Various

“ When we talk of the great authors of one generation pressing forward to claim the sympathy of the maturer genius of the next, we mean precisely what we say. We are well aware that some of the great writers we have casually mentioned have no equals in the present world; yet the present world is more mature in point of taste than their own. That is the reason why they are great authors now. Some books last for a season, some for a generation, some for an age, or two, or more; always dropping off when the time they reach outstrips them. ”

“ We do not require to be told that in every book destined to survive its author, there are here and there gleams of nature that belong to all time; but the body of the work is after the fashion of the age that produced it; and he who is unacquainted with the thought of that age, will always judge amiss. In England, we are still in the bonds of the last century, and it is surprising what an amount of affectation mingles with criticism even of the highest pretensions. It is no wonder, then, that common readers should be mistaken in their book-worship. ”

“ The villas opposite stand asleep in the sunshine; the sound of a single footstep is heard on the pavement; and anon you hear the feeble, cracked voice of old Willie, the water-cress man, distinctly articulating the cry of 'Water-cresses; fine brown water-cresses; royal Albert water-cresses; the best in London—everybody say so.' The water-cresses are welcomed on the terrace as an ornament and something more to the tea-table; and while tea is getting ready for the inhabitants of the terrace, the dwellers in the opposite villas are seen returning to dinner. ”

“ They are judged by a standard of taste and feeling existing in the author's mind: the Inferno is a magnificent caldron of everything base and detestable in human nature; and the Orlando, a paradise of love, beauty, and delight. Dante, the sublime poet, but inexorable bigot, meets with little tolerance from Leigh Hunt; while Ariosto, exhaustless in his wealth, ardent and exulting—full of the same excess of life which in youth sends the blood dancing and boiling through the veins—has his warmest sympathy. ”

“ It has sometimes been predicted, not without plausibility, that if this great empire should sink before the rising genius of some new state, when all it has accomplished in arts and arms, and its wealth, its literature, its machinery, are forgotten, its struggles for humanity in the abolition of negro slavery will stand forth in undiminished lustre. ”

“ Still, there are never wanting men of a speculative turn of mind, and the cry of 'All a-blowin' an' a-growin'' resounds through the streets as long as the season supplies flowers to grow and to blow.
The flower-merchant wheels off, having left a good sprinkling of geraniums in our neighbours' windows; and his cousin-german, 'the graveller,' comes crawling after him, with his cart and stout horse in the middle of the road, while he walks on one side of the pavement, and his assistant on the other. ”

“ This word, however—supposing it to represent the mortal and perishing part of an author's productions—belongs not to him, but to his age; not to the intellectual man, but to the external and fleeting manners of his day and generation. Such critics usually take credit to themselves for a peculiarly large and liberal spirit; but there seems to us, on the contrary, to be something mean and restricted in views that regard the man as an individual, not as a portion of the genius which belongs to the world. ”

“ In the same manner, and on the same principle, so soon as the fine weather sets in, and the front-gardens begin to look gay, the graveller loads his cart with gravel, and shouldering his spade, crawls leisurely through the suburbs with his companion, peering into every garden; and wherever he sees that the walks are grown dingy or moss-grown, he knocks boldly at the door, and demands to be set to work in mending your ways. ”

“ At the time when Mr Grenville Sharp, to his immortal honour, took up in the courts of law the question of personal liberty as a legal right, there was a more serious risk of Britain becoming a slave state than it is now easy to imagine. There was no chance of negroes being employed in gangs in the field or in manufactories, but there was imminent danger of their being brought over and kept in multitudes as domestic servants, just as they are still in some of the southern states of America. ”

“ The harmony of the divine poet would saturate his heart and beam from his eyes; and when wandering where we met him, among the storied ruins of the Rhine, he would have by his side not the man Spenser, surrounded by the prejudices and rudenesses of his age, but the spirit Spenser, discoursing to and with the universal heart of nature. Leigh Hunt, with more originality—more of the quality men call genius, but a less correct perception of what is really wanted—has done the same thing for the great Italian poets ”

“ Of that epoch, it is true, they are, intellectually, the flower and chief; they are the expression of its finer spirit, and serve as a link between the two generations of the past and the future; but of that future—so much changed in habits, and feelings, and knowledge—they can never, even when acting as guides and teachers, form an essential part: there is always some bond of sympathy wanting. ”

“ It rocks us in our beds as it passes the house; and for twenty minutes afterwards, if we are awake so long, we are aware that it is groaning heavily onwards, and shaking the solid earth in its progress—till it sinks away in silence, or we into the land of dreams. ”

“ Suicide is, in Japan, the fashionable mode of terminating a life which cannot be prolonged but in circumstances of dishonour: to rip up one's own bowels in such a case, wipes away every stain on the character. The guards of the Russian captives not only used every precaution against this, but carefully watched over their health and comfort, carrying them over the shallowest pools and streamlets, lest their feet should be wet, and assiduously beating off the gnats and flies, which would have been annoying. ”

“ While the graveller is patting down the pathway round Robinson's flower-bed, we hear the well-known cry of a countryman whom we have known any time these ten years, and who, with his wife by his side, has perambulated the suburbs for the best part of his life. ”

“ Never did we listen to so pleasant and obliging a mode of speaking; and when Mr Budge praised the apartments, and admired the country, the conquest of Thomas's heart was complete. 'Besides,' as Martha sagaciously remarked, 'it was so much better to have a steady old gentleman like this for a lodger, when pretty Miss Marion honoured them as a guest.' I thought so too; my dear young lady being so lone and unprotected by relatives, we all took double care of her. ”

“ The poetry of the Divine Comedy belongs to nature; its superstition, intolerance, and fanaticism, to the thirteenth century. These last have either passed away from the modern world or they exist in new forms, and with the first alone can we have any real healthy sympathy.
One of our literary idols is Shakspeare—perhaps the greatest of them all; but although the most universal of poets, his works, taken in the mass, belong to the age of Queen Elizabeth, not to ours. A critic has well said, that if Shakspeare were now living, he would manifest the same dramatic power, but under different forms ”

“ The commerce in blossoming flowers is one of the most uncertain and dangerous speculations in which the small street-traders of London can engage. When carried on under favourable circumstances, it is one of the most profitable, the demand for flowers being constant and increasing; but the whole stock-in-trade of a small perambulating capitalist may be ruined by a shower of rain, which will spoil their appearance for the market, and prevent his selling them before they are overblown. ”

“ A single glance at our own great books will illustrate this—books which are constantly reprinted, without which no library can be tolerated—which are still, generation after generation, the objects of the national worship, and are popularly supposed to afford a universal and unfailing standard of excellence in the various departments of literature. These books, although pored over as a task and a study by the few, are rarely opened and never read by the many: they are known the least by those who reverence them most. ”

“ The moderate competency Mr Budge had hitherto enjoyed, and which he had toiled hard for, now augmented to ten times the amount, sorely perplexed and troubled him; and after purchasing Sorel Park, he had flown from the turmoil of affluence, to seek peace and obscurity for awhile, under pretext of pursuing the philosophical recreation of angling. How unlike the Misses Dacre was the fair and gracious creature he encountered at Fairdown! ”

“ Her productions are a pleasant summer substitute for the cheerful fire of winter; and it is perhaps well for her that, before the close of autumn, the faded hues of the flowers, and the harbour they afford to dust, will convert them into waste paper, in spite of all the care that may be taken to preserve them.
Paper Poll, as the servants call her, is hardly out of sight, and not out of hearing, when a young fellow and his wife come clattering along the pavement, appealing to all who may require their good offices in the matter of chair-mending. ”

“ It is a great world, containing a thousand little worlds in its bosom; and pop yourself down in it in any quarter you will, you are sure to find yourself in the centre of some peculiar microcosm distinguished from all others by features more or less characteristic. ”

“ Then it was observed, that many of the slaves were in ships or in colonies which had not special laws for the support of slavery; and by the disfranchisement of these, British subjects would lose many millions' worth of property, which they believed themselves justly to possess.
British justice, however, has held at all times the question of human liberty to be superior to considerations of mere expediency. If the question be, who gains or loses most, there never can be a doubt that the man whose freedom has been reft from him has the greatest of all claims for indulgence. ”

“ For above two hundred years, the unknown millions of Japan have been shut up in their own islands, forbidden, under the severest penalties, either to admit foreigners on their shores, or themselves to visit any other realm in the world. The Dutch are permitted to send two ships in a year to the port of Nangasaki, where they are received with the greatest precaution, and subjected to a surveillance even more degrading than was that formerly endured by the Europeans at Canton. Any other foreigner whom misfortune or inadvertence may land on their shores, is doomed to perpetual imprisonment ”

“ By the time the cats have retired to growl over their allowance in private, the daily succession of nomadic industrials begin to lift up their voices, and to defile slowly along Our Terrace, stopping now and then to execute a job or effect a sale when an opportunity presents itself. ”

“ She goes out without beat of drum, and lets herself in with the street-door key without noise, bringing home, besides the desiderated beverage, the news of the day, and the projects of next-door for the morrow, with, it may be, a plan for the enjoyment of her next monthly holiday. ”

“ One such little world we have lived in for a round number of years; and as we imagine it presents a picture by no means disagreeable to look upon, we will introduce the reader, with his permission, into its very limited circle, and chronicle its history for one day as faithfully as it is possible for anything to do, short of the Daguerreotype and the tax-gatherer. ”

“ This fellow is rather a singular character, and one that is to be met with probably nowhere upon the face of the earth but in the suburbs of London. He is, par excellence, the exponent of a feeling which pervades the popular mind in the metropolis on the subject of the duty which respectable people owe to respectability. It is impossible for a housekeeper in a neighbourhood having any claims to gentility, to escape the recognition of this feeling in the lower class of industrials. ”

“ We are sober folks on the terrace, and are generally all snug abed before twelve o'clock. The last sound that readies our ears ere we doze off into forgetfulness, is the slow, lumbering, earthquaky advance of a huge outward-bound wagon. ”

“ Copper is very abundant, and of remarkably fine quality. All kitchen utensils, tobacco-pipes, and fire-shovels, are made of it; and so well made, that our author mentions his tea-kettle as having stood on the fire, like all other Japanese kettles, day and night for months, without burning into holes. This metal is likewise employed for sheathing ships, and covering the joists and flat roofs of houses. Iron is less abundant, and much that is used is obtained from the Dutch. Nails alone, of which immense numbers are used in all carpentry-work, consume a large quantity. ”

“ It will be found that the ripest knowledge is best qualified to instruct the most complete ignorance. It is a common mistake to suppose that those who know little suffice to inform those who know less ”

“ Mr Budge was Miss Marion's paternal uncle, her mother, Miss Dacre, having married his elder brother. These brothers were of respectable birth, but inferior to the Dacres; and while the elder never prospered in any undertaking, and finally died of a broken heart, the younger, toiling in foreign climes, gradually amassed a competency. On returning to his native land, he found his brother no more, and the orphan girl he had left behind placed with her mother's relatives. ”

“ You live in a respectable house, and you have a right to keep your garden in a respectable condition—and the graveller is determined that you shall do so: has he not brought gravel to the door on purpose? ”