soldier, penniless, almost friendless, the child of shame, but whose daring deeds and great achievements were soon to give his name a lustre far above any that gentle birth and lengthy pedigree can bestow. ”

“ And at the period that a few scanty bands of expatriated malefactors, and of refugees for opinion’s sake, flying from persecution to the wilderness, toiled out a scanty and laborious existence in the forests and prairies of North America, and alone represented the Anglo-Saxon race in the New World, Spain was in secure and undisturbed enjoyment of two vast and productive empires. To-day, how great the contrast! The unwieldy Spanish colonies have crumbled and fallen to pieces, the petty English settlements have grown into a flourishing and powerful nation. ”

“ Beware of that garden, Tom Thorne, in the evenings when your heart is soft. Ride not with the ladies over that velvet lawn when the flush of the morning’s sun is reflected from their lovely faces, Tom Thorne. You are lost to the bachelor world for ever, Tom, if you be seduced to wander through these lovely woods with the ringlets of Anita Mendoza playing round your manly shoulder; and as for the summer-houses, if ever you enter them let it be with a book or a cigar only; mind that, Tom, mind that. Anita Mendoza might be sixteen or seventeen, Mariquita eighteen or nineteen ”

“ Morning after morning, throughout the cold and dreary routine of the winter session, do they pace the barren boards of the Parliament House in a kind of dreamy languor, or laugh off with reckless witticism the disgust which is preying on their souls. No kind agent approaches them with a fee, for there is scarcely legal business left—thanks to the new-fangled Jurisdiction Acts which throw a triple burden on the sheriffs—to keep twenty or at most thirty elderly advocates in something like tolerable employment. They are afraid to try literature, for the common prejudice is against it ”

“ Leave me—fly this moment, or you meet your deserts from my hands and in this very place.”
“Thorne,” cried Le Brun with the most abject air, “I am the most miserable man in existence. I swear to you, by every thing that binds man to man, I was not the cause of Mendoza’s capture last night;—my life, sir, is in more peril than his. At this moment the emissaries of the police are at my heels, and ere sunset, I shall be in prison,—ere sunrise probably a corpse;—where is Mendoza?” ”