Various

“ Beside some philosophers of larger vision, Carlyle stands like an honest, half-despairing boy, grasping at some details only of their world systems. Philosophy, certainly, is some account of truths, the fragments and very insignificant parts of which man will practice in this work-shop; truths infinite and in harmony with infinity; in respect to which the very objects and ends of the so-called practical philosopher, will be mere propositions, like the rest. It would be no reproach to a philosopher, that he knew the future better than the past, or even than the present. ”

“ Ah! gold may purchase the gorgeous bouquet, to adorn the opera box, even in mid-winter; but all the wealth of India cannot buy one single shoot of heart’s ease! It is a fairy plant, and blossoms loveliest in the humble shades of life!
And Amy slept at last; but she slept uneasily, amid confused dreams that Kate and Henry Stanton were attempting to poison her! About the same time, Queen Mab was with Frank Pennant, too, and he laughed happily in his sleep, as he dreamed that Kate was pelting him, in mimic play, with rose-buds and myrtle leaves, while his dear friend Harry looked on smilingly. ”

“ Jack Tier looked at his commander as if he would penetrate his most secret thoughts. A short pause succeeded, during which the steward’s mate was intently musing, then his countenance suddenly brightened; he gave the doubloon a fillip, and caught it on the palm of his hand as it descended, and he uttered the customary “Ay, ay, sir,” with apparent cheerfulness. Nothing more passed between these two worthies, who now parted, Jack to make his arrangements, and Spike to “tell his yarn,” as he termed the operation in his own mind, to Mrs. Budd, Rose, and Biddy. ”

“ But we miss everywhere a calm depth, like a lake, even stagnant, and must submit to rapidity and whirl, as on skates, with all kinds of skillful and antic motions, sculling, sliding, cutting punch-bowls and rings, forward and backward. The talent is very nearly equal to the genius. Sometimes it would be preferable to wade slowly through a Serbonian bog, and feel the juices of the meadow. We should say that he had not speculated far, but faithfully, living up to it. He lays all the stress still on the most elementary and initiatory maxims, introductory to philosophy. ”

“ Arnold exhibited his usual bravery; his form towered before his troops; his voice, animating them, resounded along the line like the notes of a trumpet; his men now spring forward, and the fiery contest is close and bloody; the discharges of musketry are quick, incessant and deadly; the Americans press on steadily and close with their adversaries; the enemy resort to their bayonets, but soon falter and give way till the Americans are drawn within the shot of some regiments of German light infantry upon the extreme right. These pour upon the American flank a murderous fire ”

“ Not a mosquito, or any thing of the sort was left, however, all having gone to leeward, in the vortex which had come so near sweeping off the Mexican schooner.
“This place will do very well, aunty, for a day or two,” cried Rose cheerfully, as she returned from a short excursion, and threw aside her hat, one made to shade her face from the sun of a warm climate, leaving the sea-breeze, that was just beginning to blow, to fan her blooming and sunny cheeks. “It is better than the brig. The worst piece of land is better than the brig.” ”

“ If a horse kicks me, I’ll kick him back; and I wouldn’t get out of the way, like Mr. Daniel Tucker in the song, if a thirty-two pound shot was coming up the street, or a locomotive was a whizzin’ down the road. Stand up straight—that’s my motto. Give ’em as good as they can bring; that’s the doctrine; and while a single bit of Kerr Mudgeon remains—while any of his bones hang together, that’s him squaring off right in the centre of the track, ready for you, with his coat buttoned up and a fist in each of his hands. ”

“ The lightning is an exaggeration of the light. Exaggerated history is poetry, and truth referred to a new standard. To a small man every greater is an exaggeration. He who cannot exaggerate is not qualified to utter truth. No truth we think was ever expressed but with this sort of emphasis, so that for the time there seemed to be no other. Moreover, you must speak loud to those who are hard of hearing, and so you acquire a habit of shouting to those who are not. By an immense exaggeration we appreciate our Greek poetry and philosophy, and Egyptian ruins ”

“ The engagement is now general and sanguinary, the cannon thunder along the line, the peals of musketry are continuous, and the sharp rattle of the rifle is incessant, while the bomb lights up with its red glare, the atmosphere darkened with the smoke of battle and the shades of coming eve.
While the battle thus rages, the intrepid Brooks leads his party, as ordered, against the stockades, which are carried in a moment at the point of the bayonet; and the rest of the brigade assault the lines, though manned by twice their number. ”

“ Indeed, it is for the interest of every person who has any stake in a country, that its literature should be high and pure. Demoralize the mind of a nation by bad books, and you undermine its social and political institutions. It is of some importance to know what Mr. Prettyman peruses in the parlor, but of more importance what Dick cons over at the plough, or what Sally reads in the kitchen.
We have not space to follow Mr. Griswold in his rapid and interesting view of what has been done so far in the United States in the establishment of a sound national literature. ”

“ To have our sunlight without paying for it, without any duty levied,—to have our poet there in England, to furnish us entertainment, and what is better provocation, from year to year, all our lives long, to make the world seem richer for us, the age more respectable, and life better worth the living,—all without expense of acknowledgment even, but silently accepted out of the east, like morning light as a matter of course. ”

“ If any luminous star, or undissolvable nebula, is visible from his station, which is not visible from ours, the interests of science require that the fact be communicated to us. The universe expects every man to do his duty in his parallel of latitude. We want to hear more of his inmost life; his hymn and prayer, more; his elegy and eulogy, less; that he should speak more from his character, and less from his talent; communicate centrally with his readers, and not by a side; that he should say what he believes, without suspecting that men disbelieve it, out of his never-misunderstood nature. ”

“ Even Spike and Mulford took the rest they needed, the cook alone being left to look out for the changes in the weather. In a word, everybody but this idler was exhausted with pumping and bailing, and even gold had lost its power to charm, until nature was recruited by rest.
The excitement produced by the scenes through which they had so lately passed, caused the females to sleep soundly, too. The death-like stillness which pervaded the vessel contributed to their rest, and Rose never woke, from the first few minutes after her head was on her pillow, until near four in the morning. ”

“ Of the last, three or four fell into the water so near the vessel as to cast their spray on her decks.
“Overboard with the rest of the powder!” shouted Spike. “Keep the brig off a little, Mr. Mulford—keep her off, sir; you luff too much, sir.”
“Ay, ay, sir,” answered the mate. “Keep her off, it is.”
“There comes the other shell!” cried Ben, but the men did not quit their toil to gaze this time. Each seaman worked as if life and death depended on his single exertions. Spike alone watched the course of the missile. ”

“ As we read his books here in New England, where there are potatoes enough, and every man can get his living peacefully and sportively as the birds and bees, and need think no more of that, it seems to us as if by the world he often meant London, at the head of the tide upon the Thames, the sorest place on the face of the earth, the very citadel of conservatism. Possibly a South African village might have furnished a more hopeful, and more exacting audience, or in the silence of the wilderness and the desert, he might have addressed himself more entirely to his true audience posterity. ”

“ Rich in all these profuse gifts of nature’s bestowing, the world had likewise been bountiful in its distribution of favors. Her parents were wealthy, and her life flowed on in one unbroken stream of careless, ceaseless pleasure. Scene after scene in the drama of life passed before her, heightened in its fairy, dream-like influence, by the continual good-humor and complacency of both the actors and auditors. The gilding and tinsel, which irised every view, and which that skillful artist, Fashion, presented with ever-varying hue, concealed the misshapen mass on which the coloring was laid. ”

“ Mahomet,—Dante,—Cromwell,—Voltaire,—Johnson,—Burns,—Goethe,—Richter,—Schiller,—Mirabeau; could any of these have been spared? These we wanted to hear about. We have not as commonly the cold and refined judgment of the scholar and critic merely, but something more human and affecting. These eulogies have the glow and warmth of friendship. There is sympathy not with mere fames, and formless, incredible things, but with kindred men,—not transiently, but life-long he has walked with them. ”

“ There is something antique, even in his style of treating his subject, reminding us that Heroes and Demi-gods, Fates and Furies, still exist, the common man is nothing to him, but after death the hero is apotheosized and has a place in heaven, as in the religion of the Greeks.
Exaggeration! was ever any virtue attributed to a man without exaggeration? was ever any vice, without infinite exaggeration? Do we not exaggerate ourselves to ourselves, or do we recognize ourselves for the actual men we are? Are we not all great men? ”

“ No doubt, Carlyle has a propensity to exaggerate the heroic in history, that is, he creates you an ideal hero rather than another thing, he has most of that material. This we allow in all its senses, and in one narrower sense it is not so convenient. Yet what were history if he did not exaggerate it? How comes it that history never has to wait for facts, but for a man to write it? The ages may go on forgetting the facts never so long, he can remember two for every one forgotten. ”

“ As jet succeeded jet, each rising nearer and nearer to his brig, the interval of time between them seeming fearfully to diminish, he muttered oath upon oath. The last leap that the shell made on the water was at about a quarter of a mile’s distance of the islet on which his people had deposited at least a hundred and fifty barrels of his spurious flour, thence it flew, as it might be without an effort, with a grand and stately bound into the very centre of the barrels, exploding at the moment it struck. ”

“ Art caused the plain canvas of life to glow with gaudy tints, and luxury, with unsparing hand, laid on her rainbow pigments.
All was gay and joyous in the mansion of Mr. Laverty, on the night when Amy entered her eighteenth year. A splendid ball, unrivaled in brilliancy even in that recherché circle, had brought together the young and beautiful. The glare had attracted the fluttering insect and the ephemera of fashion, as well as those whose positions in society gave them the entrée where “exclusiveness” set her potent seal. ”

“ The sunbeam of the world does not produce this ripeness of heart, clouds and gloom will best mature it; like the perfumed shrub, which is scentless until crushed, so from the soul most deeply wrung by wo, rises the incense most grateful to divinity. Though Amy dwelt in a paradise of the world’s planting—amid it a demon was stalking—an insatiate fiend, whose presence was death to true happiness—the same which tempted our first parents to transgress, and this was—pride! ”

“ The arrival of the last reinforcements infused a degree of renewed vigor into the Americans; the contest deepened, maddened into a final effort, and raged with destructive fury as the sun set upon the scene of carnage, and the pall of night came down upon the dead and dying. The last troops engaged were those of the brave Lieut. Col. Brooks, in command of Jackson’s regiment, the eighth Massachusetts. He penetrated as far as the extreme right of the British, and became engaged with a part of Breyman’s riflemen, who had acted before but occasionally during the action. ”

“ The Americans rushed on with a shout, and delivering their fire, in quick succession, opened to the right and left, that they might gain the cover of the trees that enclosed the ridge on which the artillery was placed. Here a close and bloody conflict ensued, with the continual discharge of artillery and small arms. Nothing could exceed the bravery of the Americans; they rushed upon the enemy’s guns, which, by repeated charges, were taken and retaken, till the dead and dying were strewed all around. ”

“ Homer and Shakspeare speak directly and confidently to us. The confidence implied in the unsuspicious tone of the world’s worthies, is a great and encouraging fact. Dig up some of the earth you stand on, and show that. If he gave us religiously the meagre results of his experience, his style would be less picturesque and diversified, but more attractive and impressive. His genius can cover all the land with gorgeous palaces, but the reader does not abide in them, but pitches his tent rather in the desert and on the mountain peak. ”

“ We honor him for his noble reverence for Luther, and his patient, almost reverent study of Goethe’s genius, anxious that no shadow of his author’s meaning escape him for want of trustful attention. There is nowhere else, surely, such determined and generous love of whatever is manly in history. His just appreciation of any, even inferior talent, especially of all sincerity, under whatever guise, and all true men of endeavor, must have impressed every reader. Witness the chapters on Werner, Heyne, even Cagliostro, and others. He is not likely to underrate his man. ”

“ Better were it that mere earthly historians should lower such pretensions, more suitable for omniscience than for human science; and aiming only at some picture of the things acted, which picture itself, will at best be a poor approximation, leave the inscrutable purport of them an acknowledged secret; or, at most, in reverent Faith, far different from that teaching of Philosophy, pause over the mysterious vestiges of Him, whose path is in the great deep of Time, whom history indeed reveals, but only all History and in Eternity, will clearly reveal. ”