Various

“ It is good for us to lend a spiritual ear to these ancient whisperings, and hear nymph calling to nymph and faun to faun, as they caper merrily with the god Pan through the silence. It is good for us to listen to that "inextinguishable laughter" of the happy immortals of Olympus, ever mingling with all the voices of Nature and setting them to the still sweet music of humanity,—good, because so we are reminded how close we are to the outward world, and how all its developments are figurative expressions of our near relationships with the visible Beauty of things. ”

“ Great Britain is at this moment the most colossal power the world ever saw. It is true she has an enormous national debt. Her daily expenditure would in six short weeks wipe off all we owe. But will these millstones sink her? will they subject her to the power of France? No, Sir! let the bubble burst to-morrow,—destroy the fragile basis on which her public credit stands,—sponge out her national debt,—and, dreadful as would be the process, she would rise with renewed vigor from the fall, and present to her enemy a more imposing, irresistible front than ever. ”

“ We imbibe the creative impulse of the artist, and the beautiful thing has a new life in our affections. Studying it, we become artists and poets ere we are aware. The alphabet becomes a living soul.
Under the volutes of this capital, and belting the top of the shaft, is a broad band of ornamentation, so happy and effectual in its uses, and so pure and perfect in its details, that a careful examination of it will, perhaps, afford us some knowledge of that spiritual essence in the antique Ideal out of which arose the silent and motionless Beauty of Greek marbles. ”

“ We are haunted by it in our loneliest walks. Almost unconsciously, out of flowers and trees, earth and sky, sunrises and sunsets,—out of mosses under the feet, mosses and pebbles and grasses,—out of the loveliness of moon and stars, their harmonies and changes,—out of sea-foam, and what sea-foam reveals to us of the rich and strange things beneath the waters far down,—out of sweet human eyes,—out of all these things creeps into our spirits the knowledge that God is Love, and His handiwork the expression of ineffable tenderness and affection. ”

“ Our structure is alive in every part with defensive and recuperative energies; woe to theirs, if that vaunted corner-stone which they believe patient and enduring as marble should begin to writhe with intelligent life!
We have no doubt of the issue. We believe that the strongest battalions are always on the side of God. The Southern army will be fighting for Jefferson Davis, or at most for the liberty of self-misgovernment, while we go forth for the defence of principles which alone make government august and civil society possible. It is the very life of the nation that is at stake. ”

“ All the impulses of humanity they bent to a kindly parallelism with it. This is that famous principle of Variety in Unity which St. Augustine and hosts of other philosophers considered the true Ideal of Beauty. Start with this line from the top upon its journeying: look at the hesitation of it, ere it launches into action; how it cherishes its resources, and gathers up its strength!— with a confidence in its beautiful Destiny, and yet a chaste shrinking from the full enjoyment of it, how inevitably, but how purely, it yields itself up to the sudden curve! ”

“ At half-past seven we take up our line of march, pass out of the charming grounds of the Academy, and move through the quiet, rusty, picturesque old town. It has a romantic dulness—Annapolis—which deserves a parting compliment.
Although we deem ourselves a fine-looking set, although our belts are blanched with pipe-clay and our rifles shine sharp in the sun, yet the townspeople stare at us in a dismal silence. They have already the air of men quelled by a despotism. None can trust his neighbor. If he dares to be loyal, he must take his life into his hands. ”

“ Would it not be better to make up your mind that such things are characteristic of humanity, and so that you must look for them in dealing with human beings? And would it not be better, too, to regard each new proof of laziness, not as a new thing to be angry with, but merely as a piece of the one great fact that your servant is lazy, with which you get angry once for all, and have done with it? ”

“ It did not seem absurd in those times, when Art was recognized as a great Unity, an elaborate system of infinite language founded on the simplest elements of Life, and in its grandest and widest flowings bearing ever in its bosom, like a great river, the memory of the little weeping Naiad far up among the mountains with her "impoverished urn." And so every great national Art, growing up naturally out of the necessities of an earnest people, expressing the grand motives of their Life, as that of the Greeks and the Egyptians and the mediaeval nations of Europe, is founded on the simplest laws. ”

“ The figure and face of this nymph, in their classic finish of outline, formed a striking contract to the drawing of the Byzantine pairings within the cloisters, and their juxtaposition in the same inclosure seemed a presentation of the spirit of a past and present era: the past so graceful in line, so perfect and airy in conception, so utterly without spiritual aspiration or life; the present limited in artistic power, but so earnest, so intense, seeming to struggle and burn, amid its stiff and restricted boundaries, for the expression of some diviner phase of humanity. ”

“ Blessed the hours of serene meditation, when the "tender grace of days that are dead," of flowers that have faded, of scenes "gone glimmering through the dream of things that were," comes back to us with a new meaning, softening and refining the heart to unexpected capacities of affection. But how they fade away, these ghostly and unsubstantial pageants, when they "scent the morning air"! How they leave in our hearts nought but the dim consciousness that we are capable of an existence ineffably deeper and vaster than that which we lead in the visible world! ”

“ France and Great Britain require you to relinquish a part of your commerce, and you relinquish it entirely! At every corner of this great city we meet some gentlemen of the majority wringing their hands and exclaiming, 'What shall we do? nothing but an embargo will save us; remove it, and what shall we do?' Sir, it is not for me, an humble and uninfluential individual, at an awful distance from the predominant influences, to suggest plans for Government. ”

“ In England, for many generations, and in the United States, down to the decision of the last Presidential election, a constitutional opposition was as much a political institution, and as completely a part of the machinery of government, as the administration itself. Formerly, opposition was not without its dangers in England, and, whichever party had possession of the government, it sought to crush out its opponents with all the vigor and venom of an American slavocrat. ”

“ The secret friends of the Secession treason in the Free States have done their best to bewilder the public mind and to give factitious prestige to a conspiracy against free government and civilization by talking about the right of revolution, as if it were some acknowledged principle of the Law of Nations. There is a right, and sometimes a duty, of rebellion, as there is also a right and sometimes a duty of hanging men for it ”

“ The antiquities of Attica afford nothing frivolous or capricious or merely fanciful, no playful extravagances or wanton meanderings of line; but ever loyal to the purity of a high Ideal, they present to us, even from their ruins, a wonderful and very evident Unity of expression, pervading and governing every possible mood and manner of thought. No phase of Art that ever existed gives us a line so very human and simple in itself as this Greek type, and so pliable to all the uses of monumental language. ”

“ I'm very old; I ought to have walked with Luella this long time. Listen,—let me teach you. The pale face that you look into has eyes like my Luella. Take care! When he would walk under the stars alone, go not with him. When he would hunt bison, give him all the prairie; don't stand at the wigwam-door to keep him in. And when you are far away beyond my people, you may see this,"—and she handed to me the small parcel from close to her wild heart. ”

“ I have sometimes witnessed a curious manifestation of this vain sense of self-importance. Did you ever, my reader, chance upon such a spectacle as this: a very commonplace man, and even a very great blockhead, standing in a drawing-room where a large party of people is assembled, with a grin of self-complacent superiority upon his unmeaning face? I am sure you understand the thing I mean. I mean a look which conveyed, that, in virtue of some hidden store of genius or power, he could survey with a calm, cynical loftiness the little conversation and interests of ordinary mortals. ”

“ If we would know the golden secret of the Greek Ideal, we must ourselves first learn how to love with the wisdom and chastity of old Hellenic passion. We must sacrifice Taste and Fancy and Prejudice, whose specious superficialities are embodied in the errors of modern Art,—we must sacrifice these at the shrine of the true Aphrodite; else the modern Procrustes will continue to stretch and torture Greek Lines on geometrical beds, and the aesthetic Pharisees around us will still crucify the Greek Ideal. ”

“ It is natural to have a very kindly feeling to those who think well of us. Now, though, in severe truth, we have no more reason for wishing to shake hands with the man who thinks well of us than for wishing to shake the man who thinks ill of us, yet let us yield heartily to the former pleasant impulse. It is not reasonable, but it is all right. You cannot help liking people who estimate you favorably and say a good word of you. No doubt we might slowly learn not to like them more than anybody else ”

“ Johnson said to a woman who expressed some opinion or other upon a matter she did not understand. "Madam," said the moralist, "before expressing your opinion, you should consider what your opinion is worth." But this shaft would have glanced harmlessly from off the panoply of the stupid and self-complacent old lady of whom I am thinking. It was a fundamental axiom with her that her opinion was entirely infallible. Some people would feel as though the very world were crumbling away under their feet, if they realized the fact that they could go wrong. ”

“ Thus the test of Art is in our own hearts. It is not something far away from us, throwing into our presence gleaming reflections from some supernal source of Light and Beauty; but it is very near to us,—so near, that, like the other blessings which lie at our feet, we overlook it in our far-reaching searches after the imaginary good. We, poor underlings, have been taught in the school of sad experience the mortal agony of Love without Skill,—the power of perception, without the power of utterance. ”

“ All her external aspects are in harmony with the weakness and the strength of human nature. We recognize ourselves in her, and find all the characteristics of our own humanity there developed into a theism so divine, clothed with a personification so exquisite and poetical, that the Hellenic mythology seems still to live in our hearts, a silent and shadowy religion without ceremonies or altars or sacrifices. The festive gods of the "Iliad" made man a deity to himself, and his soul the dwelling-place of Ideal Beauty. ”

“ Napoleon, by his brilliant exploits, had subdued Italy and Holland, established the Empire, and by the battles of Marengo, Jena, Austerlitz, and Friedland, humbled Austria, overwhelmed Prussia, and conquered a peace with Russia. The Continent, from the Pyrenees to the Vistula, was subject to his sway, and he had closed it against the manufactures of England. This nation, alike victorious on the sea, had nearly annihilated the navy of France, captured the fleet of Denmark, swept the French and Dutch ships from the ocean, and was now seizing the possessions of France and Holland in the Indies. ”

“ Here, like those chimes which wander unheeded over the house-tops of the roaring town, till they drop down blessed dews of Heaven into still, grass-grown courts and deserted by-ways, the great universal human heart beats closer to our own, and our whole being palpitates with almost ethereal sympathies. Voices of old minstrels, wandering down to us on loving lips through the generations, murmur in our ears the dear burden of human, affection for men and things ”

“ So long as these laws are obeyed in simplicity and Love, Art is good and true; so long as it remembers the purity and earnestness of its childhood, the strength that is ordained out of the mouth of babes is present in all its expressions; but when it spreads itself abroad in the fens and marshes of humanity, it has lost the purity of its aim, the singleness and unity of its action,—it becomes stagnant, and sleeps in the Death of Idleness. ”

“ These are my Things Slowly Learnt: things you learn at first in the face of a strong bias against them; things, when once taught, you gradually forget, till you come back again to your old way of thinking. Such things, of course, lie within the realm to which extends the influence of feeling and prejudice. They are things in the accepting of which both head and heart are concerned. Once convince a man that two and two make four, and he learns the truth without excitement, and he never doubts it again. ”