Various

“ To paint a character which has no salient points demands a first-rate artist; but to see the inner life of a quiet, timid, retiring mind, is the exclusive privilege of a poet. To suppose that there is no inner life in such minds, or none worth observing, is a grand mistake. The crested wave may be a picturesque or striking object in itself; but under the calm, smooth surface of the passionless sea there are beautiful things to behold—painted shells, and corals, and yellow sands, and sea-plants stretching their long waving arms up to the light. ”

“ Meantime, our fat friend of the ocean is rolling himself about, as if such things as harpoons never existed; as if he were an infidel in javelins. We are approaching him, a dozen more strokes and we shall be within aim. Yet the harpooner seems cool and unmoved as ever; he holds the harpoon it is true, but he seems to grasp it no tighter, nor to make any preparation for a strike. He knows the whale better than we do—better than his crew. He has been a harpooner for thirty years, and once harpooned twenty-six whales in one year with his own hand. ”

“ This charm consists in its painting an every-day young lady to the life, and for the first time; and it by no means consists, as it is said to do, in the plot, which is but indifferently concocted, or in the incidents, that are sometimes destitute both of social and artistical truth. Anne Dysart herself, however, is a masterly portrait. Its living eyes are upon us from first to last, following us like the eyes of those awful pictures in the dining-room of long ago, which we could not escape from in any corner of the room. But Anne's eyes are not awful: they are sweet, calm, gentle. ”

“ It comes to us, with its shy looks and half-withdrawn hands, like somebody we knew all our lives, and still know; somebody who walks with us, mellowing, but not interrupting our thoughts; somebody who sits by us when we are writing or reading, and throws a creamy hue upon the paper; somebody whose breath warms us when it is cold, and whose shadow stands between us and the scorching sun; somebody, in short, who gives us assurance, we know not how, of an every-day young lady. ”

“ She loved her country, but she could not join with one party against another.
"Give me some work to do—show me how to earn a livelihood, with my fingers, Father Godard, and I will bless you."
"No person shall ask me how to be a good citizen in vain. Citoyenne Helene, thou art under my protection. My wife is dead: wilt thou be too proud to take charge of my household?"
"Surely too grateful."
"And thy cousin?"
"Heaven have mercy on him. He will hear no reason. I have begged and implored him to leave the dark road of conspiracy, and to seek to serve his country, but in vain. ”

“ If all we wanted was to walk along a road, why, there are better roads near Göttingen. Into the wood, say I! Why, who knows but there may be an adventure before us? Follow me!' Macdonald would have remonstrated, but our new friends, and I also, I am sorry to say, felt much as Laurenberg did, so we took the footpath, and plunged into the forest. We soon thought ourselves repaid. The solitude seemed to deepen as we proceeded. Excepting the almost imperceptible footpath, every thing bespoke the purest state of nature. The enormous pines that towered over our heads seemed the growth of ages. ”

“ But then rose one shrill clamor among the females, as they retreated with involuntary steps toward the verge of the green, whence they glared at Solomons and the Phenomenon with eyes so sparkling, and pointed at both with gestures so menacing, that Heaven only knows if a morsel of either would have remained much longer to offend the eyes of the justly enraged matronage of Hazeldean, if fortunately Master Stirn, the Squire's right-hand man, had not come up in the nick of time. ”

“ As the hour of death drew near, her courage and animation seemed to increase. Her features glowed with enthusiasm; her thoughts and expressions were refulgent with sublimity, and her whole aspect assumed the impress of one appointed to fill some great and lofty destiny. She remained but a few days in the Conciergerie before she was led to the scaffold. During those few days, by her example and her encouraging words, she spread among the numerous prisoners there an enthusiasm and a spirit of heroism which elevated, above the fear of the scaffold, even the most timid and depressed. ”

“ But this wild man chooses her for a wife, proposes for her hand—and is refused. Why so? Because she was an every-day young lady. He was rich; he had good points—nay, great ones, in his character: but he was an uncomfortable man. She could not love him, and she could not think of marrying a man she could not love. Had it been the young clergyman, the case would have been different. A nice young man was he; and, like all other young ladies of her class, Anne had her dreams of gentle happiness, and congeniality of temper, and poetry, and flowers, and sunsets, and a genteel cottage. ”

“ Alas! think of the bereaved old man, wandering about his desolate abode, home to him no longer; with the sad, wistful look on his face of one who continually seeks something that is not there. The cottage, too, was very different now to what it had been; the home that was so beautiful was gone with her. He set her little bird at liberty the day she died; he could not bear to hear it singing, joyously as when she had been there to listen. But for this, the parlor always remained in the same state it was in on that last evening. ”

“ Samuel," said Levasseur; "that is all. Come, sit down, let me help you to a glass of wine. You are an English Jew I perceive?"
"Yes."
A silence of a minute or two succeeded, and then Levasseur said, "You are, of course, prepared for business?"
"Yes—that is, if you are reasonable."
"Reasonable! the most reasonable men in the world," rejoined Levasseur, with a loud laugh. "But pray, where is the gold you mean to pay us with?"
"If we agree, I will fetch it in half an hour. I do not carry bags of sovereigns about with me into all companies," replied Jackson, with much readiness. ”

“ Forward!' cried Laurenberg; 'I do not laugh at you, my brother, but I think you are scarcely reasonable; for either you have truly foreseen what is to happen, or you have not. If you have, then what is to happen will happen, and we can not avoid it; if you have not, why, then it will not happen, and that is all. Either you foresee truly my destiny—' He was going on, but Macdonald interrupted him: 'It is with such reasoning that men lose themselves in this world—and in the next,' he added, after a pause. ”

“ Dale!"
"My dear sir," said the Parson, sinking his voice, and in a mild tone of conciliatory expostulation, "you are so irritable whenever Mr. Egerton's name is mentioned at all."
"Irritable!" exclaimed the Squire, whose wrath had been long simmering, and now fairly boiled over. "Irritable, sir! I should think so; a man for whom I stood godfather at the hustings, Mr. Dale! a man for whose sake I was called a 'prize ox,' Mr. Dale! a man for whom I was hissed in a market-place, Mr. Dale! ”

“ Then we have every-day young ladies set up for heroines without doing any thing for it at all, and who look in the emergencies of life just as if they were eating bread and butter, or crying over a novel at home. Of such is Evelina, who has a sweet look for every person, and every thing, in every possible situation, and who is expected, on the strength of that sole endowment, to pass for a heroine of every-day life. This is obviously improper; for an every-day young lady has a principle of development within her like every body else. ”

“ My fire now burns with fuel, and my lamp is shining with the light of gas derived from coal, that has been buried for countless ages in the deep and dark recesses of the earth. We prepare our food, and maintain our forges and furnaces, and the power of our steam-engines, with the remains of plants of ancient forms and extinct species, which were swept from the earth ere the formation of the transition strata was completed. ”

“ The Squire, with a little embarrassment in his voice: "Pray, Frank, what do you know of Randal Leslie?"
"Why, sir, he is at Eton."
"What sort of a boy is he?" asked Mrs. Hazeldean.
Frank hesitated, as if reflecting, and then answered: "They say he is the cleverest boy in the school. But then he saps."
"In other words," said Mr. Dale with proper parsonic gravity, "he understands that he was sent to school to learn his lessons, and he learns them. You call that sapping—I call it doing his duty. But pray, who and what is this Randal Leslie, that you look so discomposed, Squire?" ”

“ He dashes toward us—what can save us?
"Back water," cries the harpooner, while the coxswain taking the hint at the same moment, with a sweep of his oar the little boat performs a kind of curvet backward, and the monster has shot past us unharming, but not unharmed; the harpooner, cool as ever, has hurled another javelin deep into him, and smiles half pityingly at this impotent rage, which, he knows full well, bodes a termination of the contest. The red blood is spouting forth from four wounds, "neither as deep as a well, nor as wide as a church-door," but enough to kill—even a whale. ”

“ She is a confidant, a go-between, a bridemaid; but if she finds herself on the brink of a serious flirtation, she shrinks into her own foolish little heart in surprise and timidity, and the affair never becomes any thing but a mystery, which she carries with her through life, and which makes her shake her head on occasions, and look conscious and experienced, so as to give people the idea that this young lady has a history. ”

“ I would hope yours are not."
"Sir," replied the old man—the tears starting into his eyes, "I tell you I am a ruined man. I am heavily behind with my rent, all my stock will not suffice to pay it; and this morning we have been to entreat the steward to be lenient, but he will not hear us; he vows to sell us up next week."
"That is hard," said the stranger. "But you are hale, your son is young; you can begin the world anew."
"Begin the world anew!" exclaimed the old man, with a distracted air. "Where?—how? when? No, no! sir, there is no beginning anew in this country. Those days are past. ”

“ Six weather-beaten, muscular tars are at work at the oars, and there, in the bows, stands the harpooner, preparing his tackle; a boy is by his side. Coils of line lie at their feet, with harpoons attached to them, and two or three spears or javelins.
"Pull away, boys; there she blows again!" cries the coxswain, and at each stroke the strong men almost lift the little craft out of the water. The harpooner says nothing; he is a very silent fellow; but woe to the unlucky whale that comes within the whirl of his unerring harpoon! ”

“ Thus passed her happy childhood: often and often she dreamed over it in after-life, pleasing herself with the fancy, that perhaps as God, when he made sinless man in his own image, gave him a garden as his home, so for those who entered into "the joy of our Lord" a garden might be prepared in heaven, sweeter far than even that of Bouloinvilliers—one where sun never scorched, cold never pinched, flowers never faded, birds never died. The death of a bird was the greatest grief she had known, a cat the most ferocious animal she had as yet encountered. ”

“ When the wife of a poor man, she will sit up half the night sewing and darning, but not a stitch for herself: that can be done at any time; but the boys must go comfortably to school, and the girls look genteel on the street, and the husband—to think of Mr. Brown wanting a button on his shirt! She looks selfish, because her eye is always on her own, and because she talks of what she is always thinking about; but how can one be selfish who is perpetually postponing herself, who dresses the plainest, eats the coarsest, and sleeps the least of the family? ”

“ In every generation of Englishmen (at least since the lively reign of Charles II.) there are a few whom some elegant Genius skims off from the milk of human nature, and reserves for the cream of society. Colonel Egerton was one of these terque, quaterque beati, and dwelt apart on a top shelf in that delicate porcelain dish—not bestowed upon vulgar buttermilk—which persons of fashion call The Great World. Mighty was the marvel of Pall Mall, and profound was the pity of Park-lane, when this supereminent personage condescended to lower himself into a husband. ”

“ The path that winds over and down through this tract, crossing some of these unsightly seams by a natural bridge of only a foot's breadth, is safe enough by daylight, if one will keep in it. But be careful that you do not diverge far on either side, or let the shades of night overtake you there, lest a single mis-step in the grass and ferns, concealing some horrible hole, or an accidental stumble, shall plunge you beyond the reach of sunlight into a covered pen-stock of mineral fire, or into the heart of some deep, sunken cavern. ”

“ Not to know that they first set the example, by getting the army and navy clothes made by contractors, and taking the lowest tenders? Not to know that the police clothes, the postmen's clothes, the convicts' clothes, are all contracted for on the same infernal plan, by sweaters, and sweaters' sweaters, and sweaters' sweaters' sweaters, till government work is just the very last, lowest resource to which a poor, starved-out wretch betakes himself to keep body and soul together? Why, the government prices, in almost every department, are half, and less than half, the very lowest living price. ”

“ Our fault is, that we pass over as worthy of no remark, no careful tending, no holy reverence, the slumbering germs of all that is good and beautiful in the female character, and suffer our attention to be engrossed by its affectations and monstrosities. Let us correct this fever of the taste. Let us learn to enjoy the still waters and quiet pastures. When we see an every-day young lady flitting about our rooms, or crossing our paths, or wandering by our side, let us regard her no more as if she were a shadow, or a part of the common atmosphere, necessary, though unheeded ”

“ Imagination can conceive of nothing more dismal than these sombre caverns, with long and winding galleries opening into cells as dark as the tomb. You descend by a flight of massive stone steps into this sepulchral abode, and, passing through double doors, whose iron strength time has deformed but not weakened, you enter upon the vast labyrinthine prison, where the imagination wanders affrighted through intricate mazes of halls, and arches, and vaults, and dungeons, rendered only more appalling by the dim light which struggles through those grated orifices which pierced the massive walls. ”

“ The poor old man, more dead than alive, was conducted upon the scaffold and placed beneath the fatal ax. Madame Roland, without the slightest change of color, or the apparent tremor of a nerve, saw the ponderous instrument, with its glittering edge, glide upon its deadly mission, and the decapitated trunk of her friend was thrown aside to give place for her. With a placid countenance and a buoyant step, she ascended the platform. The guillotine was erected upon the vacant spot between the gardens of the Tuileries and the Elysian Fields, then known as the Place de la Revolution. ”

“ What but a man conscious of great guilt, of the darkest crimes, would so furtively enter an inn, and afterward steal away under the darkness of the night, when no mortal eye could behold him? If he was sensible of innocence, he might have deferred his journey till the morning, and faced, with the fortitude of a man, the broad light of day, and the scrutiny of his fellow-men. ”

“ Precious to more than her such words may be, if bravely stemming our present trouble, whatsoe'er it be—bravely enduring, persevering, encouraging others and ourselves, even as that little child—we hold the thought, that as the revolving year brings round its different seasons, as day succeeds to night—and even as surely as we look for this, and know it—so to the trusting heart there comes a time—it may be soon or late, it may be now, or it may be then—when this grief or grievance will have passed away ”

“ She will remain a raven, and he a Wahr-wolf, forever!'
"So saying, he gnashed his teeth with rage, and, with a wild look, rushed from the house. No one observed where he went, but, from that hour, neither he, nor Augustin, nor Agatha, were ever beheld in the village of Hundersdorf; though often, on a wintry night, the howling of wolves is heard not far off, and the ill-boding scream of the raven is sure to echo their horrid yells." ”