Various

“ Crime has lost every thing in introducing itself into the ranks of the republic. To do battle is not to immolate. Let us take away the crime from the cause of the people, as a weapon which has pierced their hands and changed liberty into despotism. Let us not seek to justify the scaffold with the cause of our country, and proscriptions by the cause of liberty. Let us not pardon the spirit of our age by the sophism of revolutionary energy, let humanity preserve its heart ”

“ Thou hast hearts that are noble, and doubtless are brave,
Thou hast altars to bow at, for worship and praise,
Thou hast light when night's curtains around thee are driven
From the Cross which beams out in the far southern heaven,
Yet one spot of darkness remains on thy breast,
As a cloud in the depth of a calm sky at rest.
Like a queen that is crowned, or a king on his throne,
In grandeur thou sittest majestic and lone,
And the power of thy beauty is breathed on each gale
As it sweeps o'er thy hills or descends to the vale ”

“ Then, indignant at the excesses of the scaffold, he returned to words of justice and humanity. Then once more he seized upon the scaffold, invoked virtue and suscitated death. Floating sometimes on clouds, sometimes in human gore, he despaired of mankind and became frightened at himself. 'Death, and nothing but death!' he cried, in conversation with his intimate friends, 'and the villains charge it upon me. What memory shall I leave behind me if this goes on? Life is a burthen to me!'"
Once, says Lamartine, the truth became manifest. ”

“ Is it by acts of over-reaching your neighbor that you expect to merit Heaven? Will becoming a party to wrong make you more fitted for the company of angels who seek the good of others, and love others more than themselves? I fear you are deceiving yourself. All who come into Heaven love God: and I would ask with one of the apostles, 'If a man love not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?' You have much yet to learn, my friend. Of that true religion by which Heaven is formed in man, you have not yet learned the bare rudiments. ”

“ I knew if parted we could never be the same again—the same cloud returns not to the sky; the same blossom blooms not twice; human faces wear never twice the same look; and, alas! alas! the heart of to-day is not that of to-morrow."
"Say on, Hope—years are annihilated, and we are children again, hoping, loving children."
But the girl only buried her face in his bosom, weeping and sobbing. At this moment a red glare of light shot up into the sky, and Bridget sprung to her feet.
"I had forgotten. Come, John Bonyton, come and see the only work that poor little Hope could do to save thee;" ”

“ Estelle was one of those dark-eyed lively brunettes formed by nature for the creation of flutterings about the hearts of the sterner sex. She was full of naive mischief, and coquetry, and having been petted into imperial sway by the flattery of her courtiers, she punished them by wielding her sceptre with autocratic despotism—tremble, heart, that owned her sway yet dared disobey her behests! In the dance she was the nimblest, in mirth the most gleeful, and in beauty peerless. ”

“ It is quite as necessary, my dear son, that a young man should not undervalue himself, as that he should not think of his deserts too highly. Now that you have some merits is certain—for the rest I desire frankness of you just now, and beg that you will speak out plainly. I think you love this young girl. Is it not so, Raoul?"
"I do love, sir, very dearly; with my whole heart and spirit."
"And do you feel sure that this is not a mere transient liking—that it will last, Raoul?"
"So long as life lasts in my heart, so long will my love for her last, my father." ”

“ Raoul smiled at perceiving how completely his father understood him, and then said at once, without pause or hesitation—
"I understand you to say, sir, that you thought the wretched man of whom we spoke was bound, under the extremity in which he stood, to die with a falsehood in his mouth. Can a gentleman ever be justified in saying the thing that is not? Much more can it be his bounden duty to do so?"
"Unquestionably, as a rule of general conduct, he cannot. Truth is the soul of honor; and without truth, honor cannot exist. ”

“ Men were struggling fiercely for wealth, and rank, and lofty name. The dawn of day saw them striving each for his own separate and selfish schemes; the stars of midnight looked down in mild rebuke upon the protracted labor of men who gave themselves no time to gaze upon the quiet heavens. One only of all this busy crowd mingled not in their toil—one only idler sauntered carelessly along the thronged mart, or wandered listlessly by the seashore; Adonais alone scorned to bind himself by fetters which he could not fling aside at his own wild will. ”

“ Napoleon was a grand example of a great man, who demonstrated, on a wide theatre of action, what can be done in this world by a colossal intellect and an iron will without any moral sense. In his disregard of humanity, and his reliance on falsehood and force, he was the architect at once of his fortune and his ruin. No man can be greatly and wisely politic who is incapable of grasping those universal sentiments which underlie all superficial selfishness in mankind, and of discerning the action of the moral laws of the universe. Without this, events cannot be read in their principles. ”

“ When he appeared in the colony, the women regarded his fine person, his smile, at once sorrowful and tender, and his free, noble bearing with admiration, not unmingled with terror; while men, even in that age of manly physique looked upon his frame, lithe yet firm as iron, athletic and yet graceful, with eyes of envious delight. Truth to say, John Bonyton had never impaired a fine development by any useful employment, or any elaborate attempts at book-knowledge. He knew all that was essential for the times, or the mode of life which he had adopted, and further he cared not. ”

“ Those who loved the stripling grieved to see him waste the spring-time of life in thus aimlessly loitering by the way-side; while the old men and sages would fain have taken from him his ill-used freedom, and shut him up in the prison-house where they bestowed their madmen, lest his example should corrupt the youth of the city.
But for all this Adonais cared little. In vain they showed him the craggy path which traversed the hill of Fame; in vain they set him in the foul and miry roads which led to the temple of Mammon. ”

“ The mind of the poet is so possessed by his subject that, in an artistic sense, he becomes its victim, and wanders in metaphor, and revels in separate images, and gets entangled in a throng of thoughts, until, at the end, we have a sense of a beautiful confusion of "flowers of all hues, and weeds of glorious feature," and applaud the fertility at the expense of the force of his mind. The truth is that will is an important element of genius, and without it the spontaneous productions of the mind must lack the highest quality of poetic art. ”

“ She wrung her hands and wept bitterly as she gazed—then she knelt down and looked more closely; then, with a quick cry, she flung herself into his bosom.
"Oh, John Bonyton, did I not tell you this? Did I not tell you, years ago, that little Hope stood in my path, with hair white as snow?"
The man raised himself up, he gathered the slight figure in his arms—he uncovered a torch and held it to her face.
"Oh, my God! my God!" he cried—and his strength departed, and he was helpless as a child. The years of agony, the lapse of thirty years were concentrated in that fearful moment. ”

“ But even then, when pilgrims came from afar to gaze upon the noble fane, the men of his own kindred and people stood aloof. They cared not for this adornment of their birth-place—they valued not the treasures that had there been gathered together. Only the few who entered the vestibule, and saw the sparkle of jewels which decked the inner shrine, or they to whom the pilgrims recounted the priceless value of these gems in other lands—only they began to look with something like pride upon the dreamer Adonais. ”

“ We made a mistake in our births, in being born and dying for the liberty of the world. We imagined that we were in Rome, and we were in Paris. But revolutions are like those crises which, in a single night, turn men's hair gray. They ripen the people fast. The blood in our veins is warm enough to fecundate the soil of the Republic. ”

“ You asked me if I meant to say that there was no Heaven for the good who bravely battle with evil in this life? If all the reward of the righteous was to be in this world? God forbid! For then would I be of all men most miserable. What I said was, that Heaven would be found no where else but in this world, by man. Heaven must be entered into here, or it never can be entered into when men die. ”

“ For notwithstanding the eminent distinction, and high intellect of the elder nobleman, the dignity of the abbé, not unsupported by all which men look for as the outward and visible signs of that dignity, and the grace and beauty of the lady, it was upon the boy alone that the eye of every spectator would have dwelt, from the instant of its first discovering him.
He was tall of his age, and very finely made, of proportions which gave promise of exceeding strength when he should arrive at maturity, but strength uncoupled to any thing of weight or clumsiness. ”

“ I know well, Raoul, and if you have not heard it yet, you will soon do so, when you begin to mingle with men, that there are those in society, those whom the world regards, moreover, as honorable men, who affect to say that he who loves a woman, whether lawfully or sinfully, is at once absolved from all considerations except how he most easily may win—or in other words—ruin her; and consequently such men would speak slightly of the chevalier's conduct toward his friend, Kerguelen, and affect to regard it as a matter of course, and a mere affair of gallantry! ”

“ Now mark me, boy, there must be no vaporing on your part, or interfering with the populace; and even if they should, as very probably may, be insolent, and utter outcries and abuse against the nobility, even bear with them. On no account strike any person, nor let your servants do so, nor encroach upon their order, unless, indeed, they should so far forget themselves as to throw stones, or to strike the first."
"And then, my father?"
"Oh, then, Raoul, you are at liberty to let your good sword feel the fresh air, and to give your horse a taste of those fine spurs you wear. ”

“ He thought that in extinguishing from society the aristocrats and demagogues, he would be able to suppress the vices of humanity, and the obstacles to the work of liberal institutions. His notion of the people was an illusion, not a reality. He became irritated to find the people often so weak, so cowardly, so cruel, so ignorant, so changeable, so unworthy the rank which nature has assigned them. He became irritated and soured, and challenged the scaffold to extricate him from his difficulties. ”

“ A love for amusement is one of those national peculiarities of the French people which neither time nor situation will ever eradicate, for, be their lot cast where it may, amid the brilliant salons of Paris, or on the outskirts of civilization on the western continent, they will set apart seasons for innocent mirth, in which they enter into its spirit with a joyousness totally devoid of calculation or of care. ”

“ Lamartine gave us himself as the best creation of his poetic genius. The poet Lamartine has produced the statesman. This it will be necessary to bear in mind, to understand Lamartine's career in the Chamber of Deputies, or the position he now holds at the head of the provisional government.
Lamartine, as we have above observed, entered the French Chamber in 1833, as a cosmopolite, full of love for mankind, full of noble ideas of human destiny, and deeply impressed with the degraded social condition not only of his countrymen, but of all civilized Europe. ”

“ The blood rushed in a torrent to his brow, his eye seemed to lighten forth actual fire, as he raised his right hand aloft, loaded although it was with such a mass of iron, as a Greek Athlete might have shunned to lift, and shook it at the clamorous mob, with a glare of scorn and fury that showed how, had he been at liberty, he would have dealt with the revilers of his fallen state. ”

“ Those were strange days, in which such a subject could have been discussed between two wise and virtuous parents and a son, whom it was their chiefest aim in life to bring up to be a good and honorable man—that son, too, barely more than a boy in years and understanding. But the morality of those times was coarser and harder, and, if there was no more real vice, there was far less superficial delicacy in the manners of society, and the relations between men and women, than there is nowadays. ”