Various

“ Lily it was, in her pretty green gown, white shawl, and gay new bonnet—it was trimmed with pale-green and white: as for her face, it expressed nothing but 'Dear me!' I never saw such philosophy. Out rushed Tom, so did all the men of us, and followed the crowd up the street, and down the lane to the front of Cloudesly's house, where we arrived just in time to see the gallant Sommerset hand Lily from her chair with the air of a man about to kneel. Poor Cloudesly! he was both weak and strong, but a good fellow at heart. ”

“ A fresh breeze blew from the shore, and the lordly boat ploughed her way right gallantly onward.
'Oh what an untold world there is in one human heart! Who thought, as George walked calmly up and down the deck of the steamer, with his shy companion at his side, of all that was burning in his bosom? The mighty good that seemed approaching seemed too good, too fair, even to be a reality; and he felt a jealous dread every moment of the day that something would rise to snatch it from him. ”

“ I thought I could do my work well, and keep on quiet, and have some time to read and learn out of work-hours; but the more he sees I can do, the more he loads on. He says that though I don't say anything, he sees I've got the devil in me, and he means to bring it out; and one of these days it will come out in a way that he wont like, or I'm mistaken."
"O dear! what shall we do?" said Eliza mournfully.
"It was only yesterday," said George, "as I was busy loading stones into a cart, that young Mas'r Tom stood there, slashing his whip so near the horse, that the creature was frightened. ”

“ I have heard from herself, that she had put on her aunt's bonnet, and come quietly through the lane, when it struck her that she would like to see what was going on, as Miss Croply would allow no looking out at the low creatures; so nearer and nearer to the street did Lily wend, till a boy—are not boys at the bottom of all mischief?—raised the shout that she was wearing Mr Cloudesly's colours; the phalanx then surrounded her, and improvised the triumph which we witnessed. The Tattleton Chronicle was remarkably full upon it. ”

“ Here he became the centre of a circle of the highest minds of Germany. All prized him; all, young and old, felt the benefit of his presence, his labours, and example. He regularly worked at the history of Rome; but he cultivated his garden, taught and played with his children, and built himself a house. The time was not all passed at Bonn; in 1829, the family visited Holstein and Mme Hensler. A twelve years' absence had produced many alterations, but the love of country and early home was wrought into Niebuhr's heart, and he enjoyed this renewal of youth. ”

“ Like the idle family in the Eastern tale, he could draw a disturbance from the future also, and many a heart-quake had he regarding what might happen. His Oxford tutor had made him a strong Tory; old Cloudesly had averred, that was the only politics for a gentleman; and though Sommerset believed in all the alarms of his time, his faith being particularly strong for terrors, he had always supposed himself to be somebody. Sir Jonas and the Earl of Lumberdale assured him he was the hope of Tattleton; and, in an evil hour, he consented, in electioneering phrase, to contest the borough. ”

“ Probably you have, each of you, too many matters of sore concern pressing closely upon you, to be much incommoded by possibilities of so infinitesimal a character. It cannot, nevertheless, be amiss, that you should know these amongst other things that may any day leap from the laps of the Parcæ, were it only to expand your souls a little with things superior to the eternal commonplaces of life. It is, after all, a great thing to be a part of so great a system as that revealed to us in the external frame of things, and to feel in what a mighty hand our destiny lies. ”

“ Seeing and retaining everything, he painted as if all history was before him. When he spoke of a striking event, the coast, the mountain-line, or the plain, all the accompaniments rose up and were grouped before him. You felt carried away with him, as if he had lived there, and was taking you up by the way.
His return to Denmark took place late in 1799. A double appointment awaited him at Copenhagen—two government offices, neither bringing in a large salary, but sufficient to allow of his marrying; and accordingly Amelia Behrens became his wife in May 1800. ”

“ Sommerset Cloudesly occupied a large but neat brick house on the verge of our town's liberties, with a meadow-like lawn in front, and acres of orchard in the rear. His father had been a small farmer, who bettered his fortune by all manner of money-making speculations—the last of which, a cider-manufactory, and a mill, together with a house he had built, the orchard he had planted, and a handsome strip of landed property, descending to his only son, made him the second man in Tattleton. ”

“ Of all men, seamen have pre-eminently a claim on public sympathy and protection; no class needs the latter more, and, strange to say, no class has, until a comparatively recent period, received it less. In the words of Thomas Clarkson: 'The grievances of mercantile seamen are a national and crying evil;' and when we reflect on their importance, both as regards commerce and war, it will be acknowledged that it is a national duty to do all that is possible to protect them while ashore, and to ameliorate and improve their lot in every practical way. ”

“ If it be true that there are thousands of comets, all of which make periodical visits to the near neighbourhood of the sun, it must be evident that the earth, being itself not far, comparatively speaking, from that luminary, must be rather liable as otherwise to a brush from one of these wanderers; and, indeed, the wonder is, that several thousand years should have passed without, so far as we know, any one such collision having taken place. ”

“ Tories hate and scandalise him; despots put him in prison; he only can bequeath his scheme to be wrought out by the happy man of a happier age. Here, however, comes me in a besom which sweeps all the old peccant institutions away at one whisk. Church and state are severed, and for ever. The Holy Alliance against the liberties of mankind is broken up—the pomp and corruption of courts is annihilated—bribery and bigotry are no more. ”

“ Men cannot have Waterloos of their own every day. No wonder, then, that the honourable member's glory was too great for his prudence: scarcely had the poll closed, when it became generally known in front of the Stopford Arms, that there were two barrels of strong beer, which his liberality had devoted to the populace. On the publication of this intelligence, the ancient ceremony of chairing went on with more than usual vigour. It was a quiet autumn evening, but there was no peace for Tattleton. ”

“ We at least recollect when old gentlemen, after dinner, brightened up at the mention of 'claret 1811,' merrily attributing the extraordinary merits of the liquor to the comet of that year. But comets, in the cool eye of modern science, are not without their terrors. Crossing as they often do the paths of the planets in their progress to and from their perihelia, it cannot but be that they should now and then come in contact with one of these spheres. ”

“ Uncle Tom is a middle-aged negro slave, on the farm of a Mr Shelby, in Kentucky; he has learned to read, is pious and exemplary, and his hut is resorted to for edification by old and young in the neighbourhood. Tom is married, has several children, and is highly trustworthy. Between his family and that of his owner there is an agreeable intercourse, and to all appearance he is likely to live and die on the estate; but his master falls into pecuniary difficulties; becomes indebted to a wretch, Haley, a dealer in slaves from the south ”

“ To allow of the sudden undoing of all this fair scene, which it has taken thousands of years to bring out in its full proportions, seems like a wanton destruction of valuable property, and we are not disposed to believe that such a thing could be permitted. But we must at the same time remember, that our sense of what is important and consequential has a regard to the earth alone, which is but a trifling atom in the universe. ”

“ Both the earl and the baronet possessed some property, and more influence, in our borough, by help of which they warned the loyal Conservatives that their country was in danger, and exhorted Great Tattleton to rush to the rescue. The mayor said, that though he respected birth and breeding, yet, if a country gentleman like Mr Stopford would so far disgrace his family as to vote for a measure which must break down the British constitution, and utterly ruin England in less than twenty years, he, for his own part, felt called upon to oppose him. ”

“ Debts, bonds, contracts, obligations of all kinds, in like manner were absolved by the comet, and Creation itself left to open a new score in, it is to be hoped, a less blotted book.
Considered as a reform, our possible event must be viewed with great interest. The patriot's heart is broken, in the ordinary current of things, by the passive resistance he meets with from the great, inert mass of prejudice and contrary interest. ”

“ Tom said 'he had no notion of politics, being entirely given to beer; and who was right about that there Bill he couldn't say, but he never knowed an honest man as made money by a contested election.' Old Mrs Prior always echoed what her husband said, besides knitting [pg 152] a perpetual stocking that was her only occupation; but Tom and his wife were old people now, and in small intimacy with the college-bred young Cloudesly, though they sat in the same church-pew, and some thought their daughter Lily was also a friend to our proposed member. ”

“ It cannot, however, be said that any competition, save only that which they themselves naturally and necessarily exhibit among their class, for obtaining the inadequate amount of employment for which they are fitted, is chargeable with the hardships they endure. It is a melancholy truth, as concerns the individuals, that we cannot extend to them any indirect relief without tending to increase the evil by raising an addition to their number. ”

“ Eliza, such as we have described her, is not a fancy sketch, but taken from remembrance, as we saw her years ago in Kentucky. Safe under the protecting care of her mistress, Eliza had reached maturity without those temptations which make beauty so fatal an inheritance to a slave. She had been married to a bright and talented young mulatto man, who was a slave on a neighbouring estate, and bore the name of George Harris.
'This young man had been hired out by his master to work in a bagging factory, where his adroitness and ingenuity caused him to be considered the first hand in the place. ”

“ Such idle dreams were left to the fanciful and superstitious, whose stores were usually situated in the bosom of mountains, and guarded by gnomes and demons. The others were more rational and practical: they sought to obtain their end by means of legitimate science, based upon virtue and religious faith. This basis is the only thing that since then has been unanimously abandoned; for philosophers are still by no means agreed as to the impossibility of making gold.
Only a few of the gold-seekers of the present day are literary men, for the pickaxe does not very naturally replace the pen ”

“ A Home was opened in Dublin in July 1848; and at Bristol, Plymouth, Cork, Dundee, &c., Homes are in course of formation. A magnificent Sailors' Home has long been in course of establishment at Liverpool; but it is not yet opened, although nearly finished. Influential meetings have also been held at Aberdeen, Glasgow, Greenock, &c., to establish Homes at these several ports. No one can conceive how absolutely necessary such institutions are but those who, like ourselves, have seen the way in which seamen are robbed and led astray ashore. ”

“ In the words of Mr Sheriff Alison (now Sir A. Alison) , when addressing a meeting at Glasgow, with the view of founding a 'Home' there: 'The seamen are placed in very peculiar circumstances—their virtues are exhibited at sea, and their vices are exhibited on shore. The community is benefited by the former, and they, the sailors, are the victims of the latter. It is therefore more incumbent on those who are enriched by their industry, and protected by their valour, to prevent their falling into those vices to which unhappily so many of them are addicted. ”

“ No manœuvre was left untried by the rival factions, nor any cause of dispute omitted, and the strife increased in bitterness every day. Readers, can any of you explain why people so generally run into the way of whatever they most fear? I never could; but the case is common, and Sommerset Cloudesly was a striking instance. What waves of worry passed over him! and what heaps of annoyance were piled on his spirit during that county election!—a rather tedious business in those unreformed days. ”

“ Undoubtedly, any and all improvements, whether of the physical or moral condition of one class of the community, reacts on all. But especially in the case of seamen, the result would be beneficial to the nation in an incalculable degree. Raise the moral character of the sailor, by inducing in him reformed and provident habits, and he will soon feel that he has a stake in the prosperity and security of his country ”

“ Our object in giving those extracts is, to shew the vital necessity for the formation of Homes at all our leading ports. At Liverpool, for instance, the crimps are so active and speculative in driving their abominable traffic, that no sooner do they hear of a man-of-war being paid off at Portsmouth, or any other naval port, than they send their agents to entice the sailors down to Liverpool. ”

“ In the frame of mind which these speculations induce—not very greatly alarmed about such extraordinary contingencies, yet not insensible to the solemnity of the thought of what may come to pass even before our living eyes—it is curious, and not necessarily unpleasant, to consider what might be the actual phenomena attending a cometary collision. We know not what comets are composed of, but are certain that they consist of some palpable matter, however diffused, for they observe the rules of motion in their revolutions round the sun. ”