Various

“ But she was hopeful and buoyant in disposition, and consoled herself with the thought—as she looked into the mirror, and saw there her loveliness—that she yet would win him back to love her still more deeply: and pleased was she, very naturally, at the universal admiration she excited among the gentlemen; looking forward, too, to her first ball—thinking Charles Lennard would then see her in a dress, on which she bent all her taste to render it bewitching—that he would feel proud to be the husband-elect of one to whom so many eyes turned in ecstasy at her exquisite beauty. ”

“ The lamp was extinguished in the fray, and had it been the chief’s intention to escape on deck, perhaps he might have done so in the confusion which followed; for the lightning glared incessantly through the stern-ports, while the thunder, reverberated by the rocks, crashed over our heads in one continuous peal, till you’d’ve thought the hoary granite was piling over you. The first rush of the swell in the cove broke over the ship, deluging her fore-and-aft, as it heaped up in the strait in one tremendous surge, which tore the frigate from her anchor, and dashed her high against the rocks. ”

“ We soon had Parker’s boat towing astern, and Tom, if any thing, increased his speed, stretching the hawser—which, like the rest of her gear, was bran new that voyage, as taut as a harp-string. Every time he raised the edge of his flukes for a downward stroke of his tail, the men cheered; in fact, the fellows danced about the deck like wild men round a war-post, or negroes under a tamarind-tree; it was no manner of use to try to restrain them; while the poor devils of Arabs, with the black at their head, stood looking their last—with Allah’s name on their lips—at castle, rock and tower. ”

“ It was a narrow court, and at the far end, a smith’s forge. I heard the bang of the hammer, and saw the light, all in a glow, and a thousand sparkles like falling stars! Mary got under the shadow of the houses—she crept on, the hammer going, the fire glowing, the sparkles falling all the time, and the shadow as of a giant, forging the red bar, as if the hammer was a wand. ”

“ Neither the frailty of woman nor the malice of man’—here his voice grew too hoarse for utterance, and drinking off the liquor like water, he dashed the glass to the deck, walking the cabin with hasty strides, like a tiger chafing in his cage—while I, with a curse on my lips for what, as God is my judge, in spite of the man’s emotion, I believed to be a lie, sat chained to my seat, as by some predestined spell. ”

“ Jove! what a shout arose from the now triumphant cohorts!—what a thrilling shriek of the shrill trumpets, answered faintly and remotely, as if from the skies, by another Roman blast, but liker to the scream of the mountain-vulture than to the clangor of the pealing brass!—what a clang as of ten thousand stithies, when the Spanish blades smote home upon the Macedonian targes!
Yet still the men fell fast on both sides, although the Romans won their way, in spite of artillery and pike and sling-shot, at the sword’s point ”

“ When the summer came, she planted bright blossoming shrubs about the grave, and never in her life had Margery half so pretty a house as this narrow one.
The old house was given up to the rats and the winds, after the removal of the cheat, and the clock, and the hanks of yarn that hung all along the rafters. In course of time it fell into a heap; and one day, as Charity, who dwelt not far away, sat on the heap of stones where the hearth-stone had been, she saw a fair-faced youth searching up and down the lanes, over the meadows, and through the hedges hard-by, as though he missed something ”

“ You are to me, Edith, more perfect than any human being I ever dreamed of or imagined; so lovely, darling, that when you burst on me first, in your young, pure loveliness, I was almost in doubt if you, indeed, belonged to our dull earth. How could I love you!”
“What a simple question; yet, how deep in its very simplicity and artlessness. Yes, Edith, I almost ask myself the same question—how I could dare to love one so like an angel. I will not suffer myself to search into my right—lest I say with truth ”

“ To my mind there was once nothing so joyous in life as the roar of the gale at its height, when you slid from the top of a sea to the trough—the dripping dash of a head sea on the prow—or the rush of cleft waters astern, as you sat conning the chart.’ Little did that careful old pedagogue dream, as, day after day he chuckled over my progress in this department of knowledge, what restless longings disturbed the breast of his pupil, like the instinct of the unfledged albatross when it hears the sound of the sea from its nest on some sheltering cliff. ”

“ We will not say that a pang, very like the premonitory symptoms of the “green-eyed monster,” did not dart through her heart, playing sad havoc with her whilome hopeful feelings. Pale, and rather thinner than when she last saw him—but oh! how immeasurably superior, to her loving eyes, than all the men she had hitherto seen bowing homage to her charms. And now we must leave Edith, with feelings too excited for her evening siesta, and follow Charles and his party, who, of course, are no other than Bel Ashton, and her parents. ”

“ I also recollect his remarking how much hotter it had got within the past ten minutes, and looking aloft, I saw the light scud flying across the stars, though the flutter of air on deck had already died away. A noisome steam was rising out of the forecastle-scuttle enough to choke one, while a dog which we had on board lay on the fore-hatches, panting for breath, without so much as looking at the bucket of water, which some one had placed within a foot of his nose. ”

“ There was a savor of rebellion in some of these songs which wonderfully took the fashionable fancy of the English; while in Ireland the repeated allusions to the ancient glories of the land, and the graceful sorrow which seemed to weep its many misfortunes, touched the popular heart, and led the people— (we mean the reading people) —to look on Moore as the genuine poet of Erin, and to applaud him accordingly. ”

“ Bel will not dance. She is somewhat provoked with Charles, whom she saw addressing Edith with more empressement and diffidence of manner than he exhibited toward herself, and hence the cloud.
Their party leave early, and Lennard, restless and disquieted, wanders forth to the beach seeking company from the moaning and restless waves for his own troubled thoughts. Strains of melody are borne to him on that lonely shore from the scene of gay festivity, and he feels angry with Edith, whom his jealous imagination pictures reveling in the dance, for thus enjoying herself to his own misery. ”

“ Who would fall with the common herd, like rain into the ocean—lost in eternity! Even as the lightning is born of conflicting vapor; is born to penetrate, change, and subdue. So, of every age, and of the breath and roar of the people, is born one to rule, and mould, and make his time. Go then, and get power. Get it by the sword; since, even in our day, blood buoys the strong swimmer onward to greatness. Get it by arts of policy; since men will be ruled, and most honor those who rule them most sternly. ”

“ What wonder that the honest laborer, who knows no cunning but the use of the physical force which God has given him, or the mechanic who plies his trade, should stand aghast, and feel his heart sink within him, as he is forced from his legitimate occupation, to another and still another, and at last finds his employment altogether fitful and uncertain, from the number of his fellows driven to the same condition as himself. His labor is truly “a drug in the market,” and stern necessity is fast putting him, if it has not already, wholly at the mercy of capital. ”

“ All was still as death, except the surge of the Tartar’s bows to the strain of the hawser and the creak of her hamper aloft, as the whale sheered to port, and we passed within half a pistol shot of the corvette’s broadside—her crew at quarters staring at us in a queer enough sort of a way, as if catching a sight of the American flag, and the whale-boats at the cranes, they made sure all was right, strange as the sight was—until, as if to break the spell, their little mad-eyed captain jumped on the hammock-netting and hailed. ”

“ There was the father and mother, all excited; there were a couple of bridesmaids, new-fangled acquaintances, and two or three strangers, friends of the bridegroom’s, that Mr. and Mrs. Considine made a great fuss over, and called by the finest of names: there was a dinner, half-laid out in an upper room, that no one on the banks of the Shannon ever saw the like of: little puff things, all ornamented out by a real confectioner, in a white apron, such a sight of folly and nonsense. ”

“ The black dog of a eunuch, secure, as it seemed, in the shadow of his master, walked the poop with as proud a stride as if his foot was already on our necks—not a muscle of his grim, relentless face moving beneath his showy turban, flecked, as it was, with blood, while, as I met his deadly, sinister glance every time he turned, I fancied to myself—as, indeed, I had done on former occasions—what a hell of secrets must lie hidden, from all but God’s eye, in the black pit of his soul. ”

“ Excuse me, De Lacy,” he continued with a laugh, “but every man entering a great town like this, must be a little green at first, whatever may be his experience of other places. It would be better for you to come to a knowledge of London by degrees, and that can only be done by living a little way out of it. With all its vices, its knavery, and its abomination, there is no place like this great capital of ours in the world for the comfort of having every thing that one can want, or desire, or dream of, ready for one in an instant. Each man can choose according to his means or his ambition. ”

“ Half blinded, I stumbled over a prostrate body, clearing my eyes as I brought up against my own berth, when another flash showed every object distinctly, and I saw the two mutes throw themselves before the eunuch upon Halil; then followed a deadly struggle from the mast through the cabins to the transom, during which Hadji’s shrill voice screamed to the executioners to use dagger or bowstring—then a heavy fall and a gasp—woman’s fearful shriek—and again you heard over all, the defying roar of the tempest. ”

“ To my dying day, I shall never forget the look that strong man cast from the locket to Mary, but I know he could not see her face, it was in the darkness to him, though I saw, plain enough, her quivering lips and glowing cheeks—he stamped on the locket, and I heard it scrunch beneath his foot. She flew like a rapid over a rock of the Shannon, and was away in a minute—I turned to follow her, but the strong grasp of the smith was on my shoulder. ”

“ Never was the youth of any poet spent in the midst of greater incitements of love, friendship, and song, than those that solicited Moore on every side during the heyday of his years, in the high society of England. It was therefore morally impossible that his verse should be any thing but “brilliant and light,” full of all the levities and luxuries of sentiment. The real arduousness, effort, and pain of life find no expression at all in Moore. ”

“ The bridegroom whispered something to her mother about her being nervous, but it would soon go off: I could have killed him! He then handed round the ring for us to look at; aye, while SHE was weeping and trembling at the priest’s feet. When he held it to me, I struck it down. Aunt, I could not help it! What a look he gave! It rolled along the floor; but his attention was drawn to Mary’s words.
“ ‘Father,’ she sobbed, to the priest, ‘save me—save me from my own people; save me, a young, helpless girl; save me from marrying him I hate. ”

“ From Rome that peril was averted. The arms of Macedon abstained, perforce, from the shores of devastated Italy. The arms of Syracuse, of Spain, were wrested from the hands which would have wielded them in the behalf of Carthage. The arms even of the unbridled Numidians were turned against the masters whom they had served so fatally for Rome. And out of the furnace of that scathing war, the giant form of the chosen republic emerged, without one hair singed, one thread of its vestments injured; and that, like the faithful sons of Israel, by the especial providence of the Almighty. ”

“ That there was some dark mystery about my fate, was clear, and it presented itself in a more painful and tangible shape to my mind now, than it had ever done before; but, in truth, I must own that this was neither the sole nor the principal cause of the gloom that now fell upon me. I had looked forward to the meeting with Madame de Salins and Mariette, with a sort of childish, delighted expectation, which had given a relief to darker and more sorrowful thoughts. A thousand sweet memories of childhood had risen up like flowers to cover the grave of more mature affection ”

“ Why does our friend go back only to the Hand-Press to exhibit the disastrous effects of Machinery on the interests of Labor? The hand-press itself is a labor-saving machine of immense capacity—far more so in its day than the power-press which is now extensively superseding it. It threw wholly out of employment and reduced to absolute destitution thousands upon thousands of skillful, accurate, admirable penmen, who had given the best years of their lives to acquire skill in a profession, or pursuit, which the press almost extirpated. ”

“ Like any fair lake which the breeze is upon
When it breaks into dimples and laughs in the sun!
No wonder “the magnificent son of Acbar” should be set excessively beside himself on account of such a miracle of womanhood.
Moore shows himself very incapable of sustaining himself in any flights of imagination to compare at all with the soaring of Shelley or Byron. The sight of his mind is less keen and ardent than theirs, his thoughts feebler and his verse less vigorously constructed. ”