Various

“ By that time, indeed, the best of a private ball is very commonly over. No doubt there are delicious and long-to-be-remembered opportunities now and then seizable by staying later. Strauss' world-known "Blue Danube" waltz with an appreciative partner, and the rare luxury of ample dancing-space in an emptying room, is one such. But when the minute-hand of the hall-clock is approaching the third of the small hours, the endurance of the most indulgent and enduring of matrons is apt to get exhausted, and she carries off her brood, determined, like everybody else, not to be the last to go. ”

“ I am a vain person. I am very proud of my own opinion of myself; and if I acceded to what you propose—if I took your money—I suppose I should be driving about in that fine phaeton you speak of. That is very good: I like driving, and I should be pleased with the appearance of the trap and the horses. But what do you fancy I should think of myself—what would be my opinion of my own nobleness and generosity and humanity—if I saw Sheila Mackenzie walking by on the pavement, without any carriage to drive in, perhaps without a notion as to where she was going to get her dinner? ”

“ The Life is an uneventful history, but the letters, though singularly free from egotism, bring up before us a most interesting character—a curious mixture of genius and want of faith in that genius, of energy and self-distrust, of intense devotion to practical studies and the most impractical and dreamy fancy, an affectionate nature lonely and misunderstood, a spirit of the most sturdy and uncompromising independence, a mind of keen and scientific insight—a character made up, in short, of all the warring elements of philosopher, physician, politician and poet. ”

“ The longest, and certainly the most interesting, excursions to be made from Ventnor are those to Carisbrooke and to Freshwater. The first leads you into the very heart of the island, through lanes that must be the boweriest in all England. Often the road-bed drops for a long way into a deep cutting. Ivies cover all the sides, ferns, vetches, campions and arums spring thickly amid them, and the tall, straggling hedges of dog-roses, brambles and hawthorn that top the banks are luxuriantly overrun with honeysuckle, filling the whole air with its spicy fragrance. ”

“ If any one, on a rainy day or a lonely evening, wishes to drive away the blue devils by the perusal of some laughter-compelling volume, we can recommend for the purpose no better reading than the tragedy of Hamlet done into French verse by the Chevalier de Chatelain, a gentleman well known as a very successful translator of English poetry. With singular good sense and feeling he has selected, not the play as Shakespeare wrote it, but the stage-version thereof, as the foundation of his work. For which Heaven be praised! for what he has done is sufficient, in all conscience. ”

“ Soon after midnight, it may be, all the world and his wife will just have arrived together, and the abomination of suffocation sets in. The staircase is congested and impassable: the dancing area in the ball-room is encroached upon till a space about as big as a dining-table is all the dancers have to dance in. At which crisis it wants no little skill and practice in a man to steer his partner deftly and without collisions through the intricate mêlée. ”

“ Not thus had Sheila proposed to herself to return home on the first holiday-time that should occur to them both. He began to think of his present journey as it might have been in other circumstances. Would she have remembered any of those pretty villages which she saw one early morning long ago when they were bathed in sunshine and scarcely awake to the new day? Would she be impatient at the delays at the stations, and anxious to hurry on to Westmoreland and Dumfries, to Glasgow, and Oban, and Skye, and then from Stornoway across the island to the little inn at Garra-na-hina? ”

“ From Ventnor south-west through the Undercliff to St. Catherine's Hill, the western bulwark of the Elysium of suave airs, the scenery is perhaps even finer to Western hemisphere taste than that of the more noted northern region. It is, if not wilder, more solitary, unimproved by art, less pervaded with tourists and tourists' needs: one feels less suffocated, crowded, and very, very covetous of one or another of the lovely, lonely homes scattered here and there. ”

“ She advanced with a slow and majestic step, looking about her with assurance, and saluting nobody, as if she had been the queen of the ball. No one except Franz knew her, but every one, conquered by her marvelous beauty and her lofty air, stood respectfully aside, and almost bowed down before her passage. Franz, at once dazzled and enchanted, followed her at a sufficient distance. At the moment she arrived in the last hall a handsome young man wearing the costume of Tasso was singing, accompanying himself on the guitar, a romance in honor of Venice. ”

“ But when things were at their very worst, when he appeared to the world as a self-indulgent idler, careless of a noble woman's unbounded love; when his indifference, or worse, had actually driven from his house a young wife who had especial claims on his forbearance and consideration,—there were two people who still believed in Frank Lavender. They were Sheila Mackenzie and Edward Ingram; and a man's wife and his oldest friend generally know something about his real nature, its besetting temptations, its weakness, its strength and its possibilities. ”

“ Bonchurch is perhaps a mile from Ventnor, and is the boskiest bit of loveliness in all the lovely island. By every approach you enter it under the interlacing arches of noble old trees; ivy and ferns mask all with tender and dark glossy green; the thatched cottages are masses of honeysuckle and jessamine, their tiny windows and gardens gay with old English flowers; you may stand beneath fuchsia trees so reddened with the profusion of blossoms that at a little distance they are like nothing so much as tall clumps of barberry bushes laden with the ripe berries ”

“ Suddenly, in turning the corner into Piccadilly, they saw the moon appear in a rift of those passing clouds, but it was not the moonlight that shed this pale and wan grayness down the lonely streets. It is just at this moment, when the dawn of the new day begins to tell, that a great city seems at its deadest; and in the profound silence and amid the strange transformations of the cold and growing light a man is thrown in upon himself, and holds communion with himself, as though he and his own thoughts were all that was left in the world. ”

“ It is not often that we see a poet giving up the glorious race from sheer distrust of his power to win, but such was the case of Beddoes. A want of faith in his own genius was for ever paralyzing his hand. To succeed, as he himself knew but too well, and as he wrote to his editor, "a man must have an exclusive passion for his art, and all the obstinacy and self-denial which is combined with such a temperament—an unconquerable and always enduring will, always working forward to the only goal he knows." ”

“ The baron, my galling and dispensable old Hohenfels, would have arrived and scolded. My home-circle was like a ring without its jewel, while I, an undenominated waif in search of a visé, was fluttering through the duchy of Baden. Thirty minutes passed, and the bath-house retained the silence of a ruined monastery, while outside, among the perfumes and shadows of twilight, there began to arise strains of admirable harmony. I looked out of the window. Some lanterns placed among the trees were already beginning to assert their light among the shadows of evening. ”

“ Many and many a rocky hillside pasture in New England is far finer than the Landslip, and the Chines (fissures or ravines—"He that in his day did chine the long-ribb'd Apennine," sings Dryden) are by no means impressive to American eyes. But the mixture of miniature wildernesses, tumbled rocks, stream, waterfall, airy little swells and falls of ground, elegant villas, charming walks where all is beautiful, finished, dainty, with incessant views of the really grand features of the scene—the sea and the down—forms an enchanting combination. ”

“ Thousands of frantic people were pushing wildly in every direction. The crowds seemed bewildered, lost, frenzied. And what wonder? The world seemed to be burning up, the heavens to be melting: a star looked like a speck of blood, so that the whole canopy of heaven when visible seemed blood-spattered.
As the doctor was gazing at the terrible spectacle the cry ran from mouth to mouth that all the bridges across the west branch of the river were burned. There were thousands of spectators from the West Division who had come over to witness the melting away of the South Side business-palaces. ”

“ Then a new silence fell, and the voice continued, 'Dost thou hate or love?'
"The unknown hesitated a moment, then in a voice thrilling like thunder she cried out, 'I love.'
"Then the voice said, 'Thou hast accomplished thy destiny—thou lovest Austria. Die, Venice!'
"A great cry, a heartrending, desperate cry, clove the air, and Franz sank in the waves. On coming to the surface he saw nothing—neither the gondola, the Bucentaur nor his beloved. Only on the horizon shone some little lights: they were the famous lanterns of the fishermen of Murano. ”

“ It is not that you have shamed and insulted her as a wife, and driven her out of her home—there are other homes than yours where she would be welcome a thousand times over—but you have destroyed her belief in everything she had taught herself to trust, you have outraged the tenderest sentiments of her heart, you have killed her faith as well as ruined her life. ”

“ Soon the darkness grew deeper, the wind rose, and the young man heard nothing but the seething of the waves and the hissing of the air through his hair, and saw nothing before him but the tall white figure of his companion in the midst of the shadows. Standing at the stern, her hands on the oar, her hair scattered over her shoulders, and her long, white garments abandoned in disorder to the wind, she less resembled a woman than the spirit of shipwrecks playing upon the stormy sea.
"'Where are we?' cried Franz in an agitated voice. ”

“ Mrs. Lavender looked at her hard for a second or two, and then said, in what she meant to be a kind way, "Come here and sit down, child, and tell me all about it. If no one else knows it there is no harm done. We can easily patch it up before it gets abroad."
"I did not come to you for that, Mrs. Lavender," said Sheila calmly. "That is impossible: that is all over. I have come to ask you where I may get lodgings for my friend and myself."
"Tell me all about it first, and then we'll see whether it can't be mended. Mind, I am ready to be on your side, though I am your husband's aunt. ”

“ And Nature herself has had pity on these stones for the mirth, the heroism, the misery they have encompassed: she has propped up the tottering ramparts with forests of tall trees in the courts, balustraded the dizzy heights with a sturdy, bushy growth of ivy, and firmly bound together all the crumbling decay with a centuries-old cording of vine-stems.
A mile from Carisbrooke village lies Newport, the modern capital of the island—modern in its relation to Carisbrooke, but possessing some traces that it was formerly of Roman occupation also. ”

“ Lavender," he said in dismay. "She is a married woman. Her husband is the proper person—"
"I tell you I won't give him a farthing!" she said with a sudden sharpness that startled him—"not a farthing! If he wants money, let him work for it, as other people do; and then, when he has done that, if he is to have any of my money, he must be beholden for it to his wife and to you."
"Do you think that Sheila would accept anything that she would not immediately hand over to him?"
"Then he must come first to you."
"I have no wish to inflict humiliation on any one," said Ingram stiffly. ”

“ But hardly has the preux chevalier successfully struggled at the buffet for the creamy spoonful when harp and horn are heard preluding to the next dance up stairs, and everybody must hurry back from passage, stairs or tea-room to find or await his or her next partner.
When the ball is at its fullest is the time for the really first-rate dancer to turn his talent to the best advantage. Nearly all London ball-givers have such an immense circle of acquaintances that, for some shorter or longer period of the evening, their parties are pretty sure to be overcrowded. ”

“ The landscape has none of the exuberant luxuriance and variety of the Undercliff. Bare, lofty downs, shadeless fields, no coppices, great swampy pastures—an open, breezy country all swells and falls, with occasionally fine clumps and avenues of English elms, feathered to their roots. And so, at last, Freshwater, where downs are noblest, and the air, blown straight across the Atlantic, seems not less bracing and exhilarating than that of New England. ”

“ Scarcely was I warmed up to my work, when, turning my head, I saw a tall gentleman with broad shoulders and a round face, whose look, at first one of inquiry, and perhaps bewilderment as he tried to distinguish the house he was in search of from among a dozen, all characterized by that unity of design which in Philadelphia strikes forcibly the intelligent foreigner, suddenly changed to one of amusement, not, I thought then, unmixed with approval, as he caught sight of me at my reprehensible employment. ”

“ Young girls could not venture into lodgings without strict inquiries being made. Sheila should have suitable rooms, and Mrs. Lavender would see that she was properly looked after and that she wanted for nothing. In the mean time she must have some money.
"It is kind of you," said the girl, blushing hotly, "but I do not require it."
"Oh, I suppose we are too proud," said the old woman. "If we disapprove of our husband taking money, we must not do it either. Why, child, you have learnt nothing in London. You are a savage yet. ”

“ Sheila said.
"Do you mean to live in those lodgings always?"
"How can I tell?" said the girl piteously. "I only wish to be away, and I cannot go back to my papa, with all this story to tell him."
"Well, I didn't want to distress you," said the old woman. "You know your own affairs best. I think you are mad. If you would calmly reason with yourself, and show to yourself that, in a hundred years, or less than that, it won't matter whether you gratified your pride or no, you would see that the wisest thing you can do now is to take an easy and comfortable course. ”

“ They have sisters of their own who beg and demand and insist upon their procuring tickets, and they know sisters of their friends who are sure to be there, and whom they feel ready to give any price to meet; so the long and short of it is that they go off to the orderly-room and qualify themselves for tickets by taking the oath and becoming enrolled members of the corps. Whereat those moving spirits in the affair wink their shrewd eyes gleefully. They will dance all the more heartily, remembering the good stroke of business they have done in the interest of the corps and its recruiting. ”

“ There are timber-tied farm-houses here and there, or tiny hamlets whose straw thatches are simply glorious with their patches of velvet moss and the brilliant golden blossoms of a succulent whose name I do not know—houses and hamlets one would like to seize in one's arms and drop them down in America, in the midst of New England's hideous factory-villages, ornamentless, shadeless, unrestful, glaring with white-painted deal. ”