Various

“ What, then, can be this heavy sin or sorrow which you are now ashamed or fearful to relate to one who surely loves you as no one else can do beneath the canopy of heaven? Marian, you must reply to me in full, or I must leave you till better thoughts shall be awakened in your soul, and till you judge more truly of those who most esteem you!”
“Too true!—it is too true!” Marian replied, “no one has ever loved me as you have done, sweet Annabel—and now no one will love me any more—no one—no one forever. ”

“ When all had become clear to her, she dropped her hands slowly and the tears gathered into her eyes; then, as by a new impulse, she drew herself to my bosom, and nestled there, like a dove, weary and desolate.
“Tender and beautiful sufferer! she gathered her duty only from my eyes, and assented to the slightest intimation of my will. I was her only friend on the earth, and her gentle nature, now doubly gentle in her sorrow, lavished all its tenderness on me. ”

“ In loving you I am but doing homage to virtue and wisdom and piety—in bowing down before your image I am but worshipping the noblest attributes of human nature enshrined within your heart. I dared not pour out the fullness of my joy until I had told you my sad tale, but now that you know all—now that no shadow of distrust can fall upon the sunshine of the future, come to me, and assure me with your own dear voice that my troubled dream is now forever past, and that the dawn of happiness is breaking upon my weary heart! ”

“ Ellen was the realization of my dreams, the one pure and blessed being forever floating about the fancies of the imagination, the impersonation of my ideal of womanhood at that time; meek, trusting, dependent, and loving with a singleness and purity of soul that sanctified every emotion. I need not say that the most restless dream of ambition, the most alluring incitements to pleasure, were as nothing to me when weighed by the wealth of her guileless tones of affection, the earnest and touching accents of tenderness that fell from her sweet lips. ”

“ Most friendship is feigning
Most loving mere folly!”
Alas! for trusting Annabel!—soon shall she wake from her fond dream, soon wake to wo, to anguish. Again they mount their steeds, again they sweep the meadows down to the very brink of the broad deep transparent Wharfe—and now the heronshaw is sprung—he flaps his dark gray vans, the hermit bird of the waters, and slowly soars away, till the falconer’s shrill whoop and the sharp whistling flutter of the fleet pinions in his rear arouse him to his danger—up! up! he soars—up! up! ”

“ Johnson’s two thumbs, and the centre ornamented by the striking resemblance of a broken leaf, cut by the same ingenious artist in the original paste.
Truly a day is like a human life, seldom all clouds or entire sunshine. The most gloomy is not all darkness, nor the most happy all light. When the remembrance of that sea-side dinner, under the juniper bushes, comes over me, I must acknowledge that my day of tribulation—with all its provoking incidents and petty vexations—had its hour of respite, if not of enjoyment. ”

“ No one who has not heard that fearful cry on a lee shore, when surrounded by darkness, can have any notion of our feelings. Each man held his breath, and turned his ear anxiously to leeward. In that awful second what varied emotions rushed through our minds, as we heard, rising distinctly over the partial lull of the tempest, the hoarse roar of the surf, apparently close under our lee.
“Port—a-port—jam her close to the wind,” almost shrieked Merrivale, the energy of his character, in the moment of peril, divesting him of his usual prolixity. ”

“ All along the coast, at a distance of more than a mile from the shore, stretched a narrow shoal, over which the breakers were now boiling as in a maelstrom. It needed no prophet to foretell our fate, had we struck amid this surf. No boat could have lived in that raging sea, and our frail craft would have been racked to pieces in less than half an hour. Nothing but the energy of the skipper in crowding the canvass on the schooner, though at the imminent hazard of carrying away the masts and thus ensuring certain destruction, enabled us to escape the doom which befell the ill-fated man-of-war. ”

“ Norwood, and when he returned to Mr. Allston’s study he feelingly described the bodily pangs and angelic patience of the gentle sufferer. The frame of the stern man shook as he listened, and tears—such tears as sear rather than relieve the heart—fell from his eyes. It was one of the last struggles of human feeling in the breast of one who vainly fancied himself marked out for a higher than human destiny—one more was yet to come, and then earth held no claim upon his heart. ”

“ Wallingford’s death. He had fallen a victim to his own misdeeds in Italy, and at the moment when Allston had considered himself the subject of a temptation intended to try his strength, the divorced wife was in reality free from every shadow of a tie.
Why had she not disclosed these tidings to her scrupulous lover? Ask rather why she who had twice suffered from man’s wayward nature, and who had escaped from the vices of one only to perish by the too rigid virtues of another, should place trust in any earthly affection? ”

“ His forehead was contracted in a superb and scornful frown—his whiskers and moustaches looked black as night—and his half-closed eyes seemed as if they deemed it an act of condescension on their part to open upon the works of the Creator. Tousky Wousky swung his cane, and looked neither to the right nor to the left, except when he bowed to some envied female acquaintance. As for that highly respectable portion of the human race, the males, the count rarely condescended to recognize their existence. He passed them by with supreme indifference. ”

“ What thorn you could plant in my heart I know not—nor how you could suppose it—but this I do know, Marian, that you have set distrust, and dark suspicion, and deep sorrow in my soul this morning. Distrust of yourself, dear Marian—for what can these half confidences breed except distrust—suspicion of I know not, wish not to know, dare not to fancy what—deep sorrow that already, even from one short separation, a great gulf is spread out between us. ”

“ I would scarcely assert that Anne was endowed with genius; and yet I know not—at any rate it was thoroughly a woman’s genius—earnest, truthful, affectionate, dependent, and yet nobly self-sustained—impassioned and yet never mistaking or perverting her emotions—embodying every quality of her sex, and yet elevating all—gay as a bird, simple as a child; her own bright nature investing all things with an ideal halo, and yet with a singular clearness of perception and soundness of judgment correcting all such illusions; a creature of contradictions, and yet grand in her consistency; a true woman ”

“ Is it strange, therefore, that spiritual pride should have grown up in the heart of the isolated student, and twined its parasitic foliage around many a hardy plant of grace and goodness? Is it to be wondered at if Charles Allston at length indulged the fancy that he had been set apart as one chosen for a high and holy work—that he was destined to be one of the “vessels of honor,” of whom St. Paul has spoken—and that nothing now could sully the spotless garments in which his self-denial had clothed him. ”

“ Johnson, whose dimensions required rather more than half, placed herself by my side, her husband grasped the reins and crowded his diminutive proportions between us, while the dear little boys stood up behind and held by the back of our seat. Mr. Johnson gave his reins a jerk and flourished a whip—with a very short and white hickory handle, a long lash, and a thong of twisted leather fastened on for a snapper—with peculiar grace over the drooping head of our steed. The poor animal gathered up his limbs and walked down the street, dragging us after him, with great majesty and decorum. ”

“ Allston had been among the first to welcome the sick stranger to Elmsdale, and, pleased with the gentle grace which characterized her manners, had lavished upon her every kindness. Mrs. Norwood was grateful for her attentions, and seemed happy to find a friend whose mature age and experience could afford her counsel and sympathy. This feeling of childlike dependence, on the one hand, and matronly affection on the other, was growing up between them, and served to establish a closer intimacy than at first might have appeared natural to persons so entirely unlike in character. ”

“ Annabel, now attired like her sister in velvet side robe and the slashed graceful hat, and were assisted to their saddles by the young lover; then he too bounded to his noble charger’s back, and others of the company in their turn mounted, and the whole party rode off merrily to the green meadows by the fair river’s side. Away! away! the spaniels are uncoupled and questing far and wide, among the long green flags, and water bryony, and mallows that fringe the banks of many a creek and inlet, over the russet stubbles, up the thick alder coppices that fringe the steep ravines. ”

“ The love of my girlhood was blighted even as a flower which blossoms out of time, and loneliness has hitherto been my lot through life. Will you deem me too bold, my friend, if I tell you that from you I have learned my first lesson in womanly duty? Till I knew you I dreamed not of the power of a fervent and true passion—till I beheld you I believed my heart was cold and dead to all such gentle impulses. You have taught me that happiness may yet be found even for me. ”

“ Lo! there he goes, the gray hawk after him—by heaven! in fair speed he outstrips the jerfalcon, he does not condescend even to dodge or double, but flies wild and high toward the purple moorland, and there we cannot follow him. Ride, De Vaux; gallop for your life—cut in, cut in between the bird and that near ridge—soh! bravely done, black charger—now cast the lanner loose! so! that will turn him. See! he has turned and now he must work for it—the angle he has made has brought old Diamond up against his weather wing—now! he will strike—now! ”

“ But it is not so much the graces of language or style, or the appropriateness or beauty of imagery, as the pensive but deep and manly philosophy, that incites our admiration of Mr. Bryant’s genius. It must strike every one, upon the most slight and cursory perusal of his poems, that he is a man of the most unquestionable good sense. The silent meditation of nature, in her more genial and subduing aspects, seems to have imparted to him the gentleness, truth, simplicity, and calmness that ever await upon her teachings. ”

“ Frank and confiding in my disposition, I was easily led to place confidence in those who treated me with a semblance of affection, and the sense of loneliness which oppressed my heart, even in childhood, led me rather to seek for the friendship of those by whom I was surrounded, while the romance, which shows itself in a greater or less degree in the developing character of every school girl, assumed in me the form of a morbid desire to inspire affection in those whom Providence had placed around me, to fill the places of parents, and brothers and sisters to my desolate life. ”

“ Norwood’s feelings when she first took possession of her new abode, she certainly seemed both healthier and happier after a year’s sojourn in Elmsdale. A faint color returned to her thin cheek, a smile, bright and transient as an April sunbeam, often lit up her fine face, her features lost much of their sharpness of outline, and gradually, almost imperceptibly, the feeble, drooping invalid was transformed by the renovating touch of health into the lovely and elegant woman. ”

“ Sweet affections, tenderness, patience, love, and, above all, trust in Nature and God, are the virtues that chiefly inspire his song. It is for this reason, that amidst his most striking and picturesque descriptions there is always something to soften and improve. Not the tempest, the earth-quake, or the torrent move him, but nature, in her gladness and smiles. With every phase of the external world he has connected some noble moral, or some beautiful religious or philosophical sentiment. ”

“ Thus, in the deep slumber of the woodlands he finds an emblem of the inward peace that marks the life of virtue, twilight hues, “lingering after the bright sun has set,” are like the memory of good men gone; the perishing flowers of autumn recall those who “in their youthful beauty died;” the golden sunlight that follows the tempest anticipates the day when “the voice of war shall cease, and married nations dwell in harmony;” ”

“ There is then a sternness in the sky, a plaintive melancholy in the sighing of the wind through the mottled forest foliage, which harmonizes better with the spirit of the scene. For the Genius of Niagára, O friend! is never a laughter-loving spirit. For the gaudy vanities, the petty pomps, the light follies of the hour, he has small sympathy. Let not the giddy heir bring here his ingots, the selfish aspirant his ambition, the libertine his victim, and hope to find enjoyment and gaiety in the presence. ”

“ We clambered up the mountain, searched over its broken and picturesque features, and gazed down on the Arcadian scenery below with a delight which I can never forget; the town lying amid its forest of trees, the glittering Sound, the line of Long Island stretching along the horizon, and the green meadows and pretty village at our feet, lay within our glance, and human eye never dwelt upon a scene more lovely.
It was late in the morning when we drove through the town again—our horses in a foam—our cheeks glowing with exercise and our laps full of wild blossoms. ”

“ She dreaded rather than anticipated the future, and while listening to the wrapt eloquence of her lover, who seemed to spiritualize the impassioned language of affection, she could not but tremble to think what a blank life would be if this new-found bliss were suddenly extinguished. The peculiar tone of Allston’s mind was never more distinctly displayed than in his courtship. ”

“ The breath of a thousand flowering thickets was abroad, the sun lay twinkling amid their foliage, and the dewy grass with the shadows sleeping upon it looked so cool and silent, one longed to take a volume of Wordsworth and dream away the morning there—we dashed forward to the college grounds, by the Tontine and into Elm street, where we drove at a foot pace to enjoy the shade of the tall elms where they interlace, canopying the whole street with the stirring foliage, and weaving a magnificent arch through which the sunshine came flickering with broken and unsteady light. ”

“ I will not upbraid you, madam, for your cruel concealment; your own conscience will be your accuser, and it will not fail to remind you that your deception has nearly hurled me from an eminence which it has been the labor of my life to reach. But you have been only an instrument in the hands of a higher power. I fancied myself superior to temptation, and God has sent you to teach me the necessity of closer watchfulness over my still frail nature. ”