Various

“ Percival longed intensely for a glimpse of beauty, for a little space of warmth and love, of wealth and liberty. Let their life thus blossom together into joy, and he would be content that it should be, like the flowering of the aloe, followed by swift and inevitable death. Only let the death be shared like the life! It would be bitter and terrible to be struck down in their gladness, but if they had truly lived they might be satisfied to die. Percival used to fancy what they might do in one glorious, golden, sunlit week, brilliant against a black background of death. ”

“ Life, and the joy of life, beauty so profuse that it can afford to have a few blemishes like a slatternly Venus, and the dolce far niente of poverty that neither works nor starves,—they lie all along the road.
Silvia was young, and had all her life looked forward to this journey. She could not be quite indifferent. She looked and listened, though all the time her heart was heavy for Claudio. They reached the gate of St. John Lateran just as all the bells began to ring for the noon Angelus, and in fifteen minutes were at the Signora Fantini's door and Silvia in the kind lady's arms. ”

“ She sighed. "Georgy is a beautiful girl," she said quietly, "but she baits too many lures for men, Floyd. It seems to me she is trying to win you, my dear boy. She is born to make men unhappy. Do not trust her. Oh, why is she here?"
"Because Helen has asked her to remain, mother."
"Helen pities her and tries to please her. She is one too many in the house, Floyd: she will do some harm to some of us. She is cold and treacherous at heart, and she never sees us happy, contented together but that she hates us every one." ”

“ She sat and stared at Rome while her busy fingers knit—at the wonderful city where she was one day to go and be a nun, where the pope lived and kings came to worship him. In the morning light the Holy City lay in the midst of the Campagna like her mother's wedding-pearls when dropped in a heap on their green cushion; and Silvia knelt with her face that way and prayed for a soul as white, for she was to be the spouse of Christ, and her purity was all that she could bring Him as a dowry. ”

“ His heart turns to her as to a haven of peace; all his possibilities of happiness are in her hands; he rests in the full assurance that neither deed nor word of hers can ever jar upon him; in his darker moods he thinks of her as clear, still sunlight, and he has no desire apart from her. Yet when he looks back he doubts whether his life can hold another moment so supreme in love and anguish as that moment when he looked into Sissy's eyes for the last time and knew himself forgiven. ”

“ Matteo said the carriage tilted, and she, being asleep, fell out before he could prevent. Her temple struck a sharp rock, and Claudio missed his bride.
He had to keep quiet about it, though. What could he prove? what could any one prove? Where knives are sharp and people mind their own business, or express their opinions only by a shrug of the shoulders and a grimace, how is a poor boy, how is even a rich man or a rich woman, to come at the truth in such a case? Besides, the truth would not have brought her back, poor little Silvia! ”

“ Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, what sublime unconsciousness of their own personality as the personality of artists and as influencing art! Does Richard Wagner seem at first sight to be a glaring exception to such a rule—seem to strive more than any other artist in any branch of art to be critic as well—seem, perhaps, to be most notably self-conscious even in an age of self-consciousness? ”

“ The beautiful and costly modern buildings on every principal street, the noble bridges across the vast river, the fine railway-stations, the handsome theatres, the palatial hotels, would explain to him why it is that the citizens of Pesth speak of their town as the "Chicago of the East." There was a time when it really seemed as if Pesth would rival, if not exceed, Chicago in the extent of her commerce, the vivacity and boldness of her enterprises and the rapid increase of her population. Austria and Hungary were alike the prey of a feverish agitation which pervaded all classes. ”

“ There is little more to write. Four years, with their varying seasons, their endless procession of events, their multitude of joys and sorrows, have passed since Sissy died. Her place in the world, which seemed so blank and strange in its first vacancy, is closed up and lost in the crowding occupations of our ordinary life. She is not forgotten, but she has passed out of the light of common day into the quiet world of years gone by, where there is neither crowd nor haste, but soft shadows and shadowy sunshine, and time for every tender memory and thought. ”

“ While our parents and grand-parents were attending it I sat down beneath some cherry trees that were opposite my father's house—for from that spot could be seen the whole valley that ended in the sea—and shortly after four or five young girls came to seek me, red as the cherries that hung over my head or as the graceful knots of ribbon that tied the long braids of their hair, and made me compose couplets for them to sing to their sweethearts in the afternoon, to the sound of the tambourine, under the walnut trees where the young people danced and the elders chatted and enjoyed our pleasure. ”

“ Even Aunt Harriet's sorrow is patient and subdued, and she sees her darling's face, with other long-lost faces, softened as in a gentle dream. She looks back to the past with no pain of longing. At seventy-eight she believes that she is nearer to those she loves by going forward yet a little farther. Nor are these last days sad, for in her loneliness Godfrey Hammond persuaded her to come to him, and she is happy in her place by his fireside. He is all that is left to her, and she is wrapped up in him. ”

“ Nowhere does contemporary art seem so healthy and sane, so sure of itself, so consonant with the best nature and gifts of the people, as in the Netherlands: nowhere are its ideals so free from morbidness, affectation or sentimentality. Is it perhaps that in the studios of Amsterdam, in the great school of Antwerp, even in the galleries of Brussels, one is somewhat out of the wildest stream of modern life—less driven to analysis and theorizing and self-consciousness than in London, Paris or Munich? ”

“ His overwrought brain caught up the fancy that Death and he were side by side, racing together through the dark, at breathless, headlong speed, to Sissy, where she waited for them both.
Outside, the landscape lay dim and small, dwarfed by the presence of the night. And with the lights burning on its breast, as Sissy saw them in her half-waking visions, the express rushed southward across the level blackness of the land, beneath the arch of midnight sky. ”

“ I sat in the silence, in moonlight that gathered and glowed
Far over the field and the forest with tender increase:
The low, rushing winds in the trees were like waters that flowed
From sources of passionate joy to an ocean of peace.
And I watched, and was glad in my heart, though the shadows were deep,
Till one came and asked me: "Say, why dost thou watch through the
night?"
And I said, "I am watching my joy. They who sorrow may sleep,
But the soul that is glad cannot part with one hour of delight." ”

“ Georgy Lenox became more and more involved in the watering-place dissipations as the season advanced and the hotels filled. She came and went in shimmering toilettes of all hues with an air of radiant enjoyment, but her outgoings and incomings disturbed no one but myself. Helen would kiss her and tell her there was no one half so beautiful; Mr. Floyd would lean back in his chair and smile at her with the admiration in his eyes that all men who are not churls feel it a discourtesy to withhold from a pretty woman ”

“ Men paint because they must—because put at anything else they come back to art as iron to the magnet. Not because art is lovely, nor because to be an artist is a desirable or a noble or a righteous thing, but because they are artists born, stamped, double-dyed, and, kick as they might, they could be nothing else—if not artists creative, yet artists critical and appreciative. ”

“ After passing Peterwardein and Neusatz the boat's course lies through the vast Hungarian plain, which reminds the American of some of the rich lands in the Mississippi bottom. Here is life, lusty, crude, seemingly not of Europe, but rather of the extreme West or East. As far as the eye can reach on either hand stretch the level acres, dotted with herds of inquisitive swine, with horses wild and beautiful snorting and gambolling as they hear the boat's whistle, and peasants in white linen jackets and trousers and immense black woollen hats. ”

“ For all that, however, he had been to her not a person, but a voice. That he should come here and express her sorrow made him seem different. For the first time she looked at his face. By daylight it was thin and finely featured, and of a clear darkness like shaded water, through which the faintest tinge of color is visible. In this transfigurating moonlight it became of a luminous whiteness.
The song ended, the singer turned his head slightly and looked up at Silvia's window. She did not draw back. ”

“ I, poor son of Adam, in whom the curse of the Lord on our first parents has not ceased to be accomplished a single day since the time when, still a child, I left my beloved valley of the Encartaciones,—I shall love this life, and shall not believe myself exiled in the world while God, friendship, love and the family exist in it, while the sun shines on me every morning, while the moon lights me every night and the flowers and birds visit me every day. ”

“ Of whom should he borrow the money to take him back to his drudgery at Brenthill? Well, since Sissy no longer cared for his future, it was well that he had spoken. Better poverty than treachery. Let the money go; but, oh, to see her once again and ask her to forgive him!
As the night crept onward he grew drowsy and slept by snatches, lightly and uneasily, waking with sudden starts to a consciousness of the window at his side—a loophole into a ghostly sky where shreds of white cloud were driven swiftly before the breeze. ”

“ There was the young girl's journal before she was married, bound in blue velvet and clasped with gold: there were the letters the poor little woman had written, shuddering before her great trial, to the husband and the child who should survive her. I believe all young mothers on the threshold of outward and visible maternity believe they are to die in their agony, but these tokens of his young wife's unspoken dread touched Mr. Floyd so closely we almost had cause to regret that he had seen them. ”

“ For though these people do not clean their houses more than they clean their yards, yet their clothing and tables and beds are clean. Plentiful white linen, stockings like snow, and bright dishes and metals give a look of freshness and show well on the dim background. Heavy walnut presses, carved and black with age, stood against the walls, drinking-glasses and candlesticks sparkled on a dark bureau-top, there was a bright picture or two, and the sunlighted tinware of a house at the other side of the street threw a cluster of tiny rays like a bouquet of light in at the window. ”

“ Yet it is easy to see how entirely the revival is a child of theory and books and teachers and rules—how little owing to a spontaneous development of art-instinct in the people, a spontaneous desire for more beauty in their surroundings, a spontaneous knowledge of how it is best to be obtained.
The literary and un-painterlike—if I may use such an awkward term—nature of English art is shown perhaps more forcibly in its critics than in artists or public. One is especially struck in reading criticisms of whatever grade with the excessive prominence given to the artist's personality. ”

“ The poet continues: "I am a blind man who sees: that angel told the truth. With my guitar resting on my loving heart, you may see me wandering from the city to the valley, from the cabin of the poor to the palace of the great, weeping with those who weep, singing with those who sing, for my rude guitar is the lasting echo of all joys and all sorrows. ”

“ Of all that I have seen in what was the rich, the beautiful, the flourishing city of Cua, now a cemetery, nothing has made so profoundly melancholy an impression upon me as the cremation of the bodies of the unfortunate victims of the late disaster, tied together with ropes and dragged forth from the ruins, one over another, the stiffened limbs taking strange, unnatural attitudes, and upon being touched by the flames consuming instantly, on account of their advanced decomposition. ”

“ Unfortunate Cua experienced both: the first shock was one vast upheaval, the whole town being uprooted from its foundations and every house uplifted and overturned, and before the bewildered population could realize what was happening they were buried beneath the ruins. The shock then changed into the oscillatory movement, and set all this mass of destruction to quivering as if it were the dire agony of some living creature. ”

“ In England, more even than on the Continent or with ourselves, is there a passion for story-telling with the brush, a desire to give ideas instead of pictures, a denial of the fact that the main object of a picture is to please the eye just as truly and as surely as the main object of a symphony is to please the ear. If we look through the catalogue of a Royal Academy exhibition, we notice the preponderance of scenes illustrative of English or other literature—of canvases that tell a story or point a moral or bear a punning or a sentimental title. ”

“ Bryant. "How should a gentleman like you know all the ins and outs, Mr. Thorne? It makes all the difference to a young woman having a brother well-to-do in the world. And very fond of her he always seemed to be, as I was remarking to Lydia."
Percival felt as if his blood were on fire. He dared not profess too intimate a knowledge of Judith's feelings and position, and he could not listen in silence. "I think you are mistaken, Mrs. Bryant," he said, in a tone which would have betrayed his angry disgust to any more sensitive ear. ”

“ THE OXEN OF THE DANUBE.
At night, when the moon is good enough to shine, the voyage up the river has charms, and tempts one to remain on deck all night, in spite of the sharp breezes which sweep across the stream. The harmonious accents of the gentle Servian tongue echo all round you: the song of the peasants grouped together, lying in a heap like cattle to keep warm, comes occasionally to your ears; and if there be anything disagreeable, it is the loud voices and brawling manners of some Austrian troopers on transfer. ”

“ I learn from the signora that this Claudio is a good young man, so the sooner you are married the better. Cheer up: we will have you a bride by the first week of November; and if Claudio has such a wonderful voice, he can make his way in Rome."
The reassurances of a man were more effectual than those of a woman.
"At last I believe! at last I fear no more!" Silvia cried, throwing herself into the arms of the Signora Fantini when the Monsignor was gone. "Oh how beautiful the earth is! how beautiful life is!"
"We will then begin immediately to enjoy life," the signora replied. ”

“ The whole night between herself and Percival! The darkness must come and must go, the sun must set and must again be high in the heavens, before he could stand by her side. It seemed to Sissy as if she were going down into the blackness of an awful gulf, where Death was waiting for her. Would she have strength to escape him, to toil up the farther side, and to reach the far-off to-morrow and Percival? "Aunt Harriet," she said, "shall I live till then? ”

“ Landscape brings us inevitably to Turner. The most highly gifted of all English artists, past or present, his genius was hardly a logical outcome of the contemporary spirit of his nation. We have no right to say this of an artist, no right to call him anomalous, while we are still in doubt as to whether he may be only the advance-guard of a new national art, the herald of a new avatar. ”

“ We shall greedily fill our stomachs with the wind of art-philosophy, shall work with the reason instead of with the eye and the fingers, shall symbolize our aspirations, our theorizings, our souls and our consciences, and fondly dream we are painting pictures. ”