Various

“ The torch was applied to the town, and the dense volumes of smoke ascending into the serene and cloudless skies, from this altar of vengeance, proclaimed, far and wide over the plains of Italy, how dreadful a thing it was to incur the wrath of the conqueror.
Napoleon and his troops, their swords still dripping in blood, tarried not, but moving on with the sweep of a whirlwind, came to the gates of Pavia. This city had become the head-quarters of the insurgents. It contained thirty thousand inhabitants. Napoleon had left there a garrison of three hundred men. ”

“ There is no other such crisis in human life as the crisis of Love. The philosopher may experience uncontrollable agitation in verifying his principle of balancing systems of worlds, feeling perhaps as if he actually saw the creative hand in the act of sending the planets forth on their everlasting way; but he knows at such a moment no emotions so divine as those of the spirit becoming conscious that it is beloved; be it the peasant-girl in the meadow, or the daughter of the sage, or the artisan beside his loom, or the man of letters musing by his fire-side. ”

“ Your servant, sir—young man, come and talk."
Burley hooked his arm within Leonard's, and led the boy passively away.
"That is a clever man," said Harley L'Estrange. "But I am sorry to see yon young student, with his bright, earnest eyes, and his lip that has the quiver of passion and enthusiasm, leaning on the arm of a guide who seems disenchanted of all that gives purpose to learning, and links philosophy with use to the world. Who, and what is this clever man whom you call Burley?"
"A man who might have been famous, if he had condescended to be respectable! ”

“ Much depends on the association of ideas; and the summer song of the field-cricket recalls to us our childhood's days, long since, it may be, gone by, and fills our mind with happy thoughts of our wanderings in quest of them, when all nature appeared bright, and gay, and joyous. In very hot weather, the field-cricket is most vigorous, and then the hills echo their notes, while the evening breeze carries them to a great distance, making their melody heard in the stilly hours of night. ”

“ But Helen, there on that bed—Helen needing, for weeks perhaps, all support, and illness making luxuries themselves like necessaries! Beg he must. And when he so resolved, had you but seen the proud, bitter soul he conquered, you would have said—"This which he thinks is degradation—this is heroism. Oh strange human heart!—no epic ever written achieves the Sublime and the Beautiful which are graven, unread by human eye, in thy secret leaves." Of whom else should he beg? His mother had nothing, Riccabocca was poor, and the stately Violante, who had exclaimed, "Would that I were a man!" ”

“ From every direction the Austrians and Sardinians were hurrying to their appointed rendezvous, to combine and destroy this audacious band, which had so suddenly and fatally plunged into their midst. The French troops rushed down the declivities of the mountains and, crossing the Tanaro, rejoiced with trembling as they found themselves in the sunny plains of Italy. Dispatching Augereau to pursue the Austrian army, now effectually separated from their allies, Napoleon, with indefatigable perseverance, pursued the Sardinians in their flight toward Turin. ”

“ The statesman is the leader of a nation; the warrior is the grace of an age; the philosopher is the birth of a thousand years; but the Lover—where is he not? Wherever parents look round upon their children, there he has been: wherever children are at play together there he soon will be; wherever there are roofs under which men dwell, wherever there is an atmosphere vibrating with human voices, there is the lover, and there is his lofty worship going on—unspeakable, perchance, but revealed in the brightness of the eye, the majesty of the presence, and the high temper of the discourse. ”

“ They assured the ignorant peasants that Austria was pouring down an overwhelming army upon the invader; that all Italy was simultaneously rising in arms; that England, with her powerful fleet, was landing troops innumerable upon the coasts of Sardinia; that God, and all his angels, were looking down from the windows of Heaven to admire the heroism of the faithful, in ridding the earth of the enemies of the true religion, and that the destruction of Napoleon was sure. The enthusiasm spread from hamlet to hamlet like a conflagration. ”

“ The successful establishment of the French Republic would very probably have driven every King in Europe from his throne. England was agitated through all her countries. From the mud cabins of Ireland, from the dark and miry mines, from the thronged streets of the city, and the crowded workshops all over the kingdom, there was a clamorous cry ascending for liberty and equality. The spirit of democracy, radiating from its soul in Paris, was assailing every throne in Europe. ”

“ Ellison had certainly spoken. Joanna must decide for herself. If she was satisfied to have the greatest blessings that a woman could have—high moral and spiritual excellence in a man who loved her—and could, for these, make light of the daily drawbacks of his oddities, it was not for any one else to object. Mr. Carey could not say that his own temper would bear with so eccentric a companion; but perhaps he was narrow: perhaps his wife's nice household ways for twenty-five years had spoiled him. Joanna knew what she was undertaking. ”

“ Leonard most cordially despised and hated Randal Leslie, and his heart moved to Burley with noble but perilous compassion. In his desire to soothe and comfort the man whom he deemed cheated out of fame, he forgot the caution he had hitherto imposed on himself, and yielded more and more to the charm of that wasted intellect. He accompanied Burley now where he went to spend his evenings, and more and more—though gradually, and with many a recoil and self-rebuke—there crept over him the cynic's contempt for glory, and miserable philosophy of debased content. ”

“ The moment was the eventful one, in which France was about once more to become a monarchy, and as may be inferred from the character of the people, it was a time of high excitement and enthusiasm. The nation, even in its humblest citizen, seemed to feel some of the reflected glory that glanced from the great achievements of Bonaparte, and his elevation was little other than a grand manifestation of national self-esteem. ”

“ As regarded our domestic establishment, I had not as yet thought as much about it as one of our favorite bards, who, before he married, provided himself with a cask of flour, a coffee-pot, and a frying-pan. I thought only of "a cottage and a heart." I saw around my cottage multitudes of roses, and within it, my Rose and myself. As for every thing else, all would be provided for by my excellent father.
As soon as I arrived at Greendale, I found there two other gentlemen quite as much in love, and quite as much enchanted by the fascinating young lady, as I was. ”

“ No familiarity with earthquakes is sufficient to do away with their terrors. The Limanian who has known them from childhood, no sooner feels the first shock, than he rushes from his apartment, with the cry of "misericordia" upon his trembling lips, no less than the foreigner who has never before witnessed these convulsive throes of nature. The moment a shock is felt the Cathedral bell begins to toll, all the belfries in Lima take up the sound, and summon the affrighted population to their devotions. ”

“ Blanche here leant both hands on my father's chair, and said, looking down at first bashfully, but afterward warming with the subject, "Do you not think, sir, that little Helen has already suggested, if not what is courage, what at least is the real essence of all courage that endures and conquers, that ennobles, and hallows, and redeems? Is it not Patience, father?—and that is why we women have a courage of our own. Patience does not affect to be superior to fear, but at least it never admits despair." ”

“ I have a home no more, but there is a home for you, a very humble one (for you, too, so well born) , but very safe—the roof of—of—my peasant mother. She will love you for my sake, and—and—"
Helen clung to him trembling, and sobbed out, "Any thing, any thing you will. But I can work; I can make money, Leonard, I do, indeed, make money—you do not know how much—but enough for us both till better times come to you. Do not let us part."
"And I—a man, and born to labor, to be maintained by the work of an infant! No, Helen, do not so degrade me." ”

“ There your parents, your wives, your sisters, your lovers rejoice in your achievements, and boast with pride that you belong to them. Yes, soldiers! you have indeed done much, but much remains still to be done. Shall posterity say that we knew how to conquer, but knew not how to improve victory? Shall we find a Capua in Lombardy? We have forced marches to make, enemies to subdue, laurels to gather, injuries to revenge. Let those who have whetted the daggers of civil war in France, who have assassinated our ministers, who have burned our ships at Toulon—let those tremble. ”

“ And yet Napoleon, with thirty thousand half-starved men, had, in one short fortnight, dispersed his troops, driven the Austrians from the kingdom, penetrated to the very heart of the state, and was threatening the bombardment of his capital. The humiliated monarch, trembling for his crown, was compelled to sue for peace at the feet of an unknown young man of twenty-five. His chagrin was so great, in view of his own fallen fortunes and the hopelessness of his sons-in-law ever attaining the throne of France, that he died, a few days after signing the treaty of Cherasco, of a broken heart. ”

“ Riccabocca wrote also. Nothing could be more kind than the replies of both. They came to Leonard in a very dark period in his life, and they strengthened him in the noiseless battle with despair.
If there be a good in the world that we do without knowing it, without conjecturing the effect it may have upon a human soul, it is when we show kindness to the young in the first barren footpath up the mountain of life. ”

“ Let us rather see her in the quiet retirement of home, not doomed to the busy drudgery of hard housekeeping merely, but there the refined woman, whose pure sensibilities are shocked at the thought of a public notoriety; who shuns the wistful gaze of the crowd, and finds in her own family circle her kingdom and her rights, and seeks to adorn that with all that is lovely and of good report. Thus will she win our admiration and secure our love. Were her intellect and her eloquence displayed at the bar or on the platform, we might indeed wonder with deep amazement, but we should not love ”

“ The oddity in this country of giving a boy a female baptismal name had been no doubt jestingly remarked upon by those who were aware of it, but with the sailors the lad passed as Ally Somers. The father was approaching fifty, the son could not have been more than seventeen years of age. The elder Somers, who had attained to the rating of a boatswain, was a stern, hard, silent man, with a look as cold and clear as polished steel, and a cast-iron mouth, indicative of inflexible, indomitable firmness of will and resolution. ”

“ Napoleon was every where, sharing the toil, incurring the danger, and inspiring his men with his own enthusiastic ardor and courage. In both battles the French were entirely victorious. At Dego, the Austrians were compelled to abandon their artillery and baggage, and escape as they could over the mountains, leaving three thousand prisoners in the hands of the conqueror. At Millesimo, fifteen hundred Sardinians were compelled to surrender. Thus like a thunderbolt Napoleon opened the campaign. ”

“ The indestructibleness of the religious principle in the human soul! This is the great lesson read to us by such events. Even this nineteenth century with all its secularity, has not wholly drowned it. It breaks out in the midst of every form of worldliness. When untaught in respect to the true path, it follows the wildest imposture; and, as though in awful derision of the inability of the mere secular spirit ever to satisfy the deepest human wants, a Kingdom of the Saints settles itself in nearest contiguity to what would seem to be the exclusive territory of Mammon. ”

“ She was a young mother to train and educate such a child for his unknown but exalted destiny. She encircled, in protecting arms, the nursing babe, as it fondled a mother's bosom with those little hands, which, in after years, grasped sceptres, and uphove thrones, and hewed down armies with resistless sword. She taught those infant lips to lisp "papa"—"mamma"—those lips at whose subsequent command all Europe was moved, and whose burning, glowing, martial words fell like trumpet-tones upon the world, hurling nation upon nation in the shock of war. ”

“ When he walked the streets he was followed by a crowd of boys, who, hating him as a grasping miser, hooted him vociferously, insulted him with the coarsest epithets, and sometimes annoyed him by casting stones and filth at his person. There was no one to speak a kind word in his favor, no one to bestow an act of friendship, or a nod of recognition upon Guyot. He was regarded by all as an avaricious, griping old miser, whose whole life was devoted to the hoarding up of gold. At last this object of universal scorn died, and it was found that, by his parsimony, he had amassed an ample fortune. ”

“ If I know of few merely sensual gratifications higher than a lounge through Paris, at the flood-tide of its population, watching the varied hues and complexions of its strange inhabitants, displaying, as they do in feature, air, and gesture, so much more of character and purpose than other people, so also do I feel that there is something indescribably miserable in being alone, unknown, and unnoticed in that vast throng, destitute of means for the present, and devoid of hope for the future. ”

“ Life seems to reanimate those marble limbs; those fixed looks become lively and sparkling; and noise and bustle take the place of the former silence. As the fair Limeña leaves the cathedral the black musicians fill the air with the sound of their drums and clarinets, the lottery-men cry their tickets upon one side of the entrance, and upon the other a fat ecclesiastic vends the effigy of the saint who chances to be in fashion. ”

“ And as time goes on, something marvelous occurs; we become lovely to each other, although wrinkles furrow the cheek and forehead; and we become more youthful, though we add year to year. Then no longer have worldly troubles, misfortunes, and failings any power to dim the sun of our happiness, for it radiates from the eye and the heart of our friend; and when our earthly existence draws to its close, we feel indeed that our life and our love are eternal. ”

“ Lombardy is the garden of Italy. The whole of the extensive valley, from the Alps to the Apennines, is cultivated to the highest degree, presenting in its vineyards, its orchards, its waving fields of grain, its flocks and herds, one of the most rich and attractive features earth can exhibit. Milan, its beautiful capital, abounding in wealth and luxury, contained a population of one hundred and twenty thousand souls. Here Napoleon allowed his weary troops, exhausted by their unparalleled exertions, to repose for six days. ”

“ It is not alone that your good blood suggests this, but all your experience of life goes to prove it. Think of poor Michel, self-devoted, generous, and noble-hearted; think of that dear cottage at Kuffstein, where, even in poverty, the dignity of birth and blood threw a grace and an elegance over daily life; think of Ettenheim and the glorious prince—the last Condé—and who now sleeps in his narrow bed in the fosse of Vincennes! ”