Various

“ Over the glittering heap that dazzled Ada’s eyes, as she entered the room, was flung the scarf of delicate Brussels, no longer the veil but the ornament of brides; and Kate herself was standing before a Cheval-glass, adjusting the folds of a bright Cashmere, which fell, soft as silk, around her slight figure.
“Beautiful!” exclaimed Ada, herself an exquisite judge of dress: “and how becoming.”
“Which is more to the purpose,” replied Catharine, laughing; and she threw her shawl upon the bed, thereby disturbing the flounces of six silk dresses, which flew up like so many peacocks’ tails. ”

“ Cowper stands almost alone in having nothing to do with the passion of love, which has always figured at such a rate in all sorts of novels, dramas, and poems. It was not because he was destitute of sensibility. His life was a tender sentiment, his heart was formed for friendship; he was even an admirer of the female sex, and he entrusted the happiness of his life to the care and sympathy of female friends; but the romance of the tender passion was beneath the dignity of his Muse, while for real purity of affection, as well as of imagination, no poet has been more distinguished. ”

“ And a spell in the star-beam that whispers of thee;
But as gay hours in fleeting new blushes of Spring
To this wild bosom’s beating in loveliness bring,
So its soft feelings deepen to glorious pride
When it dreams of its angel, my sweet sister Lide.
The world thinks us lonely—’tis true we’re alone,
Not as twin-spirits only—our hearts are but one —
With no parent, no brother, no glad, happy home,
We’re the world to each other, wherever we roam,
And my young life glides onward like spring’s sunny tide
When I dwell with “mine own one”—my “love of a Lide!” ”

“ Ada was utterly ignorant of the meaning of the phrase. All she knew was that James Darrington’s presence materially increased her happiness; but she would not have confessed to the very reeds and rushes that she liked him even more than she did her dear Catharine. Her wise and gentle mother, aware that her little daughter was in an Eden of ignorant bliss, prudently forbore to tender her the fruit of precocious wisdom. She knew that Ada was as childish as became her years, and she judged it best to leave that little heart undisturbed by knowledge of the good and evil of artificial life. ”

“ Then curse you, Mabel Clifdon.”
And Philip Mordaunt paused, exhausted by his own violence; paused, with lips trembling, with the hot blood mounting even to the white hairs brushed from his massive forehead, with his strong form shattered as a reed by the tempest of passion.
“Has not my agony washed out the blot of my transgression? Do I not grovel at your feet, not for the aid I dare not hope, but for the pardon God gives the vilest? Have I not suffered till my life has been to me a torture and a curse, and a long remorse? Is it not enough, my father?” ”

“ Catharine was as free in step, as joyous in heart as ever. She laughed and talked of her happiness, as she twined her fingers around her glossy curls; and she spoke gayly of her love for Charles, as she gathered up the folds of her veil, and requested Ada to fasten in her hair, so as to make it becoming, as well as emblematic.
Catharine was more than ever an enigma to her friend, for Ada could not comprehend that happiness which wears the form of so much gayety. To the one, happiness was a deep and subdued feeling; to the other she came
“With nods, and becks, and wreathed smiles.” ”

“ The sister of charity, whose gentle hand smoothes the pillow of the dying outcast, the pensive nun, who sits at the Redeemer’s feet, are they not the Marys, ‘who have chosen the better part;’ and the busy wife, with her thousand cares, is she not that Martha troubled about many things?”
Catharine was touched by the eloquent earnestness of her friend’s manner, but it was not in her nature to be serious; she could only pause, to get over the embarrassment of feeling solemn, and then answer:
“Ada, your ideal of an old maid is charming, but unluckily, it is but an ideal. ”

“ Old Capulet, as the revels progress, is filled with the spirit of the occasion. His heart overflows with genial hospitality; and inspired by the array of beauty around him, he descants on the time when he himself “could tell a whispering tale in a fair lady’s ear.” Tybalt, recognising Romeo, a Montague, among the guests, instantly calls out, “Fetch me my rapier!” On this, as on all occasions, the sight of a Montague is with him a sufficient signal for battle. But Capulet, whose ruling passion now is hospitality, rebukes and restrains him:
Let him alone! ”

“ If neither recognized the other, James was to be punished for his audacity, by keeping his secret till his mother’s arrival; all of which, in the height of his presumption, he promised, with no more expectation of being called upon to fulfill his bond than had the Merchant of Venice.
He met Ada, and the impression she made was such as to occasion certain doubts in his mind of his boasted constancy. This unknown looked as he would have had Ada look; and he felt that if her mind at all resembled her person, he was in danger. ”

“ But without offering these songs of Carew as models, without denying that according to the rigid canons of polished criticism, many glaring faults may be found in them, we still insist that their beauties are many, and to the eye, which brings not every thing to the narrow measure of a stern critic’s scrutiny, will more than compensate for unquestioned blemishes. The blemishes are the offspring of the distorted taste of the age in which our poet flourished—their beauties, the triumph of the poet’s genius over the difficulties in his pathway. ”

“ Ten years have glided away since we left Ada in tears and pantalets, and she has reached the mature age of twenty-three, “in maiden meditation fancy free.” Not that she ever bestowed a thought upon her childhood’s love—not that she lacked suitors either; for beautiful as one of Domenichino’s dark-eyed sybils, and with too many of the incidental endowments of fortune not to be worshiped for her wealth, if not for her worth, Ada might have had admirers as many as she had thousands. ”

“ But a poet must be a man of more ethereal mould. Why so? Behold Sir Walter Scott, that man of regal imagination, who breathed the spirit of poetry into the body of his romance, and transfused romance into his poetry, while with dramatic energy and verisimilitude he summons before us, on the stage he has erected, the stirring scenes and characters of other days, as with the wand of an enchanter. ”

“ This we can very easily imagine; for it must be to the spirit of a painter, like the enlargement of a caged bird, to escape the confines of buckram, broadcloth, and modern costume, and feel that “no pent up Utica” confines the powers, and they can range from the trammels of the real to the delicious abandon of the ideal. To transfer to canvas the feelings of our nature, and embody, as it were, the moral sentiments must indeed be a triumph to the artist, and we think it has been achieved by Huntington. ”

“ Romeo and Juliet tossed on the stormy sea of ill-starred love, pass from the summit of bliss to despair and death. The hatred of Montague and Capulet is drowned in tears, and from their grief springs reconciliation and friendship. Mercutio is a courtier and a wit, his spirits are always brim-full, and sparkling; and he pursues and runs down every phantom that happens to flit across his mind. His wit, and all his speeches are entirely of this character. He never opens his lips except to utter something fantastical. ”

“ You have yourself, my liege, known what it is to be hunted down by those who would have deprived you of life. And when you first learned that you might again hold your existence without fear, the thrill of happiness you must have experienced may be named as a fair parallel with that you now confer on those two outcasts whose lives and liberty hung upon your word. But there is no criterion by which one of your sex may judge of the blessing bestowed upon a wife in restoring the life and freedom of her husband. ”

“ At first, the discomfited lover held his reins in dejected silence, but by and bye the infection of his father’s cheerfulness spread over his young heart, his reins grew tighter, and his horses went faster, and by the time they reached the city, as he dashed along the streets at full speed, his brain was a kaleidoscope in which love, horses, Ada Somers and boyish curiosity tumbled about in glorious confusion. ”

“ May the memory of the mother murdered by your ingratitude, of the childless and wifeless old man whose love you have turned to hate, ever cling around your heart; ever poison, like a million of curses, the well-spring of your life! away!”
But she lay there, buried in the long folds of her hair, the raven masses that he had so often smoothed and played with, lay there like a thing without sense or motion, save for the prolonged and bitter sobs that burst forth at intervals, as though the very heart was cleft asunder and breathing out its life. ”

“ But Ada was no Lydia Languish, and had no horror of being called a spinster; neither saw she any thing so attractive in marriage that all the world must go mad for it. Early in life, she had learned, as do all little girls, her lesson of inferiority to a greater sex, and she grew up with a vague idea of the sublimity and wisdom of man, and the folly and ignorance of woman ”

“ Stanley must justly despise her. But she was mistaken. Mr. Stanley knew Catharine well enough to recognize her as sole author of the plot, and his behaviour on the occasion testified his conviction of the same. Ada felt his kindness, but her wounds bled none the less; and with bitter reluctance she placed her arm within his, and descended to the parlor.
What a dangerous thing it is to interfere with the inclinations of others. If there is anything in the world calculated to disgust two people with one another, it is the discovery that their friends are laboring “to make a match between them.” ”

“ He raised himself in his bed, and with her little hands clasped in his own, spoke solemnly, and in a firm voice.
“Not with the lips of purity, not with the heart of the upright man may I invoke a blessing on thee, my Lilia. But if love, perfect love, that has never known chill or change; that has kept thee inviolate in the midst of guilt, and lovely, though surrounded by corruption—if such can win a smile from Heaven, it is thine.”
His head sunk lower and lower, until it rested upon her innocent brow, and upon her shining curls. ”

“ The crisp leaves rustled to the tread of their horses’ hoofs, and the soft breeze that swept over golden meadow and sunny hill, came laden to their young hearts with those sweet, vague reveries that visit the soul but once—but once!—in that untried season of youth when the earth seems starred with flowers, the sea mirrors naught but heaven, and the very consciousness of animal life is happiness. ”

“ The necessary law of this poetry, down to the still indefinitely distant point where the great Epic of modern times, which hitherto has announced itself only rhapsodically and in broken glimpses, shall present itself as a perfect whole, is this:—that the individual gives shape and unity to that portion of the world which is revealed to him, and out of the materials of his time, its History and its Science, creates his own Mythology. For as the ancient world is, in general, the world of classes, so the modern is that of Individuals. ”

“ She was clad in black, and as she threw aside her veil to ascend the plank leading to the vessel, she discovered a face of such exquisite beauty, and an expression of such elevated purity, that all who caught a passing glimpse of her lineaments, turned to observe them more closely. She was alone, and borrowed the arm of a sailor to walk the plank, ascending it with a firm and dignified tread. As soon as she touched the vessel’s deck, she put a small piece of money into the hand of her companion, drew her veil again tightly over her face, and immediately sought the cabin. ”

“ It was made as briefly as possible, and Catharine was so overjoyed that she scarcely marked the cold and discouraging tone of Ada’s recital. “Just like him,” exclaimed she, “to sprain his wrist in saving the life of a little ragged democrat—it is not the first time he has risked himself for others.” And she was now as loud in praise as she had just been in condemnation.
Ada never doubted for a moment, that Catharine, whose impetuous nature converted life into a series of telegraphic dispatches, would fly off and relate what she had just heard to Charles, Mr. Stanley, and the whole world. ”

“ The ragged clouds, the huddled waves, the prostrate ship, though forced by contrast into the sharpest angles, all agree, opposed as they seem, evolving harmony out of discord. And this is Genius, which no criticism can ever disprove.”
The criticisms in these lectures on Michael Angelo, Raffaelle, Titian, Poussin, Claude, are as unrivaled for discrimination as appreciation. No one has a quicker and deeper eye to detect the excellencies of great works, and no one seizes with more fatal sagacity upon their defects. ”