Various

“ Before fifteen minutes, we were well in on the land side of the chase, and had every apparent chance of capturing her without the firing of a shot. Hitherto she had been doggedly silent. But finding now that we had beat her on the tack she had chosen, and seeing no chance of escape but in going off dead before the wind, and spreading the pyramid of light sails in which a brig has always the advantage of a schooner, she put her helm suddenly down, and, throwing out rag after rag, was soon seen speeding away through the twilight like a frightened bird upon the wing. ”

“ A few weeks passed, and Leslie Pierpoint had prevailed on the blushing Clara to name the day when she would redeem her pledge given in the verandah, and become wholly and irrevocably his own. It was now at hand, and Leslie counted the hours which envious Time thrust between him and his anticipated bliss. Leslie loved the chosen bride of his bosom with the most impassioned ardor. His whole heart was involved in his affection, and he had so given himself up to his passion that any revulsion promised to make him miserable. ”

“ Clara is proud that she has captivated the handsomest young man in the town whom all the young ladies were sighing for; but she loves you not, Leslie, as a true woman should love.”
“My dear mother, how you wrong the angelic girl! Has she not watched over my sick bed like a sister, yea, like a beloved and loving wife? Has she not sympathized in all my afflictions? Did she not just now quit the chamber overcome by the intensity of her grief? You wrong her, dear mother, indeed you wrong her!” ”

“ No human being has slept within its walls since the development of the dreadful tragedy I am about to relate. God knows I shudder at the task!
I never saw a sweeter child than the young heir of Wentworth: I think now I see his little hands, his silken hair, or his soft blue eyes, so like those of his mother. All loved him. How could they help it? for in everything he resembled her who gave him birth, and she was one who insensibly won every heart, and deserved to win them too. ”

“ Younger in feelings than in years, he had never drank from the pure fount of reciprocal affection; he had been loved where he could offer no return; he had loved where no answering fondness became his reward; and though past the age of romance, he yet thirsted for the sweet waters of mutual tenderness. But with all his genius, his tact and his experience, he was a mere tyro in his knowledge of woman. No man has ever deeply understood the peculiarities of woman’s nature until the intimate communion of wedded life has given him an insight into its mysteries ”

“ But, my dear Leslie, I hope she will prove herself all you hope and desire.”
“Of that I am sure, dear mother,” he answered warmly. “I only grieve that you should have conceived a prejudice against one who is so soon to become my wife and your daughter.”
“Let us speak no more upon this subject now, Leslie. You need repose.”
Mrs. Pierpoint then drew the curtains and darkened the room. The invalid threw himself back in his easy-chair and soon, yielding to the soothing influence of the soft twilight in his chamber, sunk into a refreshing sleep. ”

“ The blushing timidity with which she listened to his passionate tenderness, her delicate dread lest his discovery of her secretly cherished attachment should be the motive of his present offer, and, finally, the modest yet fervent abandonment of feeling with which she allowed her head to rest on his shoulder, while his arm encircled her slender form and his lip imprinted a lover’s kiss on her fair brow, would have made the fortune of a theatrical débutante. It was all settled; the album decided the affair, and Rosa Crafts was certainly destined to become Mrs. Colonel Middleton. ”

“ Some fool among her danglers offered a wager that she would not succeed; she accepted the wager, and though she knew of his engagement to another, she deliberately set herself to the task of robbing his affianced bride of his affections. When did an unprincipled woman ever will any thing which she did not accomplish if she scrupled not the means? She succeeded. Adeline was neglected, and, for a time, forgotten. She pined in solitude for the accustomed tenderness which had become the nutriment of life to her young heart, but she received it not. ”

“ The little personal vanity which had lurked unsuspected in his bosom, was fanned into a gentle flame by her adroit flatteries, and could not fail to throw additional light upon the lovely woman who seemed to forget the homage due to her own charms in her admiration of her new friend. Though timid almost to nervousness when on horseback, she was ready every morning for a ride with him; though far too indolent to love walking, she never declined a ramble with the enthusiastic lover of nature ”

“ He was too good a soldier to hesitate, whatever might have been his disappointment, and the day which should have witnessed his union with his beautiful bride, dawned upon him amid the everglades of that wild and perilous district. Rosa felt his absence as a positive relief. Nothing was easier than to write tender and beautiful letters to her distant lover—nothing more pleasant than to return to society as an affianced bride, certain of a future establishment, and privileged to seek present enjoyment. ”

“ Her retiring manners and timid reserve in society prevented many from learning the full value of her mental gifts, but to the few who knew her intimately, she appeared a creature of rare endowments. Grace had not been blind to the arts which were practised to attract Colonel Middleton, but, looking upon him as fully qualified, both by age and experience, to take care of himself, she felt some little amusement at the manœuvres of her aunt and cousin, until a knowledge of his past history, together with the discovery of his high-toned feelings, excited a deeper interest in his welfare. ”

“ She is all truth—all purity. Surely you must have seen enough of her vestal-like life to know that if ever there was a true-hearted woman upon earth, it is she. If Rosa Crafts had but half the mental graces and moral virtues of her cousin Grace, she would be an angel.”
Colonel Middleton did ask Grace Leydon; but not till long afterwards. His decision of character forbade him to grieve over an unworthy object, and the moment Rosa ceased to be the noble-minded being he had imagined her, he ceased to cherish his affection for her. ”

“ He will see at once how it would break a high-spirited woman full of youth and beauty to be tied down for life to a sofa and arm-chair—a mere machine to hand him his crutches and night-cap! He is too generous to wish it! I do wish he had not met with this awkward accident. I don’t think I could have found a better husband than poor Leslie! ”

“ All through the weary week, in summer or in winter, amid cold and rain and heat, he is compelled to toil for the scanty pittance which barely keeps his wife and little ones alive—and when the Sabbath morning comes, and he sees all so tidy about him, while the sun smiles pleasantly through the casement, and there is an eloquent stillness on all without, a feeling of freedom and of untold peace, comes stealing over his soul, such as those who have never shared his toils cannot imagine. ”

“ Westbrook,” said the old quarter-master, who overheard us by chance—“do you see that?” and he pointed to a rocket which that instant shot up from the deck of the frigate, and then arching over in the sky, broke into a thousand sparkles, which fell shivering to the water. “If I know anything of such sky-lighters, that bloody Englishman has a consort somewhere hereabouts—and there he is on our lee-bow, the varmint.” ”

“ I have not yet been a reader of commentators and, perhaps, some of the crowd of distinguished writers who, ever since his death, have been endeavoring to throw light on him, may have accounted for the till now inexplicable mystery of it. But I could never conceive it. Why a perfectly noble mind, should be so cruelly tortured without guilt on its own part; why a scene of innocent happiness should be thus wantonly destroyed was always an unanswerable question I asked myself on seeing or reading this, one of the greatest of his five great tragedies. ”

“ The theory of Ulrici is so beautiful and so consonant to the lofty rank which our poet occupies, that one cannot help wishing, and scarcely believing, that it may be true. It has the force and convincingness which characterize the solution of an enigma. And, in this view, it possesses something of the solemnity of the creation itself. The creation is an enigma of which Christianity is the solution. ”

“ In his youth, he had been mortified by the belief that his handsome face was more valued than his gifted mind; and the consciousness that, whatever might be his physical merits, his intellectual gifts were of far more value, tended to make him but little sensible to the impulses of vanity. But though possessing so many spells to awaken love, and endowed with a heart singularly alive to affection, he had been destined to disappointment. ”

“ There are others here besides us who have quitted the gay scene to seek refreshment of spirits in the quiet night breeze and in the calm light of the moon. Hither approach us, leaning on each other, arm fondly linked in arm, a noble pair. How stately his carriage, yet how tenderly he bends till his lips breathe upon the cheek of the fair creature he whispers to! They pause in the shadow of the thick vines! Her eyes meet his upturned and swimming with tenderness,—his arm glides around her waist—she is pressed to his manly breast, and their lips meet! ”

“ The idea of an ever superintending Providence being in my mind, I cannot join those philosophers who find in our poet merely a colossal diamond or a chance giant—as if the same hazard which gives to the farmer an overgrown cucumber or pumpkin had dropped the rare soul of this first of human geniuses among men. ”

“ But a man who thinks of poetry as Ulrici thinks, can never write of it altogether unworthily: one who is willing to consider Shakspeare as coming up to so lofty a standard, cannot fail to entertain that reverence for genius, and truth, and goodness, which is the source of all pleasure as well as soundness in criticism; and the admirable analysis of the poet’s works which constitute the latter half of the volume, shows the writer to be fully qualified for expounding such a creed. ”

“ There was a languid softness in her eye that contrasted beautifully with the bright, laughing eye of her sister. Hers was the eye of a Dudu—Virginia’s that of a Haidee; the one a fawn’s—the other a gazelle’s. I was not sorry to see that my friend seemed deeply interested in Miss Emily Melville. It is certainly not strange, if there is love at first sight, that there is also jealousy. I felt quite happy when I learned that, though surrounded by admirers, Virginia’s heart was untouched ”

“ During the parade the beautiful steed behaved admirably, and elicited, by the grace and swiftness of his movements, the universal admiration of every eye. At length the firing by platoon commenced. At the first discharge, he leaped bodily into the air with his rider and lit upon the ground twenty feet distant; and Leslie’s superior horsemanship only saved him from being thrown to the earth. ”

“ Each put spurs to his horse, and the young heir, as wilful as ever, instead of awaiting his companions, dashed forward as fast as his steed—the fleetest of them all—could carry him. He was already several rods in advance of his companions, when the wind, suddenly bursting out into a hurricane, swept across the avenue, taking in its course a huge, but somewhat decayed tree, whose trunk, after swaying forwards a moment, was seen to yield to the gale just as young Wentworth came underneath it. ”

“ It is a September morning, and all Nature is filled with harmony. Not a leaf that rustles on the air, nor a brook that babbles by, nor a bird that whistles in the wood, nor the voice of a child singing from the overflowing gladness of its heart, but is sweeter to their ear, and more soothing to their souls, than the music of a Garcia. ”

“ It is as if the newness, the fresh youth of the season, gave birth to a corresponding youth of the soul. Such are the sentiments which many men feel now-a-days, besides the painter and the poet and the soul-rapt enthusiast of nature ”

“ A large man-of-war, to judge by her size and rig, partially concealed by the brig, was coming down to us, with studding-sails all spread, and the English cross flying at her main.
“We are already under a press of sail—as much as we can conveniently spread,” said the skipper, as if musingly, looking aloft; “and the Englishman will have to give the brig somewhat of a berth. Ah! there comes the enemy—a frigate, as I live!” ”

“ Soon, however, darker masses of smoke rolled, volume on volume, up the hatchways, and directly, like a flash of lightning, the fire shot clear and high up from the hold, and catching to the shrouds, stays, and every portion of the hamper, ran swiftly across the ship, mounted up the rigging, and licking and wreathing around the spars, soon enveloped the chase in a pyramid of flame, which eddied in the breeze, and streamed like a signal banner far away to leeward. ”