Various

“ The timid young girl seemed like a prophetess animated with a mighty inspiration. A flush was on her pale face, and in her glance was the light of enthusiasm.
"You are a noble creature," said Ireneus, taking her by the hand. The hand of Ebba lay motionless and pale in his, her blush passed away, and the dark shadows of her habitual melancholy returned.
Just then the sleigh of M. de Vermondans arrived at its destination. Eric was waiting for them at the threshold, clasped the hand of his father-in-law, and helped Alete out, as Ireneus did as much for Ebba. ”

“ I look with respect on the sweaty brow and toil-stained hand. God himself prescribed labor to us as a law, and his infinite goodness unites with obedience to it the enjoyment of much happiness. Certainly no person with a heart can repress sympathy at the sight of the poor laborer, who is busy from morning to night to earn his moderate wages, who braves every weather to sow and harvest his crop. This laborer, however, is often happier than the majority of the rich, who, as they pass, look on him with pity. He has done his duty. When his task is done he sits contented at his humble hearth. ”

“ We pause and hesitate. We may return, and joyfully cast ourselves into arms still open to us. This is the last contest of the heart, perhaps the last remonstrance of a good genius. Passion however conquers, and the bark is launched upon a sea without a port, beneath a sky without a star. May God guide it!
Thus Ireneus departed, deserting domestic peace, leaving a family in distress, and crushing a young heart. He was himself unhappy, but was sustained by the idea that he hearkened to the voice of honor, and that the sacrifice was noble in proportion as it was painful. ”

“ Thus had lived and flourished the Degs on their ancient patrimony, the parish, for upward of two hundred years. Nay, we have no doubt whatever that, if it could have been traced, they had enjoyed an ancestry of paupers as long as the pedigree of Sir Roger Rockville himself. In the days of the most perfect villenage, they had, doubtless, eaten the bread of idleness, and claimed it as a right. They were numerous, improvident, ragged in dress, and fond of an alehouse and of gossip. Like the blood of Sir Roger, their blood had become peculiar through a long persistence of the same circumstances. ”

“ Alete, her husband, and the old pastor, sought to retain him. When Ebba heard he was about to leave, she said nothing: her head sunk on her bosom, and tears stole into her eyelids.
Ireneus left not without effort and distress. At sunset the rays of the sun have singular beauty, and life is never so attractive as to the dying man. Just at the moment of separation a strange reaction also takes place. In an instant we see a kind of dazzling light, unfolding to us what we love and what we abandon. We regret in anticipation what we are about to leave. ”

“ The Turks have a proverb which says, 'Cure the hand you cannot spare.' Now we can add to this maxim, 'Cure the hand which can serve you, satisfy your pride, avarice and egotism.' Young and happy when you first entered on life, dear Ireneus, you have seen much. A sudden revolution has covered your eyes with a cloud, and unexpected treachery has pierced your heart. Time will show you many others, and if you do not give yourself up to useless misanthropy, the most foolish and idle of all maladies, you will learn to resign yourself to chagrins you cannot avoid. ”

“ I am, less their genius and virtue, what were St. Augustine, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Chateaubriand, Montaigne, all those men Who have silently interrogated their souls and replied aloud, so that their dialogue with themselves might also be a useful conversation with the century in which they lived, or with the future. The human heart is an instrument which has neither the same number nor quality of chords in every bosom, and on which new notes may eternally be discovered and added to the infinite scale of sentiments and melodies in the universe. ”

“ GENTLEMEN—The man who has just descended into this tomb is one of those whom the public sorrow follows to the last abode. In the times where we are all fictions have disappeared. Henceforth our eyes are fixed not on the heads that reign but on the heads that think, and the whole country is affected when one of them disappears. At this day, the people put on mourning for the man of talent, the nation for the man of genius. ”

“ I have the audacity to think that a king, who in the splendor of his court is forgetful of the suffering of his people; that a noble, who abandons himself to all the enjoyments of his fortune, forgetful of misery languishing at his castle gate, are great criminals; and that God will punish their misdeeds, either on them, or, as the Bible says, 'on their children even until the fourth and fifth generation.'"
Ireneus, who had listened in silence to this long profession of faith, asked himself if it was worth while to contradict it. ”

“ More than one happy acquaintance originates in one of those northern evenings—and more than one girl, who, in the autumn, has a heart free as air, in the spring wears on her finger the ring of a promised bride.
When the weather was good, Ebba went out sometimes alone, to be present at these re-unions. All rose to welcome her with a sentiment of respect and attention, for she was kind to the poor.
The young people silently withdrew, and the matron of the house gave her the most pleasant seat by the hearth-side. ”

“ When I write or speak before the public, I feel myself as free, as exempt from the susceptibilities of one man to another, as if I were speaking or writing before God and in the desert; the crowd is a solitude; you see it, you know that it exists, but you know it only as a mass. As an individual it does not exist. Now this modesty of which you speak, being the respect of one's self before some other person, when there is no person distinct on account of the multitude, becomes without a motive. ”

“ The weaknesses which cling, tendril-like, to a fine nature, not unfrequently bind us to it by ties we do not seek to sever. I know you for a true-hearted girl, but with the bitter lessons of life still unlearned; let it be my part to shield you from their sad knowledge,—yet whatever sorrow or evil falls upon you, I must or ought to share. Let us have no secrets; and while the Truth which gives its purest luster to your eye, and its richest rose to your cheek, still reigns in your soul, I cannot dream of a fault grave enough to deserve harsher rebuke than the kiss of forgiveness. ”

“ He is ignorant of the troubles which fill the hearts of the opulent. Ceaseless toil to him is a cuirass warding off stormy passions. The door of his soul is shut to dark chimeras, to the mad fancies which people the area of the palace, and on his rude pillow he enjoys a peaceful repose, which the lord of his village often asks for in vain. When I thus praise the efficaciousness of toil, I do not speak only of manual labor. The labor of thought is often most painful, and its fruits infinitely more valuable."
"Take care," said Ireneus, "you touch a sensitive string of my uncle's breast." ”

“ The eccentricities, too, of men of genius are of such value that they may well be said to atone for themselves.
A quality of Lord Brougham's mind, that is almost as extraordinary as his extent of information, is its singular activity. His energies never seem to flag—even for an instant; he does not seem to know what it is to be fatigued, or jaded. Some such quality as this, indeed, the vastness and universality of his acquirements called for, in order to make the weight endurable to himself, and to bear him up during his long career of political excitement. ”

“ Ireneus took pleasure in looking at her, and as she immediately acquired self-possession, she conferred the same privilege on others. She already jested with him as if he had been an old friend, and he felt himself as unconstrained as if he had passed his whole life with her. When, however, he looked at Ebba, it was with strange emotion. Nothing in his whole life had ever touched him so. The countenance of the young girl had a cold marble whiteness, making it assume the appearance of a statue, wrought in the most artistic manner. ”

“ Never, at any other period of our history, has it been so necessary to urge upon the students of the law the example of their worthiest predecessors. The tendency of the age is to lower, not to elevate, the standard set up by our ancestors for the attainment of preeminence. That our giants may not be stunted in their growth—that the legal stock may not hopelessly degenerate—Chief Justice Campbell does well to impress upon his brethren the patient and laborious course—the high and admirable qualities—by which Chief Justice Mansfield secured his greatness and his fame. ”

“ But Lenny retreated, and cast on the umpire a look of great aversion and disgust.
"Please, Master Dale," said he, obstinately, "I'd rather not."
"It is a matter of feeling, you see," said the Parson, turning to the umpire; "and I believe the boy is right."
"If it is a matter of feeling," replied Dr. Riccabocca, "there is no more to be said on it. When Feeling comes in at the door, Reason has nothing to do but to jump out of the window."
"Go, my good boy," said the Parson, pocketing the coin; "but stop! Give me your hand first. There—I understand you—good-by!" ”

“ Walter Ferrars had a warm heart, that yearned for affection, as well as a clear head; and, fascinated as he had been by the youthful grace and beauty, the high-bred repose of manner and cultivated talents of the Lady Lucy, he set himself resolutely to win and keep her girlish heart, not expecting that the man of forty was to obtain it without an effort. Thus, when he assumed a husband's name, he did not "drop the lover." His was still the watchful care, made up of the thousand little thoughtful kindnesses of daily life, neither relaxed in a tête-à-tête, nor increased in public. ”

“ I therefore think, dear Ireneus, that in our benevolence we make monsters of certain ideas which we imbibe when we are children, and to which, without examination, we always submit ourselves. I think that without violating any true principle of morality, without ceasing to be, in any respect, a moral man, we may break some links of that network of traditions spun for us by our teachers at so much an hour, and which throws a hood over us as it is thrown over a falcon, to keep it from flying in the infinitude of space. ”

“ It was to him the most irritating sight in the world; for what were all those swarming weavers and spinners but arrant radicals, upstarts, sworn foes of ancient institutions and the landed interests of England? Sir Roger had passed through many a desperate conflict with them for the return of members to parliament. They brought forward men that were utter wormwood to all his feelings, and they paid no more respect to him and his friends on such occasions than they did to the meanest creature living. Reverence for ancient blood did not exist in that plebeian and rapidly multiplying tribe. ”

“ We will live here with my father, near your own family. May God grant that our hearts may not be disunited. May God grant us new pleasures without robbing us of those of the past. Now, when shall we be married—tell me?"
"How you go on!" said Alete. "Must I, because it has seemed fit to our venerable prelate to make you a vicar— (after all it is a sensible appointment) —put on my wedding dress and go to the altar? Do you know I expect a letter from Hernosand or Stockholm! Do you know———"
The artless girl, however, sought in vain to conceal, beneath pretended laughter, her deep emotion. ”

“ Is then, we ask, no single member of that gifted body competent to say a word or two in plain English for the departed sculptor, that such a melancholy exhibition of helplessness must needs be sent forth as a tribute from excellence to excellence? The life of Chantrey properly written could not but prove of the utmost value to Englishmen, and simply because it is the career of a man attaining the highest distinction by means thoroughly understood by his countrymen, and by the exercise of an intellect at all times under the salutary influence of a wholesale national bias. ”

“ In your time of distress you will draw near to those who do not deceive your esteem. You will, without hatred and anger, be able to look at those whom base calculation or cowardice has led astray, and if you congratulate yourself that you have not followed their example, you will be glad that heaven has endowed you with more firmness and a loftier ambition."
The wisdom of these reasonings touched the heart of Ireneus, but could not subdue it. The ardent young man continued to curse those whom he had seen in the ranks of legitimacy, and who now had linked themselves with the revolution. ”