Various

“ They will learn to be false to themselves and the truth. Happier are they who die there in old Padua in the fulness of their youth and hope, and are borne to the great hall of the university and are laid on the black-draped bier, with candles burning about them and their fellow-students rising from their seats and bowing three times before the corpse, and reading the funeral eulogy of him who is going to his grave with the spirits of the great and good that have left their footprints in the solemn halls for his mourning train. ”

“ Searching the drawers and cabinets, Malcolm, to his unspeakable delight, found a miniature of his mother, along with one of his father—a younger likeness than he had yet seen. Also he found a few letters of his mother—mostly mere notes in pencil—but neither these nor those of his father which Miss Horn had given him would he read. "What right has life over the secrets of death?" he said. "Or, rather, what right have we who sleep over the secrets of those who have waked from their sleep and left the fragments of their dreams behind them?" ”

“ Alaric the Goth, Attila, Ezzelin, all fought with the rebellious Paduans on those gray stones. All the Venetian generals and the princes of old Verona and the terrible Visconti of Milan—all have left the traces of their iron tread upon the patch of meadow where the pink daisies open their eyes, and the red clover calls to the bees from the base of the dingy statues, and the boys lie on the grass and play at morra or sit for hours with their bare brown legs hanging over the moat fishing for the infant minnows. What wonder that the great square echoes with battle-cries and the clash of steel! ”

“ But Miss Rood could see no way out of their awkward situation, which grew more intolerable every moment as they thus confronted each other. It was finally Mr. Morgan's voice, quite firm, but with an indescribable sadness in the tones, which broke the silence: "Young people, I owe you an apology, such as it is. I am an old man, and the past is growing so heavy that it sometimes quite over-balances me. My thoughts have been busy to-night with the days of my youth, and the spell of memory has been so strong that I have not been quite myself. ”

“ Only some morning, when the children tell them it is Sant' Antonio's Day, an old pain will rise in their hearts, and they will see the dear old arcades of Padua and the little gay booths, and trustful eyes and fresh girl-faces will start up in their memories; and when the church-bells ring out they will hide their heads from the marchesa and the marchesini and cry out aloud for the old happy student-time, when love and hope of glory and high belief in God and man were theirs. God pity them, those poor young things, in spite of all their glorious youth! ”

“ The young peasant-girls, strolling up and down under the arcades, some in groups, some clinging timidly to their lovers' arms, stop at the booths and glance wistfully at the pretty trinkets, and end by buying a life of Sant' Antonio for the old mother who has stayed at home among the olives, and a clay pipe for the old father taking his holiday rest on the doorstep by her side. They form bright pictures against the open archways of the palaces beyond, through which the young green of the gardens gleams in the sunlight. ”

“ She was not like other women: her lot was set apart and peculiar. She looked down upon her sex. The conventionality of women's lives renders their vanity peculiarly susceptible to a suggestion that their destiny is in any respect unique—a fact that has served the turn of many a seducer before now.
To-day, after returning from his drive with Miss Rood, Mr. Morgan had walked in his garden, and as the evening breeze arose, it bore to his nostrils that first indescribable flavor of autumn which warns us that the soul of Summer has departed from her yet glowing body. ”

“ A great silver brooch with a big cairngorm in the centre took the place of the brass one, which henceforth was laid up among the precious things in the little armory, and the badge of his clan in gold, with rubies and amethysts for the bells of the heather, glowed on his bonnet. And Malcolm's guests, as long as Duncan continued able to fill the bag, had to endure as best they might, between each course at every dinner without fail, two or three minutes of uproar and outcry from the treble throat of the powerful Lossie pipes. ”

“ Scarcely, however, had the poor girl, trembling at the evident displeasure the sight of her caused in Florimel, opened her mouth to answer her haughty inquiry as to her business, when Lord Liftore, daring an entrance without warning, opened the door behind her, and almost as he opened it began his apology. At the sound of his voice Lizzy turned with a cry, and her small remaining modicum of self-possession vanished at sight of him round whose phantom in her bosom whirred the leaves of her withered life on the stinging blasts of her shame and sorrow. ”

“ Gozzi's nature is as free from conceit as it is from that reserve which is sometimes mistaken for the enviable result of hereditary culture, when it often is but the makeshift of vanity to cover mental penury. The serenity of his soul never fails him even under the most disheartening circumstances. His unalterable gayety, his playfulness and his genial humor, just a little bit satirical, made him the best of fellows and the most capital companion. None of the changes or chances of an adventurous life seem to have either abated or checked the flow of his animal spirits. ”

“ They look down upon the merry crowds with solemn unwinking gaze, large-eyed and mysterious. They seem to put the old riddle of the Sphinx to the traveller who pauses by their side to watch the surging waves of human life that beat against the broad stairway of the church. The seal of the centuries is on their broad brows. They have looked down upon battle and tournament, upon success and defeat, upon life and death.
The history of the Prato is a stirring Italian epic, some heroic Orlando or Gerusalemme, with undertones of mirth and satire. ”

“ In Lady Morgan's Memoirs we read: "Mme. Bonaparte, wife of Jerome, who had abandoned her in a cruel and dastardly way, was not of the pâte out of which victims and martyrs are made. She held her difficult position with a scornful courage that excites pity for the woman's nature so scathed and outraged. Her letters bear the impress of a life run to waste: they are clever, mordant and amusing, but the bitter sense of wrong cannot be concealed: there is a dissatisfaction—one might almost call it jealousy—in the topics discussed." ”

“ We followed the crowd along the white-walled street to the great market-square the people call the Prato della Valle. In the middle was a circular space of meadow, with trees above it, surrounded by a moat, above which stand life-size statues of warriors and poets and nobles and philosophers, blackened with the damp and mould of centuries, the folds of their gowns battered and grass-grown, their noses missing, their eyes put out by stones in the well-nerved hands of riotous youth, their swords and sceptres broken short, their pointed beards snapped off into bluntness. ”

“ The most miserable animals that the imagination can conjure up, all the gaunt, ghostly steeds that graze in the pastures of legend and fable, were gathered there, neighing and pawing as impatiently as their half-starved spirits would allow. Be sure Petruchio bought his famous steed at the horse-fair of Padua, and that he tried the beast's speed, as these peasants do, by driving him round and round the statues, raising a cloud of white dust and scattering crowds of girls and children, who screamed with terror and prayed that the curse of Sant' Antonio might ever follow him. ”

“ It fell, soft and brilliant and caressing, on the frescoes of Giotto. They were as pure and fresh and holy as the very lilies; and as the lilies revealed the innermost meanings of Sant' Antonio's Day to the hearts of the worshippers, so the frescoes symbolized the deepest reverence, the hidden longing of the whole brilliant, noisy Middle Age life of Padua. Their very crudeness, their nakedness, their barrenness of accessory, their sharp, brilliant coloring, cause them to stand out in strong relief. Never did the mystery of Holy Writ receive better interpretation than at the hands of Giotto. ”

“ Her fire was burning out, her forced strength fast failing her.
"Florimel," said Malcolm, and knelt on one knee and took her hand: it gave a flutter as if it would fly like a bird, but the net of his love held it, and it lay passive and cold—"Florimel, I will be your true brother. I am your brother, your very own brother, to live for you, love you, fight for you, watch and ward you, till a true man takes you for his wife." ”

“ Jane stood irresolutely in the window. Through the bushes she could see the stoop where her father and the judge sat smoking, Mr. Van Ness beside them, his benign, sheep-like gaze wandering slowly around in search of her.
"Of course he does not smoke!" she said. "He has not a single weakness on which one can hang a liking; and he has actually taken father's own chair!" which by the way she had cushioned herself years ago, when it and two small stools furnished their shabby room. No wonder that she and the captain looked upon it as a sacred relic. ”

“ When the evening came the town-hall was crammed—men standing on all the window-sills—and so many could not get in that Malcolm proposed they should occupy the square in front. A fisherman in garb and gesture, not the less a gentleman and a marquis, he stood on the steps of the town-hall and spoke to his people. They received him with wild enthusiasm.
"The open air is better for everything," he began. "Fishers, I have called you first, because you are my own people. I am and shall be a fisherman—after such fashion, I trust, as will content my old comrades. ”

“ It is a pleasure to meet at last that gentle and guileless feminine personality after you have wearied of the tinsel flimsiness, the bubbling frivolity, the sparkling emptiness of the society-women who so turned the head of the age in which they lived, and have so scandalously immortalized it.
Goldoni and Gozzi have both given us plays which show us that scandal and intrigue were the favorite seasoning of the stale stuff of Venetian life after it had lost its religion and its patriotic ideal. Triviality for triviality, we prefer Gozzi. ”

“ When Clementina entered with Lizzy carrying her child, Florimel instantly suspected the truth, both as to who she was and as to the design of her appearance. Her face flushed, for her heart filled with anger, chiefly indeed against Malcolm, but against the two women as well, who, she did not doubt, had lent themselves to his designs, whatever they might be. She rose, drew herself up, and stood prepared to act for both Liftore and herself. ”

“ She will not touch her lips to it for fear of contamination. She hurls an angry oath at the market-woman standing near with her hens tied up in her kerchief, because she crowds so close that the hungry birds peck at the silver galloon of her sleeve. Ay, pretty Kate, you are arrogant now. But wait a little. Here comes Petruchio, a most unwholesome sight for a summer's day. Get thee gone in haste, fair Kate!
See how he stalks on through the crowd, with his riding-whip in his hand, now cutting good-humoredly at a small boy's legs, now playfully throttling a ruddy peasant-girl with the long lash. ”

“ Clementina had just taken the child from her arms when she sank motionless at his feet. Florimel went to the bell.
But Clementina prevented her from ringing. "I will take her away," she said. "Do not expose her to your servants. Lady Lossie, my Lord Liftore is the father of this child; and if you can marry him after the way you have seen him use its mother, you are not too good for him, and I will trouble myself no more about you."
"I know the author of this calumny," cried Florimel, panting and flushed. "You have been listening to the inventions of an ungrateful dependant. ”

“ For he who is about to become her husband is not only one of the noblest of men, but a man of genius whose praises she will hear on all sides. One of his works, the labor and gift of love, you shall see when we rise from the table. It is a portrait of your late landlord, my father, painted partly from a miniature, partly from my sister, partly from the portraits of the family, and partly, I am happy to think, from myself. You must yourselves judge of the truth of it. And you will remember that Mr. Lenorme never saw my father: I say this, not to excuse, but to enhance his work. ”

“ On the hill-slope south of the present road which crosses the Brandywine at Chad's, Washington was resting under the shade of a cherry tree (which fell in a storm a few years ago) , when, about half-past one o'clock, there came riding across the hillside fields from above, avoiding the circuitous roads, Squire Thomas Cheyney, his hat gone, his black hair streaming in the wind and his black eyes blazing with excitement. The blooded mare he rode, trained to fox-hunting, carried his two hundred pounds easily, and cleared ditches, fences and hedges. ”

“ Pompous and grim and fantastic and sullen by turns, these tombs would make the heart of the stranger ache with their mockery, but that the living sunlight streams athwart the hard stone faces and the monster heads, and in the quadrangle of the cloister the lilies are standing like white-robed heavenly hosts, and a well upheld by angels rises up from the rank meadow-space. The purple clover runs riot among the grass. There is humming of bees about the golden lily-hearts, and a red butterfly loses its way now and then among the graves. ”

“ When Gozzi was a young man his first initiation into life had been a repeated experience of the playful capriciousness of the sex, and he never forgot it. What a commentary on the fair Venetians is his remark, "I do not admit the possibility for a woman to know love"! In his eyes she remains a being incapable of any grand and sustained sacrifice of her instincts to the ennobling mastery of moral responsibility. In all his dramas, plays and comedies there is but one character of a woman which is at all magnetic or lovable—that of Angela, the heroine of the play of the Deer Ring. ”

“ Surely, death does but touch the living, for the dead ever keep their power over us: it is only we who lose ours over them. Each vista of leafy arch and distant meadow framed in some scene of their youth-time, painted in the imperishable hues of memory that borrow from time an ever-richer and more glowing tint. It was no wonder that to these two old people, sitting on the bench between the elms, the atmosphere before them, saturated with associations, dense with memories, should seem fairly quivering into material forms like a distant mist turning to rain. ”

“ A lady guest would now and then venture to hint that the custom was rather a trying one for English ears, but Clementina would never listen to a breath against Duncan's music. Her respect and affection for the old man were unbounded.
Malcolm was one of the few who understand the shelter of light, the protection to be gained against lying tongues by the discarding of needless reticence and the open presentation of the truth. Many men would not tell a lie, yet seem to have faith in concealment; they would rather not reveal the truth; darkness seems to offer them the cover of a friendly wing. ”