Various

“ Pre-Raphaelitism must take its position in the world as the beginning of a new Art,—new in motive, new in methods, and new in the forms it puts on. To like it or to dislike it is a matter of mental constitution. The only mistake men can make about it is to consider it as a mature expression of the spirit which animates it. Not one, probably not two or three generations, perhaps not so many centuries, will see it in its full growth. It is a childhood of Art, but a childhood of so huge a portent that its maturity may well call out an expectation of awe. ”

“ Still Isabella was at Dr.
Lester's; and with the lapse of time the harder did it become for the
Doctor to question her of her past history,—the more, too, was she
herself weaned from it.
The young people had been walking in the garden one evening.
"Let me sit by you here in the porch," said Lawrence Egerton to Celia,—"I want rest, for body and spirit. I am always in a battle-field when I am talking with Isabella. I must either fight with her or against her. She insists on my fighting all the time. I have to keep my weapons bright, ready for use, every moment. ”

“ Turner felt an emotion before Nature, and used the objects from which he had received the emotion as symbols to convey it again;—the Pre-Raphaelites look at Nature as full of beautiful facts, and, like children amid the flowers, they gather their hands full, "indifferent of worst or best," and when their hands are full, crowd their laps and bosoms, and even drop some already picked, to make room for others which beckon from their stems,—insatiable with beauty. ”

“ There is no such true, earnest, humorous, and individual life, in these days of high civilization, as that of your genuine painter; impoverished as it often is, baffled in its aspirations, unregarded by the material and the worldly, it often rears and keeps pure bright, genial natures whose contact brings back the dreams of youth. It is pleasant, too, to realize, in a great commercial city, that man "does not live by bread alone," that fun is better than furniture, and a private resource of nature more prolific of enjoyment than financial investments. ”

“ Béranger loved the country as people love it on a Sunday at Paris, in walks just without the suburbs. How different from Burns, that other poet of the people, with whom he has sometimes been compared! But, on the other hand, Béranger loved the dweller in the city, the mechanic, the ouvrier, industrious, intellectual, full of enthusiasm and also of imprudence, passionate, with the heart of a soldier, and with free, adventurous ideas. He loved him even in his faults, aided him in his poverty, consoled him with his songs. ”

“ I feel like a poor knight in chess, under the sway of a queen"——
"I don't know anything about chess," said Celia, curtly.
"It is a comfort to have you a little ignorant," said Lawrence. "Please stay in bliss awhile. It is repose, it is refreshment. Isabella drags one into the company of her heroes, and then one feels completely ashamed not to be on more familiar terms with them all. Her Mazzinis, her Tancreds, heroes false and true,—it makes no difference to her,—put one into a whirl between history and story. ”

“ The effect of a picture is increased by isolation and surprise. I never realized the physiognomical traits of Madame de Maintenon, until her portrait was encountered in a solitary country-house, of whose drawing-room it was the sole ornament; and the romance of a miniature by Malbone first came home to me, when an ancient dame, in the costume of the last century, with trembling fingers drew one of her husband from an antique cabinet, and descanted on the manly beauty of the deceased original, and the graceful genius of the young and lamented artist. ”

“ It is where the idea guides the hand that the Pre-Raphaelites are triumphant; everywhere else they fail. But this is a fault which will correct itself as they learn the significance and value of things they do not now understand. They paint well that which they love, and devotion grows and widens its sphere the longer it endures, taking in, little by little, all things which bear relation to the thought or thing it clings to; and the man who draws because he has something to tell, and draws that well, is certain of finally drawing all things well. ”

“ What is the cause of the panic itself? These daring Yankees, who are in the habit of braving the wildest tempests on every sea, these sturdy English, who march into the mouths of devouring cannon without a throb, these gallant Frenchmen, who laugh as they scale the Malakoff in the midst of belching fires, are not the men to run like sheep before an imaginary terror. When a whole nation of such drop their arms and scatter panic-stricken, there must be something behind the panic ”

“ Buchanan and his party,—their conventions, their orators, and their newspapers,—in order to quell the storm of indignation swelling the Northern heart, were voluble in their pledges of a fair field for a fair settlement of all its difficulties. In the name of Popular Sovereignty,—or of the indisputable right of every people, that is a people, to determine its political constitution for itself,—they achieved a hard-won success. On no other ground could they have met the gallant charge of their opponents, and on no other ground did they retain their hold of the popular support. ”

“ The artist became an acknowledged master, and prosperity followed his labors. No one can mistake the rich tints and vigorous expression, the character and color, which distinguish Elliot's portraits; but few imagine how much he is indebted to the long possession and study of so invaluable an original for these traits, moulded by his genius into so many admirable representations of the loved, the venerable, and the honored, both living and dead. ”

“ A story deals with human nature and time. All that is truly human is interesting, however abstractly stated; but it requires the mordant of specific circumstance, involving some historical period, to make it stain permanently. Everything that belongs to Time, as his private property,—everything temporary, using that word in its ordinary sense,—is uninteresting, except so far as it serves to fix the colors of that humanity which we always love to contemplate. The statuary, who cares nothing about Time, loves to drop his costuming, trumpery altogether. ”

“ It would be like fire and water uniting. Then there would be no longer any contest; the game of life would be over."
"Why will you make out life to be a battle always?" exclaimed Lawrence; "won't you allow us any peace? I do not find such contests all the time,—never, except when I am fighting with you."
"I had rather fight with you than against you," said Isabella, laughing.
"But when one is not striving, one is sleeping."
"That reminds me that it is time for our siesta," said Lawrence; "so we need not fight any longer."
Afterwards Isabella and Celia were talking of their new friend Otho. ”

“ We should do injustice to our subject, if we did not add a testimony to the peculiarly religious character and influence of the men of whom we speak. Shrewd, practical, capable, as they were, in the affairs of this life, perfectly natural and human as were their characters, still they were in the best sense unworldly men. Religion was the deep underlying stratum on which their whole life was built. Like the granite framework of the earth, it sunk below all and rose above all else in their life. ”

“ To suppose that a revolution so complete as this could take place without a bitter opposition would be an hypothesis without any justification in the world's experience; for, be it in whatever sphere or form, when a revolution comes, it offends all that is conservative and reverential of tradition in the minds of men, and arouses an apparently inexplicable hostility, the bitterness of which is not at all proportionate to the interest felt by the individual in the subject of the reform, but to his constitutional antipathy to all reform, to all agitation. ”

“ She never courted attention, but it was always given.
"Isabella attracts everybody," said Celia to her mother. "Even the old Mr. Spencers, who have never been touched by woman before, follow her, and act just as she wills."
Little Celia, who had been quite a belle hitherto, sunk into the shade by the side of the brilliant Isabella. Yet she followed willingly in the sunny wake that Isabella left behind. She expanded somewhat, herself, for she was quite ashamed to know nothing of all that Isabella talked about so earnestly. The sewing gave place to a little reading, to Mrs. Lester's horror. ”

“ I never laughed at my landlady after she had told me her story, but I often cried,—not those pattering tears that run off the eaves upon our neighbors' grounds, the stillicidium of self-conscious sentiment, but those which steal noiselessly through their conduits until they reach the cisterns lying round about the heart; those tears that we weep inwardly with unchanging features;—such I did shed for her often when the imps of the boarding-house Inferno tugged at her soul with their red-hot pincers. ”

“ I should have taken you for an American from your name."
"It is our name Americanized; we have made Americans of ourselves, and the Bianchi have become the Blanchards."
"The romance of the family, then," persisted Lawrence, "must needs become Americanized too. If you were to meet with a lovely young lady of the enemy's race, I think you would be willing to bury your sword in the sheath for her sake."
"I hope I should not forget the honor of my family," said Otho. "I certainly never could, as long as my mother lives; her feelings on the subject are stronger even than mine." ”

“ The Lives of Painters abound in the characteristic, the adventurous, and the romantic. Open Vasari, Walpole, or Cunningham, at random, and one is sure to light upon something odd, genial, or exciting. One of the most popular novelists of our day assured me, that, in his opinion, the richest unworked vein for his craft, available in these days of civilized uniformity, is artist-life at Rome, to one thoroughly cognizant of its humors and aspirations, its interiors and vagrancies, its self-denials and its resources. ”

“ The technicalities of Art, its refinements of style, its absolute significance, are, indeed, as dependent for appreciation on a special endowment as are mathematics; but the general and incidental associations, in which is involved a world of poetry, may be enjoyed to the full extent by those whose perception of form, sense of color, and knowledge of the principles of sculpture, painting, music, and architecture are notably deficient. It is a law of life and nature, that truth and beauty, adequately represented, create and diffuse a limitless element of wisdom and pleasure. ”

“ With the blood of his gallant adversary and his country's idol on his hands, the penalties of debt and treason hanging over him, the fertility of an acute intellect wasted on vain expedients,—an outlaw, an adventurer, a plausible reasoner with one sex and fascinating betrayer of the other, poor, bereaved, contemned,—one holy, loyal sentiment lingered in his perverted soul,—love for the fair, gifted, gentle being who called him father. ”

“ The race is no longer content with its inspirations and emotions, but must see and understand. The old school of Art was one of sentiment, the new is one of fact; and out of that English mind from whose seeming common-place level of untrained, unschooled intellect have burst so many of the loftiest souls the world has known,—from that mind more inspired in its want of academic greatness, more self-educated in its wild liberty, than the best-trained nations of Europe, this new school has fittingly had its origin. ”

“ To-day, she has come down to the sand, where, with base distended, as if in caricature of crinoline, she perambulates the crowded thoroughfare.
Here is a semi-twin, one base and two trunks. Shall I call it Janus, for its two faces? or will Chang-and-Eng best distinguish this dual unit? Sometimes, one, with tentacles in-tucked and mouth sealed, seems dozing; while his waking brother is busily waving his arms for food. At another time, you may see them both folded together in sleep, like the Babes in the Woods all bestrewn with leaves. ”

“ We have in both cases left the idea of mere imitation of Nature, and have entered on Art. Verse grows naturally into music by simple increase of the range of inflection, as Turner's color will grow more melodic and finally harmonic. And in thus beginning Turner has placed his works above the level of prosaic painting of Nature, just as verse is placed above prose by the unanimous consent of mankind. From these simple presages of Art we may diverge and follow his development as a poet by his engravings, without ever making reference to him as a colorist. ”