Various

“ In heaven there is no sorrow,” and then, in incoherent sentences, she murmured of bright faces, and strange music, and glorious visions that were in the air. The dying musician said that he then knew more of God and nature than he ever knew before, and it may be, that, as the soul leaves the body, we are gifted with a power to see things of which no mortal here can tell. Who knows? In our dying hour we shall learn.
The grave of Ellen is now forgotten by all, save me. The grass has grown over it for long years. ”

“ Though taken by surprise, the noble lady had been so long accustomed to courts that, in crossing the ante-chamber, she resumed the quiet and dignified manner which anxiety had previously disturbed, but the quick feelings of youth could not be so readily controlled, and when the duchess presented herself in King Edward’s apartments, the young creature leaning on her arm was pale as death beneath all the warm glow of her jewels, and trembled visibly with suppressed agitation. ”

“ That word arose amid the darkness faint and broken with tears.
“My child, we are alone!” replied a second voice, made strong by the agony of parting.
“No, not alone, mother, God is with us!” And, as she spoke, that noble girl stretched forth her hands and groped the way to her mother in the darkness. As she passed the lute, which still remained on the floor, her garments brushed the strings and a tone of music stole through the room—a pleasant tone—and it seemed that an angel had answered to those trustful words. ”

“ Or to sit beside a charmer on a sofa, before a cozy fire on a bitter winter night, and fill up the pauses of the conversation, you know, by drawing her to you and kissing her. But more than all,—when you have won a blushing confession of love from her you have long and tremblingly worshipped with all a boy’s devotion,—is the rapture of the kiss which you press holily to her brow, while her warm heart flutters against your side, and every pulse in your body thrills with an ecstasy that has no rival in after life. ”

“ I once knew a fine fellow—talented, rich, in a profession—whose only fault, indeed, was that he had never kissed anybody but his sister. He had the most holy horror of a man who could so insult the dignity of the sex as to kiss a lady—and, I verily believe, the sight of such a thing, in his younger days, would have thrown him into a fit. At length he fell in love; and as sweet a creature was Blanche Merrion as ever trod greensward, or sang from very gaiety of heart on the morning air. Day after day her lover watched her from afar, as a worshipper would watch the countenance of a saint ”

“ The gentle lady moved across the room, her rich, but now soiled, vestments sweeping the dusty floor as she passed; while her daughter was patiently occupied in smoothing the pages which had been injured in their fall, and in brushing away the dust which they had gathered, she approached her husband, placed a hand upon his arm, and looked with a sad smile into his face.
“The apartment within is less gloomy than this,” she said; “come and sit with us; you, who never failed to share the sunshine of life with us, should not thus brood alone, now that sorrow has befallen us. ”

“ Let me act while I have yet strength!”
Edward arose once more, unlocked a miniature cabinet which stood upon the table, and taking out a small golden flask, drank off its contents. The potion seemed to compose and strengthen him; a color came to his lips, and his eyes had within them that strange, glittering fire which springs from artificial excitement. A small branch of twisted ebony, hung with a cluster of tiny bells, lay upon the table. The king took it up, and rang the bells till the apartment seemed haunted in every nook and corner with a gush of fairy music. ”

“ A dumpy, over-dressed old lady, leaning on the arm of a delicate, fair-haired girl, entered with that fussy manner so characteristic of an out-of-place feeling, while, immediately following her, with a complexion as cool and fresh as marble, if one could only imagine marble tinged with the rose-tint of youth and health—a complexion such as nothing but a morning bath can give—came the elegant Miss Oriel. ”

“ Dudley broke off abruptly, for all at once the hectic color rushed back into the king’s face, and his languid blue eyes kindled with the brilliancy of a spirit, for the first time, thoroughly aroused.
“Were we indeed a king,” he said, “a true, free king as our father was, and not the invalid child which men see in us, these things could not happen. No man would dare to enter the councils of a nation and cast their leaders into prison without the sanction, nay, command of his monarch. But, alas! there is not in the kingdom a being more completely held in thrall than ourself! ”

“ As day by day passed, she drew nearer to the grave. Her eye grew sunken, but an unnatural lustre gleamed from its depths—the hectic flush blazed on her cheek—and that dry hacking cough, which so tortures the consumptive, while it snaps chord after chord of life, hourly grew worse.
At an early period of Ellen’s illness, Mrs. Neville, who had been to the orphan girl a second mother, divined the secret of her niece’s malady. She did not, however, urge her confidence on her charge, but Ellen soon saw that her aunt knew all. ”

“ A rose amid her tresses
Tells that she would be gay,
But a thought of some deep sorrow
Drives every smile away.
She whom I see there weeping,
Few save myself do know,⁠—
A flower in blooming blighted
By blasts of keenest wo.
She has a soul so gentle,
That as a harp it seems,
Which the light airs wake to music
Like that we hear in dreams.
A common fate is that poor girl’s,
Which many yet must share,⁠—
In the crowd how little know they
What griefs its members bear! ”

“ Point me out a being who is callous to such a feeling, and I will point you out a wretch who is unworthy of the name of man. He who can triumph in the petty vanity of being loved by one for whom he entertains no return of affection, is worse than a fop or a fool—he is a scoundrel of the worst stamp. He deserves that his home should be uncheered by a WOMAN’S smiles, that his dying hour should be a stranger to her tender care. God knows! to her we are indebted for all the richest blessings and holiest emotions of our life. ”

“ He was but a youth himself, and forgetful of his dignity and of all but the sweet, pleading face lifted to his, he laid his thin hand upon the curls which fell back from it, and would have kissed the forehead, but an exclamation from Northumberland warned him of the impropriety. Still the page had seen the impulse and the generous tears which filled the mild eyes of his master. His young heart swelled with grateful affection, and, burying his head in Edward’s robe, he sobbed aloud.
“Poor boy! he is an orphan like ourself. ”

“ Many a time, you old curmudgeon, have I laughed until the tears ran out of my eyes to see a young scoundrel, scarcely breeched, kissing an unwilling favorite. How sturdily he sticks up to her, one hand around her neck, and the other, perhaps, fast hold of her chin; while she, with face averted, and a frown upon her tiny brow, is all the while pushing him desperately away. But the young rascal knows that he is the strongest, and with him might makes right. With eagerness in every line of his face, he slips his arm around her waist, and, after sundry repulses, wins the kiss at last. ”

“ Lady Jane knew that it but mocks a broken spirit to see anything it loves over-cheerful; so her strain, though not gloomy, was touching, and a sad one, so sad that her father, as he walked in the adjoining room, forgot the selfishness of his sorrow and wept like a child, that two creatures so gently nurtured should thus inhabit a prison, and, for his sake, exert their broken spirits to render it cheerful. ”

“ No trace of care, or sorrow, lingers here.
With rosy cheek, upon the pillow prest,
To me thou seemest a cherub, pure and fair,
With thy sweet smile, and gently heaving breast,
And the bright ringlets of thy clustering hair;
What shall I wish thee, little one? Smile on
Through childhood’s morn—through life’s gay spring⁠—
For oh—too soon will those bright hours be gone!
In youth time flies upon a silken wing.
May thy young mind, beneath the bland control
Of education, lasting worth acquire ”

“ The duchess arose, and, taking the casket from her daughter’s hand, touched a spring. The lid flew open, and, with an exclamation of surprise, the ladies saw, not their own jewels, but a magnificent suite of diamonds which had once belonged to Jane Seymour, the Queen of Henry the Eighth; a young creature who had perished in giving birth to the present king—fortunate, perhaps, in being taken from her earthly state before she had learned how terrible a thing it was to “outlive her husband’s liking.” ”

“ Ah! sir, a bridemaid is a bachelor’s worst foe—one plays with edge tools when he waits at a wedding—and though you may dance with an angel or flirt with a Houri, I’d never—heaven bless you—recommend you to wait on a girl unless you were ready to marry. Seeing other folks married is infectious, and, before you know it, you’ll find yourself engaged. It was a lucky chance for Howard when he was asked to wait on Blanche, for I would stake my life that nothing else could have cured him of his bashfulness. ”

“ While we remember that we drank in our life from a mother’s breast—that we owed that life a thousand times afterwards to a mother’s care—that the love of a sister or the deeper affection of a wife has cheered us through many a dark hour of despair, we can never join that flippant school which makes light of a woman’s truth, or follow those impious revilers who would sneer at a woman’s love. ”

“ One would think that your hearts indulged in no other sentiment than this engrossing one.”
“You wrong us, indeed, Ellen,” I said, “for no one has a warmer heart than the sailor. But we have shared so many dangers with our ship, and it has been to us so long almost our only world, that we learn to entertain a sort of passion for it, which, I confess, seems a miracle to others, but which to us is perfectly natural. I love the old Arrow with a sentiment approaching to monomania, and yet I have many and dear friends whom I love none the less for this passion.” ”

“ For three thousand years he has gazed on mankind with a face as unchanging as that of the weird Sphinx of the desert. For ninety generations, he has survived war, and pestilence, and the slow decay of the system,—a being mysterious in his subtle power, wonderful in his awful and majestic beauty. This exemption from death he has won by the subjugation of every feeling and passion to the mastery of a PURE INTELLECT. But still retaining his youth, he retains the capacity to love ”

“ The mother did not smile, but a brighter expression lighted up her eyes, and the two looked almost happy making their strange toilet in a dungeon. The nurse had taken that little hand, which trembled in her clasp with conflicting emotions, and after pressing her lips upon the rosy palm, was drawing on the snowy glove with its embroidery of seed pearls, when there was a sound at the door, as of some person knocking against it with his knuckles, and, after a moment, the lieutenant of the tower once more presented himself. ”