Various

“ Shakspeare's fun grows out of his masterful knowledge of the world, of men, of women. In a play of his you seem in some city of chivalry and romance, where the great knight passes to deeds of high emprise, and the lovely lady smiles on him from her balcony, and the troubadour sings of 'the Lord of Oc and No;' and all the while you hear the chaffer of the market-place, the chatter of street gossips, the insignificant laughter of loitering louts. Fun that has no root in something deeper seems morbid and hysterical ”

“ And so the upper crust, with king, priests, and nobles—crowns, croziers, and coronets—gave way and fell into an abyss of devouring fire, like that which burst up of yore beneath Sodom and Gomorrah, devastating the corrupt Cities of the Plain. The old world of Europe was cast into the furnace, and all things became new—Providence overruling the wrath of man to its own wise and merciful ends.
All history is an ennobling study, alike in its events and its examples; but life is short, and it is the French Revolution that commences the period of history of deepest importance to the present age. ”

“ We are called, "France, Paris, stand like a wall."...
'The Pantheon wonders what it can do to make room beneath its dome for all this people who have a right to lie there.... Each time the shells fall, and the grape-shot roars, what see we in our streets? women tripping by with a smile. O Paris, thou hast crowned the statue of Strasburg with flowers; history will crown thee with stars!'
It is as hard for sober Englishmen to imagine a people delighting in edicts penned in that style, as it is for us to read without disgust any two consecutive pages of L'homme qui rit. ”

“ But it is impossible that the most pacific country can remain long under the influence of such a military organization as Prussia commands, without using it as an instrument for further aggrandizement. Were it indeed otherwise, a marvel would occur, the like of which would be unknown in history. Who ever heard of a power suddenly overtopping Europe, and, amid a handful of weaker states, stopping short in her career of aggression? Those who believe in the pacific virtues of Bismark, and the pious sincerity of William, ask us to indulge in anticipations which have never been realised. ”

“ The momentous war of 1870 is not only one of the grandest illustrations of the art which founds and destroys Empires; it not only is an astonishing drama, every scene which the military student should examine carefully and lay to heart; it not only fascinates the ordinary observer by its gigantic action and immense events; it points conclusively to a solemn moral, not to be forgotten by any country which seeks to maintain its position in the world, and cherishes a sense of its independence. ”

“ These Scottish philosophers struggled after a theory of matter from the beginning to the end; the reality of the external world, as if anybody ever questioned it, was their alpha and omega. They could think and write of scarcely anything else. But Berkeley's philosophy was a great deal deeper and wider. It was free from what we may perhaps call the provincialism of the Scottish school, which clung with tenacity to what was after all a very small strip in the wide dominion of philosophy, and could never free itself from the narrowness which such exclusiveness was sure to beget. ”

“ It may, perhaps, be roughly stated that a man will care to read Ingoldsby so long as he cares to play cricket. It is, in fact, the eager buoyancy and rather perspiring fun of the cricket-field which one finds in the rollicking strophes of the 'Legends.' When their writer knocks over a saint or a demon as if he were a wicket, you almost expect to hear the shout of, 'How's that, umpire?' Indeed, the book is a loud book, scarcely to be tolerated, one might think, in a quiet library. ”

“ After all, there is hardly anything the Americans need more than a good comic paper, to moderate the intensity of their politics, to laugh down the extravagant follies of American society, to measure the strength of their public men, to register their blunders, and expose their hollowness, to watch over the caprices of fashion, to criticize the press itself, with its coarseness and scurrility, its disgraceful advertisements, and its downright fabrications ”

“ In no other country could a small state like Prussia spring out of a mere society of Knight Templars, and in less than two hundred years, take her place among the first powers of the globe. While the smaller states of the empire followed their indolent habits, and cultivated the dilettante tastes of their rulers, Prussia was perpetually sharpening her sword, carving out of her neighbours fresh slices of territory, and using one acquisition as a stepping-stone to another. ”

“ France must be hindered from being dangerous in the future. She must, therefore, be reduced to such a position as to render her alike both impotent and defenceless. She must be degraded from her state in the family of nations. She is, therefore, stripped of her armaments: her artillery, her muskets, her swords, her ammunition, her military stores, in fact, nearly all her implements and panoply of war, are carted off to Berlin. That she may not be in an immediate position to supply their place, she is loaded with a pecuniary indemnity which must exhaust the energies of another generation. ”

“ The events of the last few months have, in a special way, drawn the thoughts of men towards two cities which stand out among European capitals as witnesses of the way in which the history of remote times still has its direct bearing on things which are passing before our own eyes. Rome and Paris now stand out, as they have stood out in so many earlier ages, as the historic centres of a period which, there can be no doubt, will live to all time as one of the marked periods of the world's history. ”

“ The forty bullet-headed Protectionists of the Free-trade reform, the Bourbons who 'forgot nothing and learned nothing,' the bereaved patrons of rotten boroughs—to say nothing of Laud and his school of divine right, of the good old times of the Star Chamber, of the Five-mile Act, of the Test and Corporation Acts, of Roman Catholic disabilities, of Church-rates, and the Irish establishment—must surely bemoan themselves very bitterly either because they maintained right in vain, or because they opposed it in vain. And yet inherent Toryism will not learn wisdom. ”

“ Political wisdom is not to be learned in six months, no matter how sternly its lessons may be enforced. The France which accepted Louis Napoleon, which gloried in the absurd boast, 'When France is satisfied the world is at rest,' which suffered itself to be kept in leading-strings for twenty years, giving full control over its wealth, its resources, its foreign and domestic policy, to an unscrupulous adventurer and his stock-jobbing associates, is not likely to rise at once to the dignity of a free people. ”

“ Now she has got it upon her own terms—that of merging the commonwealth into herself. All the power and might of Germany, instead of being allied with liberal institutions, is wielded by one despotic hand. Instead of Germany swallowing up Prussia, Prussia has swallowed up Germany. Germany in inaugurating her unity, like the young man coming to his heritage, was surrounded by two candidates for her favours,—free institutions and military despotism—and, succumbing to the tempter, she has flung herself into the embraces of military despotism. ”

“ And it is not the least wonderful phænomenon of this autumn of wonders that, while our eyes have been drawn at once to Rome and to Paris, they have been drawn far more steadily and with far keener interest towards Paris than they have been drawn towards Rome. We can hardly doubt, whether we look back to the past or onwards to the future, that the fall of the Pope's temporal power is really a greater event than any possible result of the war between Germany and France. ”

“ Those who believed in the moderation and civilization of the gigantic power of which Bismark has been the creator must have been disappointed at the German terms; but as we are not among the credulous, we cannot say that we have been surprised. The annexation, however, of Alsace and Lorraine against the will of two millions of the brave inhabitants of those provinces, the dismemberment of France, and her spoliation, and, above all, the evident understanding between the autocrats of Russia and Germany, are simply the triumphs of brute force—perpetual menaces to the peace of Europe. ”

“ That France in the school of adversity will unlearn much of the frivolity and self-glorifying spirit which has distinguished her people during the Second Empire, is another advantage which may be hoped rather than expected from her recent disasters—an advantage, indeed, which would confer as many benefits upon herself as upon the world. France, ever since the days of Louis Quatorze, has been too much accustomed to deem herself the arbitress of Europe. She had come to recognise it as her peculiar mission to open or shut the Temple of Janus, and give peace or war to the world. ”

“ Only Germany can make any pretence to a comparison with us. Month by month books for the young are produced, and at Christmas-tide they are poured forth in bewildering profusion; publishers of gravest repute lay themselves out for them; the staidest literary journals review them. We have come to understand that no service to a people can be greater or more momentous than to supply a pure, bright, merry-hearted literature for the young, which shall wisely minister to their imaginations, and in pleasant ways sow the seeds of good things in their hearts. ”

“ But when the life of a Christian Church is made to depend not on the faith, love, and liberality of its own members, and the presence and blessing of its Divine Master, but upon the protection and patronage of the civil government, and when, as a necessary consequence, the administration of its affairs falls into the hands of worldly politicians, who use it as an instrument of State, what can be expected but what always has ensued, that its spiritual life should wither, until those who seek real religious nourishment from its breasts are driven in sheer desperation to seek it elsewhere? ”

“ We fancy that the reaction against the despotism of the capital will be very strong. There is far more independent life left than most people imagine in the French provincial cities, far more than in our large towns; and they were increasingly indignant at the pre-eminence which the imperial system gave to Paris in everything. This exaltation of Paris is natural in a dynasty which has no roots in France itself. Paris had proved herself in 1790 capable of taking the lead and giving the law to all France; Paris, therefore, must be kept strong in order that all France might be of one mind. ”

“ Beyond all this, he has that sensuous delight in the real, the beautiful, and the truthful—that appreciation of the grandeur of universal law, visible in the minutest details, and that union of the receptive and active faculties which constitute the artist and the genius who owes more to Nature than to culture. If an argument may be derived from what man is, and from the mental excellence which he is capable of exhibiting, to rebuff the theory that he is of so humble a parentage as Mr. Darwin represents, the author himself would be a refutation of his own theory. ”

“ University reformers, bent on opening the universities to all classes for the furtherance of every branch of study, saw the necessity of removing every invidious distinction, and welcoming on equal terms that half of the nation which had hitherto regarded these institutions as places where their sons would not have fair play. The rapid growth and wide influence of the London University, where no such disabilities existed, no doubt quickened the perception of these reformers, each of whom beheld his Alma Mater beginning to weep like Niobe for the loss of her children. ”

“ Artistic excellence, romantic adventure, fairy imagination, natural phenomena, the wonders of travel and of science, creations of fiction and fancies of poetry, are all brought under requisition—and their very highest products consecrated to the nurture of youthful imagination and fancy, mind and heart. This is one of our distinctive glories, and, we will venture to say, a mark of distinctive wisdom, that our literature for the young is so rich in quality and so affluent in quantity. Few nations possess a juvenile literature—France has no children's books; neither has Spain, nor Italy. ”

“ We do not charge the American press with any flagrant changes of policy or principle, for we believe it is, in these respects, sufficiently consistent. But we deplore the absence of high moral purpose, as well as independence in its discussions of public questions. The American people demand a large amount of flattery; they have come almost to loathe the wholesome truth; they must be pampered with constant adulations, so that no one will venture to tell them their faults, and, neither at home nor abroad, dare moralists venture a whisper to their prejudice. ”

“ Even if the Welsh people were so devoid of spirit and self-respect as to feel it no grievance to have a costly Church Establishment, which exists almost exclusively for the benefit of the rich, saddled upon their necks, surely that is no proof that it is right to perpetuate the privileges of a body, whose history for generations has been marked by 'gross neglect, corruption, and nepotism,' and which, purporting to be the Church of a nation, does not pretend, even according to the claims of its most audacious advocates, to number among its adherents more than one-fourth of the nation. ”

“ France wanted prestige: who more likely to give it to her than the nephew of the man who won Jena and Austerlitz? France wanted protection against the 'Reds,' 'the enemies of order and property:' surely, the very man to secure this to her was l'homme providentiel, who could sway the army as one man, and who, though he professed to believe in universal suffrage, and to have a high regard for the working man, was known to be hand in glove with the great financiers and capitalists? ”

“ Life in the bush has charms for our youthful author as great as those of the handsome drawing-rooms of Melbourne and Sydney. After much visiting amongst the highest circles of Sydney—banqueting at the Government House, and dancing in the spacious halls of the great officials of the colony—the buoyant spirits of the young Marquis lead him to throw himself, a corps perdu, into the delights of savage life. ”

“ The interest of Russia in driving the Turks out of Europe is traditional. She believes in it as a mission to which she is called by divine Providence. It is not merely an affair of conquest, but a matter of religion. For this she exists as a nation, bound to execute the task at all hazards, and to intermit no opportunity of bringing it about. With Prussia it is merely a question of arithmetic. But the gain to her, were the struggle only partially decided in her favour, is such as to overpower even an Oriental imagination. ”