Various

“ When struggling against the armies of Austria, upon the plains of Italy, visions of Egypt and of the East blended with the smoke and the din of the conflict. In the retreat of the Austrians before his impetuous charges, in the shout of victory which incessantly filled his ear, swelling ever above the shrieks of the wounded and the groans of the dying, Napoleon saw but increasing indications that destiny was pointing out his path toward an Oriental throne. ”

“ In a moment the assault, like a tornado, fell upon them. But it was a tornado striking a rock. Not a line wavered. A palisade of bristling bayonets met the breasts of the horses, and they recoiled from the shock. A volcanic burst of fire, from artillery and musketry, rolled hundreds of steeds and riders together in the dust. The survivors, wheeling their unchecked chargers, disappeared with the same meteoric rapidity with which they had approached. The flotilla now appeared in sight, having arrived at the destined spot at the precise hour designated by Napoleon. ”

“ It was, therefore, untrue that the Hungarians had struggled for the dominion of their own race; they struggled for civil, political, social, and religious freedom, common to all, against Austrian despotism: the ruling principle of the nation was, to have Republican institutions, founded on universal suffrage—so that the majority of the people shall rule in every respect and in all departments. This was the principle for which they would live, and for which they were willing to die. He entreated the aid of the United States in that great struggle. ”

“ The history of successful men proves that it was the habit of cultivating opportunities—of taking advantage of opportunities—which helped them to success—which, indeed, secured success. Take the Crystal Palace as an instance; was it a sudden idea—an inspiration of genius—flashing upon one who, though no architect, must at least have been something of a poet? Not at all; its contriver was simply a man who cultivates opportunities—a laborious, pains-taking man, whose life has been a career of labor, of diligent self-improvement, of assiduous cultivation of knowledge. ”

“ Wretched spiritual Nigger, oh, if you had some genius, and were not a born Nigger with mere appetite for pumpkin, should you have endured such a lot? I lament for you, beyond all other expenses. Other expenses are light; you are the Cleopatra’s pearl that should not have been flung into Mahogany’s claret-cup. And Rossini, too, and Mozart, and Bellini—Oh Heavens, when I think that Music too is condemned to be mad and to burn herself, to this end, on such a funeral pile—your celestial Opera-house grows dark and infernal to me! ”

“ And then again, the sublimity of that invocation—the heavenly thought, and heavenly harmony, of that song of praise and love! All is redolent of a philosophy to which our most rapt contemplations never ventured to ascend. Even the despised hymn-book may be soberly supposed to fill their souls with an admiration that Dryden and Shakspeare might fail to inspire. How transcendent the conceptions on every page! How far beyond all ancient or modern poetry that is alien to its spirit, or claims no kindred with its celestial origin. Here, indeed is progress. But we must close our sketch. ”

“ Egypt, the memorials of whose former grandeur still attract the wonder and the admiration of the civilized world, after having been buried, during centuries, in darkness and oblivion, is again slowly emerging into light, and is, doubtless, destined eventually to become one of the great centres of industry and of knowledge. The Mediterranean washes its northern shores, opening to its commerce all the opulent cities of Europe. The Red Sea wafts to its fertile valley the wealth of India and of China. ”

“ On the morning of the 1st of July, after a passage of forty days, the low and sandy shores of Egypt, about two thousand miles from France, were discerned extending along the distant horizon, as far as the eye could reach. As with a gentle breeze they drew nearer the land, the minarets of Alexandria, the Needle of Cleopatra, and Pompey’s Pillar, rose above the sand hills, exciting, in the minds of the enthusiastic French, the most romantic dreams of Oriental grandeur. ”

“ If I remain long unemployed, I am undone. The renown of one, in this great Babylon, speedily supplants that of another. If I am seen three times at the opera, I shall no longer be an object of curiosity. I am determined not to remain in Paris. There is nothing here to be accomplished. Every thing here passes away. My glory is declining. This little corner of Europe is too small to supply it. We must go to the East. All the great men of the world have there acquired their celebrity. ”

“ The Court of Vienna is perhaps the most brilliant in Europe; the whole social system in Vienna is perhaps the most thoroughly unsound in Europe. Austria is weighed down by a numerous and impoverished nobility, by unjust taxes, and by a currency incredibly depreciated. Her commerce is hampered by all manner of monopolies, and is involved in such a complex network of restrictions, as only the industrious, gold-getting fingers of a few can unravel. ”

“ The Knights of Malta, living upon the renown acquired by their order in by-gone ages, and reveling in luxury and magnificence, were very willing to receive the gold of Napoleon, and palaces in the fertile plains of Italy and France, in exchange for turrets and towers, bastions and ramparts of solid rock. The harbor is one of the most safe and commodious in the world. It embraced, without the slightest embarassment, the whole majestic armament, and allowed the magnificent Orient, to float, with abundance of water, at the quay. ”

“ To present the contrast in its strongest light, let it be the humblest church, with the humblest worshipers, and the humblest preacher of our great city—some obscure corner which the literary and editorial lights of the age might regard as the last place in which there could be expected any thing original or profound. Yes—the poorest sermon of the poorest preacher in New York could hardly fail to strike the great Roman, and the greater Greek, with an awe which nothing of any other kind in the modern world could ever inspire. ”

“ Fame has taken charge of his glory. But it belongs to me, and to you, my lords and gentlemen, to do honor to his mortal remains! I wished that this lofty courser should have a burial worthy of his great, his immortal deservings. He has had it, my lords and gentlemen, he has had it! My cook has fitly prepared him, and you have feasted upon him to-day! Yes, my lords and gentlemen, this repast which you have relished so keenly—these dishes which awakened the so frequent inquiry, ‘What animal could be so delicious?’—that animal, my lords and gentlemen, was Tiberius! ”

“ Sit down here, Ella. There’s a good girl. Don’t you know there are some persons who don’t write for money, and who don’t care for fame? Some who write because they must, who’d go crazy outright, if they didn’t, but who would just as soon dig a hole in the ground, and throw what they write in there, or make a burial place of this sea, as they’d have their writings printed? They write to satisfy their own great spirits, not to please others. ”

“ The active mother of all human science.
The Pulpit and the Press—the past and the present, the rising and the waning power, would be to some minds the first idea suggested by such a collocation of terms. But we trust the time has not yet come for the actual verification of any such contrast. Far be it from us to underrate the value of the very instrument through which we seek to instruct and reform the public mind; but woe to the land and to the age in which such an antagonism shall ever be realized. The Press is man’s boasted means for enlightening the world. ”

“ Death, to such an one! to any one, indeed, who, regardless of the great and wise purposes for which he was created, has passed his days and nights in drunkenness and debauchery; who, having fallen from his high estate—disappointed his own hopes of usefulness, respectability, and honor among men; having frustrated the fond, ardent hopes of parents, the wishes of troops of friends, finds himself at last on a drunkard’s death-bed, with the awful consciousness of having laughed to scorn the responsibilities resting on his immortal soul! ”

“ How easy, in this way, to fill the heavens with life, when we are led to regard them no longer as an unmeaning collection of glittering points, or what is scarcely better, a mere diagram for the illustration of scientific abstractions, but stored with remembrances of the older days of our world—the old religion, the old mythology, the old philosophy pictured on the sky—the old heroes, and heroines, and heroic events, transferred to the stars, and still shining in immortal splendor above us. ”

“ On this point, we have to object that Jefferson—a man of remarkable powers, and whose spirit has more intimately transferred itself into the heart and hereditary sentiment of the American people than that of perhaps any other American, not perhaps excepting even Washington—does not seem to have received a full enough measure of that appreciation which even Mr. Hildreth might have been able to give him. Jefferson we regard as the type and father of much that is now most characteristic in the American mind; and in any history of the United States he ought to figure largely. ”

“ I have asked myself whether, in presence of the madness of passions, the confusion of doctrines, the division of parties, when every thing is leaguing together to deprive justice, morality, and authority of their last prestige—whether, I say, we ought to allow the only principle to be shaken which, in the midst of the general chaos, Providence has left upstanding as our rallying point? When universal suffrage has again upraised the social edifice, when it has substituted a right for a revolutionary act, ought its base to be any longer narrowed? ”

“ I will answer you, It is a world all calculated for strangling of heroisms. At every ingress into life, the genius of the world lies in wait for heroisms, and by seduction or compulsion unweariedly does its utmost to pervert them or extinguish them. Yes; to its Hells of sweating tailors, distressed needle-women, and the like, this Opera of yours is the appropriate Heaven! Of a truth, if you will read a Psalm of Asaph till you understand it, and then come hither and hear the Rossini-and-Coletti Psalm, you will find the ages have altered a good deal.... ”

“ After the first transports of meeting were over, the widow found leisure to observe her child. But what a poor young delicate flower was she, to brave the rude blasts of poverty. She was a lovely girl: like a lily, fragile and pale, the storms of life would wither her. Her mother took her home; but the contrast was too great, from affluence to poverty—Amalie wept. Poor Jane strove to comfort her; but she might only use the language of the eyes, for her foreign sister scarcely understood two words of English. ”

“ The position of the nobles is ridiculous. They swarm over the land; increase and multiply, and starve. Not more than a few dozen of them can live honestly without employment; while not one of the noble millions may exercise a trade for bread; may practice law or medicine, or sink down into authorship. The Austrian patrician can not feed himself by marriage with a merchant’s daughter; if he do, his household will not be acknowledged by his noble friends. The he-noble must marry the she-noble, and they must make a miserable, mean, hungry, noble pair. ”

“ Such was the impetuosity of the French attack, that although the most positive orders had been given by Massena that not more than three guns and their caissons should traverse the bridge together, and even these at a walk, seven or eight were seen passing at the same instant, and all at a gallop, making the old frame-work so rock and tremble, that it seemed ready to come to pieces. As often happens, the hardihood proved our safety. ”

“ It is in the solitude of this wilderness, that the jaguar, stretched out motionless and silent, upon one of the lower branches of the ancient trees, watches for its passing prey; a deer, urged by thirst, is making its way to the river, and approaches the tree where his enemy lies in wait. The jaguar’s eyes dilate, the ears are thrown down, and the whole frame becomes flattened against the branch. ”

“ We doubt if ever at Pesth, in the best days that are gone, or that are to come, of Hungarian nationality, the chief of the nation could receive more hearty and zealous plaudits than have welcomed him upon our sunny Bay of New York. A fine person, an honest eye, and an eloquent tongue—pleading for liberty and against oppression—stir our street-folk—and we hope in Heaven may always stir them—to such enthusiasm as no Paris mob can match. ”

“ A few months previous to the time alluded to, the sister was the affianced bride of an amiable, enterprising young man, the partner of her father in business. At that period her ideal world was doubtless one of beauty and of innocence, the acme, perhaps, of earthly peace and happiness; for within it was a fountain of pure and mutual love, ever full and ever flowing. No worldly care disturbed her tranquil bosom—her every wish was gratified; no cloud obscured the brightness of her sky—it was pure, serene, and beautiful. How uncertain are earthly hopes! How vain are human expectations! ”

“ Though Napoleon could look with perfect composure upon the carnage of the field of battle, and order movements, without the tremor of a nerve, which he knew must consign thousands to a bloody death, when by such an accidental event life was periled, his sympathies were aroused to the highest degree, and he could not rest until the person was extricated. He always liberally rewarded those who displayed unusual courage and zeal in effecting a rescue. ”

“ Science, literature, and even politics, find their most profound interest for the human soul when the questions they raise lie nearest to her sacred confines, and connect themselves with that “faith which is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things unseen.” What true worth in any problem in philosophy, in any discovery in science, the moment it is once conclusively settled, beyond a peradventure, that man has no hereafter? What becomes of art, and poetry? ”

“ Bewick first practiced his genius on the cottage-walls of his native village, which he covered with his sketches in chalk. Rittenhouse, the astronomer, calculated eclipses on the plow-handle. Benjamin West, the painter, made his first brushes out of the cat’s tail.
It is not accident, then, that helps a man on in the world, but purpose and persistent industry. These make a man sharp to discern opportunities, and to use them. To the sluggish and the purposeless, the happiest opportunities avail nothing—they pass them by with indifference, seeing no meaning in them. ”

“ Men of all grades look anxiously to France; well knowing that the events in Paris next year, if they lead to outbreak, will be felt in Vienna instantly. Yet Strauss delights the dancers, and the military bands play their “Hoch Lebe” round the throne. The nobles scorn the merchants and the men of letters; who return the noble scorn with a contemptuous pity. The murmur of the populace is heard below; but still we have the gayest capital in all the world. We throng the places of amusement. Dissipation occupies our minds and shuts out graver thought. ”