Various

“ And Erix and Zella stretched out their hands toward heaven and swore, by the light, and by the orbs of the air, and by the ocean, far-rounding, illimitable, infinite, and by the solid earth, and by Him who moved upon the face of the waters and begat this glory, to be forever one. “What you receive, I will receive; what you reject, I will reject; your breath is my breath, and even as we are now, so death shall find us; leaving all else to cleave unto each other.” ”

“ Boswell always betrays himself. For, without a grain of Oliver’s genius, he shows himself to be as thoughtless and absurd as he would have us think the poet to have been. If the latter did really exhibit any thing like exultation on the occasion alluded to—the canny Scot mistook it; he could not enter into the humorous vein of the author of the Citizen of the World, who never let any opportunity of pleasantry of any kind escape him, and who, doubtless, with a playful impulse, would, slily and aside, for Boswell’s behoof, put on a comic air of loftiness, at the idea of his own privilege. ”

“ Away they fled, and away we hurried in the chase. A thousand horsemen were wheeling rapidly in pursuit—a thousand cattle, terrified and frantic, swept over the plain—and a thousand Condors mingled in the crowd—until, by the rapid movement, herd and Condor were again hidden from the view in clouds of dust. A loud shout soon after attracted us to the scene of conflict. Bursting forth once again from the cloud of dust into which he had vainly rushed, the devoted animal plunged madly forward, yet more closely followed by the whole field of vultures. ”

“ In the contemplation of this spectacle the soul swells with alternate despair and hope; with despair, at the thought of such wealth, capable of rendering such service to Humanity, not merely wasted but given to perpetuate Hate; with hope, as the blessed vision arises of the devotion of all these incalculable means to the purposes of Peace. The whole world labors at this moment with poverty and distress; and the painful question occurs to every observer, in Europe more than here at home—what shall become of the poor—the increasing Standing Army of the Poor. ”

“ It must be. That pale, thoughtful, hiding countenance could be only hers. Poor Roderick! I feel for you deeply! I wonder if your sorrow feels any alleviation in your new country! I fear not.
The next day I made sufficient inquiry to certify me that I had seen Count Reisach, and with him, Ella. I saw them once again, it was for a moment, and she seemed paler still; as I gazed, again she turned her face away. Poor Ella! how she shrank from the eyes of men! There was a deep remorse preying upon that wasting beauty; a secret sorrow and shame blighting every bud of pleasure and of hope. ”

“ Every one has heard of the Condor or Great Vulture of the Andes, rivaling in natural history, the fabled feats of the Roc of Sinbad. Even the genius of Humboldt has failed to strip this giant bird of its time-honored renown, and his effort to reduce the Chilian Condor to the level of the Lammergyer of the Alps, is a signal failure.
Although he has divested this mountain-bird of all its fictitious attributes, and stripped a goodly portion of romantic narrative of its wildest imagery, yet the Condor still floats in the solitude of the higher heavens, the monarch of the feathered race. ”

“ She thinks a pleasant delusion better than a disagreeable truth; and it is to this fondness for old books, and old places, and the old stories that have grown up into a popular creed about them, that we may trace the paramount charm of simplicity and trustfulness, the cheerful spirit and the teeming good-nature which abound in her writings.
To us, we must acknowledge, this freshness of the heart and entire freedom of the imagination, is very delightful. Miss Mitford is not a critic; but she is something a great deal better and more agreeable. She is of too enjoyable a temperament for a critic ”

“ As to its habits, while the Lapland or Siberian Reindeer is the tamest and most docile of its genus, the American Cariboo is the fiercest, fleetest, wildest, shyest and most untameable. So much so, that they are rarely pursued by white hunters, or shot by them, except through casual good-fortune; Indians alone having the patience and instinctive craft, which enables them to crawl on them unseen, unsmelt—for the nose of the Cariboo can detect the smallest taint upon the air of any thing human at least two miles up wind of him—and unsuspected. ”

“ Her very duty to her betrothed she converted into a pretext to betray him. Still, call her not traitress. Like one who begins to believe his oft-told lie to be the truth, a penalty for his deceit, she more than half trusted her shallow sophistry. No human power now, no stand of honor or pride, can save her now; she has let the enemy within the citadel to parley, and whilst she prates in whispered, cowering tones, of future peace or victory, he quietly possesses himself of every avenue and stronghold, and nothing less than power divine can lend the least effective aid. ”

“ Amid such excellence, the excellence of a primeval age, before man and the seasons had marred earth’s face, Erix and Zella hunted.
SECTION VI. The two moved on, like gods, hastening to outrun the growing light, and to make their sport before high noon should steal its freshness from their path. So, long after, but less large, less strong, less fleet, and less beautiful, did the twin creations of pure intellect, Apollo and his mate, pursue the boar in Tempe; while the herdsman who sat afar off, upon some high rock, watching his wealth, veiled his face in wonder and in fear. ”

“ With what a royalty of soul he has done all this, let those answer who have spent their most delightful hours in his drawing-rooms—where the stern lawyer, the energetic champion of political principles and rights has unbended, and let loose the bounding joyousness of the man—where his heart has let off its bubbles in very glee, and where the exhaustless stores of his memory are poured out in wantonness, and his imagination and wit flash and play in perfect abandonment. ”

“ Huge, aspiring, with arms reaching outward many a rood, each monarch stood; the traveler and man of science, he whose name now fills the world, never found, in his many rounds in search of knowledge, even in southern climes, such offspring of earth, air, water, and the sun; and Australia, with its wondrous herbage, sometimes cloud-capped, stand dwarfed and small to the life with which God, in his first joy, clothed his work. ”

“ With one loud shout the forest rang, and then, clear as the notes of bugle or of flute, played to the listening morn, burst forth the hunter’s song; for not yet had the gin and pit, and stealth cowardly creeping upon its prey, debased the chase, and dishonored with cheat and trick man’s highest sport; but room was given and a chance for life, to the course before the flood.
SECTION VII. See, the east is glowing with golden-tinted light, and the morn calls to us with the breath of youth.
See, the incense rises from every dewy leaf; and the morn calls to us with the breath of youth. ”

“ Roderick’s society still possessed a singular charm for her. In his presence she became more like her former self. She still loved him with a calm, settled love, which nothing on earth could ever destroy. When he turned his mournful gaze toward her, there was so much of tenderness and truth, so much of ill-concealed anxiety and trust, that tears of anguish and of pity would gather upon her eyelids, and she would turn her head, to brush them away unseen. ”

“ Miss Mitford relates these painful recollections with a serenity and patience that yield a lesson from which her readers may profit as largely as from the example of extravagance and recklessness which made so severe a demand on her feelings and her philosophy; and it is pleasant, after all her vicissitudes and jolting over the rough ways of the world, to find her in a tranquil cottage, in the midst of the scenery she loves, with her dog and her maid, her stick and her pony, enjoying as much felicity as can be reasonably looked for in the sunset of a chequered life. ”

“ They are out—and away scamper the Condor, fleet as the winds of heaven—and away, in rapid pursuit, wheels the mounted Chilian, swinging around his head the noose of the unerring lasso, which, falling upon the neck of the bird, makes him captive. The line is played out, and away sweeps the powerful bird, and away the practiced horseman after him. Springing upward, the Condor now unfolds his wings and flutters in such width of circle as the rope will permit—and now shoots perpendicularly upward—and now falls headlong, and is trailed exhausted on the ground. ”

“ With a manly heart, lifted in its gigantic resolves above all mere considerations of self—obeying all of its generous and noble impulses, he has from early manhood devoted his energies to build a paradise around those he loves—to render his home the abode of all that refines, of Art, Music and Society—to gather around him those who appreciated his manhood, and to impart by all the delicate and tender relations and attentions of a son and a brother, the largest amount of happiness which domestic life can afford. ”

“ Then they crawl onward, breathless and voiceless, up wind always, following the foot-prints of the wandering, pasturing, wantoning deer; judging by signs, unmistakable to the veteran hunter, undistinguishable to the novice, of the distance or proximity of their game; until they steal upon the herd unsuspected, and either finish the day with a sure shot and a triumphant whoop; or discover that the game has taken alarm and started on the jump, and so give it up in despair.
One man perhaps in a thousand can still-hunt, or stalk, Cariboo in the summer season. ”

“ Truth was too near and palpable, to be lost in imagination; to be moulded and cast anew, so changed as not to know itself; and poetry, the juggler and soul’s cheat, lay hid in matter, where God placed it, to be drawn thence for other purposes than those of error. It was not until man forgot his origin, that he sought out a new creator, even Beauty, the prime element in all God’s works, and so wrought with it, as to give strange life to all that is, and is not. ”

“ But I heard the mournful cry of the children from the factories; the cry which the public voice has made audible to the world; the cry of the children, of the little ones who had been compelled by the lust of gain of their parents and the manufacturers, to sacrifice life, and joy, and health, in the workshops of machinery; the children who lie down in those beds which never are cold, the children who are driven and beaten till they sink insensibly into death or fatuity—that living death; I heard the wailing cry of the children, which Elizabeth Barrett interpreted in her affecting poem ”

“ Brewster’s appearance before the Court is impressive. Thoughtful, earnest, and of fine manners, he at once impresses you with the importance of his cause, and that that which he is about to say is the result of no passing thought, but of care and deliberation—graceful and dignified in his manner he yet becomes, when warm with his subject, vehement without losing his self-possession, oftentimes treading a little out of his path to indulge in a pleasantry to relieve the dry detail of legal discussion, still maintaining the thread and course of his argument. ”

“ Surely this power to waft and to sustain himself in the loftiest regions of the air—the ability to endure, uninjured, the exceeding cold attendant upon such remoteness from the earth, and to breathe with ease in an atmosphere of such extreme rarity—together with the keenness of sight that, from such vast heights can minutely scan the objects beneath, as well as the formidable powers of this bird, when the herds are scattered before him; were sufficiently admirable to entitle the Condor to our attention, and to give us promise of goodly sport in the approaching Condor or Lasso Hunt. ”

“ You are an artist, and I must bear witness to the promise of success you make in your art; but, as I begin to feel a deep interest in yourself, your family, and—I think I may say with truth—in your sorrows, for some strange misfortune seems to brood over this house, I feel at liberty to remonstrate with you for abandoning what seems to me your duty to yourself, and your father’s family. I could not give you hope of better success where you purpose going than you would probably meet with here. The best of our own artists reside in Europe, for we have no models at home. ”