Various

“ Randall was as cross that night as it was possible for the most tyrannical servant to be, but some way or other, Mrs. Melwyn did not feel as if she cared for it quite so much as usual; she had her mind filled with the image of Lettice. Something so very nice about her—she thought to herself—in one respect even better than Catherine. She should not be so afraid of her being distressed by disagreeable things; she should venture to tell her about Randall, and other vexations which she had carefully concealed from Catherine, lest they should make her unhappy. ”

“ While founding a new government, he practiced that policy, at once modest and severe, measured and independent, which seems to belong only to the head of an aristocratic senate ruling over an ancient state. His success does equal honor to Washington and to his country.
Whether we consider the general destiny of nations, or the lives of the great men whom they have produced; whether we are treating of a monarchy or a republic, an aristocratic or a democratic society, we gather the same light from facts; we see that the same laws determine the ultimate success or failure of governments. ”

“ Jane, from that moment, gave up the idea of the connection. There might be those who would suspect Nancy of a selfish bias in the advice she gave; but Jane knew that no such feeling influenced her pure soul. For one long year the two sisters traversed the hills between Cressbrook and Tideswell. But they had companions, and it was pleasant in the summer months. But winter came, and then it was a severe trial. To rise in the dark, and traverse those wild and bleak hills; to go through snow and drizzle, and face the sharpest winds in winter, was no trifling matter. ”

“ Both represent to our minds distinct forms of undoubted greatness. The Body of the Common Law of England is the type that speaks for Coke. The glory of human wisdom shines forever around the drooping head of Bacon. Both teach posterity how much intellectual grandeur may co-exist with the most glaring moral turpitude; both pay homage to virtue by seeking refuge in disgrace in the tranquil pursuits that have since immortalized them. Bacon, with a genius only less than angelic, condescends to paltry crime, and dies branded. ”

“ It is very terrible to take the first summer plunge into a deep, dark river and when you are at the bottom, and the water is roaring in your ears, to think of dead bodies and crocodiles; it is almost worse to make that frightful journey down a steep beach, in a bathing machine, with a vague incertitude as to where you will find yourself when the doors open again: but nothing can come up to what I suffered in my last extremity, in this Constantinople bath. ”

“ Neglected and left alone as a corpse in the shroud of his own genius, a fugitive, though not a vagabond, compelled day after day to fight absolute starvation at the point of his pen, the marvel is, that he has written so much which the world may not willingly let die. But, it is the world's fault that the writings it now recognizes, and may henceforth preserve on a high shelf, are rather the sublime ravings of De Quincey drunk, than the calm, profound cogitations of De Quincey sober. The theory of capital punishments is much more subtle and widely ramified than we might at first suppose. ”

“ At such a time—with such terrible teachings—children became men in all the sterner features of character: cruelty is a lesson so easily learned.
As for myself, energetic and ambitious by nature, the ascendency my first assumption of power suggested was too grateful a passion to be relinquished. The name—whose spell was like a talisman, because now the secret engine by which I determined to work out my fortune—Robespierre had become to my imagination like the slave of Aladdin's lamp; and to conjure him up was to be all-powerful. Even to Boivin himself this influence extended ”

“ I felt as if my death-summons was in the words "Michel Delannois."
"That crazy priest can neither hear nor see, I believe," said the jailor, savagely. "Will no one answer for him?"
"He is asleep yonder in the window," replied a voice from the crowd.
"Let him sleep, then," said the turnkey "when awake he gives us no peace with his prayers and exhortations."
"He has eaten nothing for three days," observed another; "he is, perhaps, overcome by weakness more than by sleep."
"Be it so! if he only lie quiet, I care not," rejoined the jailor, and proceeded to the next name on the list. ”

“ A set of prints, after his designs, for Shakspeare and Cowper, exhibit a chaos of mingled genius and absurdity, such as, perhaps, was never before seen. He endeavored to bring Michael Angelo's apostles and prophets, with their superhuman ponderousness of intention, into the common-places of modern life. A student reading in a garden, is all over intensity of muscle; and the quiet tea-table scene in Cowper, he has turned into a preposterous conspiracy of huge men and women, all bent on showing their thews and postures, with dresses as fantastical as their minds. ”

“ He should know how to unbend and how to uphold his dignity, or rather the dignity of his sovereign; for it his business, in whatever quarter of the world he may be placed, to maintain the rights and dignities of his sovereign with vigor and effect. It is the union of these diverse, and yet not repugnant qualities, that gives to an embassador prestige, ascendency, and power over the minds of others, that acquires for him that reputation of wisdom, straightforwardness, and sagacity, which is the rarest and most valuable gift of a statesman. ”

“ As a judge he was above all suspicion of corruption; yet most men," adds Lord Campbell, "I am afraid, would rather have been Bacon than Coke." We participate in his Lordship's fear. Aware of the lax period in which both flourished, we are willing to attribute many of the faults of both to the age in which their lot was cast. Their virtues and intellectual prowess were all then own; and let us once enter upon a comparison of these, and the lofty, universal genius of Bacon will shine as the noonday sun in the firmament where the duller orb of Coke shall cease to be visible. ”

“ I had seldom been more surprised than on coming close to Mathews on that occasion, and seeing the bust which he possessed in his gallery of his friend Liston. Some of these comic actors, like comic writers, are as unfarcical as can be imagined in their interior. The taste for humor comes to them by the force of contrast. The last time I had seen Mathews, his face appeared to me insignificant to what it was then. On the former occasion he looked like an irritable in-door pet: on the latter, he seemed to have been grappling with the world, and to have got vigor by it. ”

“ Kay, from official and other authentic sources, for his work on the Social Condition and Education of the Poor in England and Europe, would be hard to believe, if we had not to encounter in our every-day life degrees of illiteracy which would be startling, if we were not thoroughly used to it. Wherever we turn, ignorance, not always allied to poverty, stares us in the face. If we look in the Gazette, at the list of partnerships dissolved, not a month passes but some unhappy man, rolling perhaps in wealth, but wallowing in ignorance, is put to the experimentum crucis of "his mark." ”

“ Melwyn, "the being treated so carelessly as she too often is. How hard it must be to perform duties such as hers, if they are not performed in love! and how impossible it must be to love in such a case—unless we meet with love. Even to be treated with consideration and kindness will not suffice upon the one side, nor the most scrupulous endeavor to discharge duty upon the other—people must try to love. ”