Various

“ But there had been a loftiness of spirit in which Violante had first defied the Marchesa's questions, followed by such generous, exquisite sweetness, when the girl perceived how that wild heart was stung and maddened, and such purity of mournful candor when she had overcome her own virgin bashfulness sufficiently to undeceive the error she detected, and confess where her own affections were placed, that Beatrice bowed before her as mariner of old to some fair saint that had allayed the storm. ”

“ In a rather ill-favored and ill-savored neighborhood, though one of its rising grounds bears the name of Mount Pleasant, the Elfin Smallweed, christened Bartholomew, and known on the domestic hearth as Bart, passes that limited portion of his time on which the office and its contingencies have no claim. He dwells in a little narrow street, always solitary, shady, and sad, closely bricked in on all sides like a tomb, but where there yet lingers the stump of an old forest tree, whose flavor is about as fresh and natural as the Smallweed smack of youth. ”

“ You never see the postman stop at that desolate door; you never hear a visitor's knock on that rusty lion's head; no unnecessary traffic of social life ever takes place behind those dusty blinds; it might be the home of a select party of Trappists, or the favorite hiding-place of coiners, for all the sunshine of external humanity that is suffered to enter those interior recesses. If a murder had been committed in every room, from the attics to the cellar, a heavier spell of solitude and desolation could not rest on its floors. ”

“ On the other hand, to rise suddenly above the earth; to look down upon the gradually lessening crowds and vanishing cities beneath; to glance over the tops of mountains upon the vast inland plains, sprinkled with villages and towns; to sail on and on, exhausting horizon after horizon; to look down upon even the clouds of heaven, and thunder-storms and rainbows rolling and flashing beneath your feet, and upon glimpses of the heaving bosom of the "Great and wide Sea"—these, again, are the elements of the aeronaut, that may well be termed the "Poetry of Ballooning." ”

“ In nothing is the infirmity of our nature more conspicuous, than in the petty jealousies which so often rankle in the bosoms of great men. General Moreau had looked with an envious eye upon the gigantic strides of General Bonaparte to power. His wife, a weak, vain, envious woman, could not endure the thought that General Moreau should be only the second man in the empire; and she exerted all her influence over her vacillating and unstable husband, to convince him that the conqueror of Hohenlinden was entitled to the highest gifts France had to confer. ”

“ The national enthusiasm was so great, the conviction was so unanimous that there remained for France no alternative but, by force, to repel aggression, that Napoleon proudly formed a legion of the Vendean royalists, all composed, both officers and soldiers, of those who, but a few months before, had been fighting against the republic. It was a sublime assertion of his confidence in the attachment of United France. To meet the enormous expenses which this new war involved, it was necessary to impose a heavy tax upon the people. ”

“ It is impossible now to tell what would have been the result of a conflict between the English squadron and those innumerable gun-boats, manned by one hundred and fifty thousand men, surrounding in swarms every ship-of-the-line, piercing them in every direction with their guns, and sweeping their decks with a perfect hail-storm of bullets, while, in their turn, they were run down by the large ships, dashing, in full sail, through their midst, sinking some in their crushing onset, and blowing others out of the water with their tremendous broadsides. ”

“ And to such as these is the divine mission of brotherly charity required; for though poverty may not be relieved by reason of our inability, suffering may always be lightened by our sympathy. It takes but a word of love, a glance of pity, a gentle kiss of affection—it takes but an hour of our day, a prayer at night, and we may walk through the sick world and the sorrowful as angels dropping balm and comfort on the wounded. ”

“ The Austrian Prince bowed his head, as if in assent to the prayer.
"Giulio Franzini," said the Duke of Serrano—for so we may now call the threadbare recluse of the Casino—"had this last villainous design of yours been allowed by Providence, think you that there is one spot on earth on which the ravisher could have been saved from a father's arm? But now, Heaven has been more kind. In this hour let me imitate its mercy," and with relaxing brow the Duke mildly drew near to his guilty kinsman. ”

“ My carriage waits yonder. Come home with me—I will not detain you an hour; and I will bring you back."
This proposition startled Violante. She retreated toward the gate, with a gesture of dissent. Beatrice laid her hand on the girl's arm, and again lifting her vail, gazed at her with a look, half of scorn, half of admiration.
"I, too, would once have recoiled from one step beyond the formal line by which the world divides liberty from woman. Now—see how bold I am. Child, child, do not trifle with your destiny. You may never again have the same occasion offered to you. ”

“ Innumerable birds filled the air with their warblings, and the chirp of the insect, the rustling of the leaves, the sighing of the wind, the ripple of the streamlet, and the silence of all human voices, so deep, so solemn, left an impress upon the mind never to be forgotten. How terrible the fate of those who once made these scenes resound with the voice of gayety. Some were burned in their chateaux, or massacred in the streets. Some died miserably on pallets of straw in dungeons dark, and wet, and cold. Some were dragged by a deriding mob to the guillotine to bleed beneath its keen knife. ”

“ Lawson, the widow, was a mild, lady-like person, whose face bore the marks of recent affliction, and whose whole appearance and manners were those of a loving, gentle, unenergetic, and helpless woman, whom sorrow could well crush beyond all power of resistance. The boy was a tall, thin youth, with a hectic flush and a hollow cough, eyes bright and restless, and as manifestly nervous as his mother was the reverse in temperament—anxious and restless, and continually taxing his strength beyond its power, making himself seriously ill in his endeavors to save his beloved mother some small trouble. ”

“ OLD CHATEAU OF VERSAILLES
Suddenly the vision changes. The dark hours of the monarchy have come. The people, ragged, beggared, desperate, have thundered at the doors of the palace, declaring that they will starve no longer to support kings and nobles in such splendor. Poor Maria, educated in the palace, is amazed that the people should be so unreasonable and so insolent. She had supposed that as the horse is made to bear his rider, and the cow to give milk to her owner, so the people were created to provide kings with luxury and splendor. But the maddened populace have lost all sense of mercy. ”

“ The sailors were mounted on mules. The officers rode on horseback. The cavalcade was escorted by a troop of twenty armed Arabs—twelve mounted and the rest on foot.
They found the valley which they had to ascend in going up to Kerak, a gloomy gorge, of the wildest and grandest character. The path was steep and very difficult, overhanging on one side a deep and yawning chasm, and being itself overhung on the other with beetling crags, blackened as if by fire, and presenting an aspect of unutterable and frightful desolation. ”

“ One day, when the atmosphere was peculiarly clear, Napoleon, upon the cliffs of Boulogne, saw dimly, in the distant horizon, the outline of the English shore. Roused by the sight, he wrote thus to Cambèceres: "From the heights of Ambleteuse, I have seen this day the coast of England, as one sees the heights of Calvary from the Tuileries. We could distinguish the houses and the bustle. It is a ditch that shall be leaped when one is daring enough to try."
Napoleon, though one of the most bold of men in his conceptions, was also the most cautious and prudent in their execution. ”

“ Love, in all its delirium of passion, of hopelessness, of jealousy, and of remorse, has here rioted, causing the virtuous to fall and weep tears of blood, the vicious to become demoniac in reckless self-abandonment. After years of soul-harrowing pleasure and sin, the Duchesse de la Vallière, with pallid cheek, and withered charms, and exhausted vivacity, retired from these sumptuous halls and from her heartless, selfish, discarding betrayer, to seek in the glooms of a convent that peace which the guilty love of a king could never confer upon her heart. ”

“ He needs a Sabbath for intense thought, not so much on the argumentative evidence of particular dogmas, as on the great yet simple questions, whether the liberality of his opinions, and the few difficulties they present to his own mind, may not be evidence of their having no foundation in any wide system of eternal truth,—whether a religious creed that has no profound awe for the soul, no fearful apprehensions, no deep moral anxieties, no absorbing interest in a life to come, does not, from the very fact of such deficiency, prove itself a contradiction and a lie. ”

“ The sea itself, mysterious and unknown, the lonely and desolate coast, the dark and gloomy mountains, the human voices heard in shouts and outcries on the cliffs, with the flashes of the guns, and the reports reverberating along the shore, joined to the dread uncertainty which the boatmen felt in respect to what the end of the adventure was to be, combined to impress the minds of all the party with the most sublime and solemn emotions. ”

“ There has been only one child in the Smallweed family for several generations. Little old men and women there have been, but no child, until Mr. Smallweed's grandmother, now living, became weak in her intellect, and fell (for the first time) into a childish state. With such infantine graces as a total want of observation, memory, understanding and interest, and an eternal disposition to fall asleep over the fire and into it, Mr. Smallweed's grandmother has undoubtedly brightened the family. ”

“ The exquisite paintings, the rich carvings and gildings, the graceful spring of the arched ceiling, the statues of marble and bronze, the subdued light, which gently penetrates the apartment, through the stained glass, the organ in its tones so soft and rich and full, all conspire to awaken that luxury of poetic feeling which the human heart is so apt to mistake for the spirit of devotion—for love to God. ”

“ The tidings of this decree rolled a billow of woe over the peaceful homes of England; for there were thousands of travelers upon the continent, unapprehensive of danger, supposing that war would be declared before hostilities would be resumed. These were the first-fruits of that terrific conflict into which the world again was plunged. No tongue can tell the anguish thus caused in thousands of homes. Most of the travelers were gentlemen of culture and refinement—husbands, fathers, sons, brothers—who were visiting the continent for pleasure. ”

“ True, his career was in the low-lying paths of humanity; but it was none the less beautiful and pure, for it is not deeds, it is their spirit, which makes men noble, or leaves them stained. Had Herbert Lawson been a warrior, statesman, hero, philosopher, he would have shown no other nature than that which gladdened the heart of his widowed mother, and proved a life's instruction to Jessie Hamilton, in his small deeds of love and untaught words of faith in the solitude of that lodging-house. ”

“ Here the regal votaries of pleasure, satiated with the gayeties of Paris, weary of the splendors and the etiquette of the Tuileries and Versailles, endeavored to step from the palace to the cottage, and in the humble employments of the humblest life, to alleviate the monotony of an existence devoted only to pleasure. They played that they were peasants, put on the garb of peasants, and engaged heartily in the employments of peasants. King Louis was the inn-keeper, and Maria Antoinette, with her sleeves tucked up and her apron bound around her, the inn-keeper's pretty and energetic wife. ”

“ Let him devote one day in seven to the sober contemplation of a universe without a God, without a providence, without prayer, without a moral government,—religion, reverence, and worship forever dead and gone,—buried with them in their graves all that was most touching in poetry, beautiful in art, elevating in science, or sublime in philosophy,—all moral distinctions perished, of course, except those base counterfeits which resolve themselves into the pursuit of physical pleasure, or the avoidance of physical pain. ”

“ We are never tired of reading of such things, identified as they are with genius, and consecrated by their association with the names of great men.
We take an interest in even smaller things. Everybody remembers Goldsmith's bloom-colored coat; George Fox's "leathern hull;" Milton's garb of coarse gray; Magliabecchi's great brown vest down to his knees, his broad-brimmed hat, and patched black mantle, and his cravat full of snuff-droppings; Pope's velvet cap, tye-wig, and sword; and Buffon, with his hair in curl-papers while sitting at his desk. ”

“ The Bible plainly speaks of things which "have the promise both of this life and of that which is to come," and among these the right observance of the Sabbath would doubtless hold a distinguished place. It is the great connecting bond between the political and the religious, between social virtue and the individual devoutness, between the kingdom of nature and the kingdom of grace,—in short, between all secular and all spiritual moralities. We can not well conceive of either squalid poverty or debasing vice in a community distinguished for its intelligent reverence of the Sabbath. ”

“ Seizing the moment when the tempest subsided, the French flotilla might perhaps cross the Straits before the squadron could return. A fourth chance offered. It was, by skillful combinations to concentrate suddenly in the channel a strong French squadron, and to push the flotilla across under the protection of its guns. For three years, Napoleon consecrated his untiring energies to the perfection of all the mechanism of this Herculean enterprise. Yet no one was more fully alive than himself to the tremendous hazards to be encountered. ”

“ They burn the chateaus of the nobles and hang their inmates at the lamp-posts. The high civil and military officers of the king rally at Versailles to protect the royal family. In this very theatre they hold a banquet to pledge to each other undying support. In the midst of their festivities, when chivalrous enthusiasm is at its height, the door opens, and Maria enters, pale, wan, and woe-stricken. The sight inflames the wine-excited enthusiasts to frenzy. The hall is filled with shoutings and with weeping; with acclamations and with oaths of allegiance. ”

“ His hat presents at the rims a peculiar appearance of a glistening nature, as if it had been a favorite snail-promenade. The same phenomenon is visible on some parts of his coat, and particularly at the seams. He has the faded appearance of a gentleman in embarrassed circumstances; even his light whiskers droop with something of a shabby air.
His appetite is so vigorous, that it suggests spare living for some little time back. He makes such a speedy end of his plate of veal and ham, bringing it to a close while his companions are yet midway in theirs, that Mr. Guppy proposes another. ”