Various

“ Would it not be a curious result of the war against Rebellion, that it should end in conferring on a Rebel voter in South Carolina a power equal, in national affairs, to that of two loyal voters in New York? Can any Democrat have the face to assert that the South should have, through its disfranchised negro freemen alone, a power in the Electoral College and in the national House of Representatives equal to that of the States of Ohio and Indiana combined? ”

“ In a matter entirely strange, we seldom know beforehand what we can do, and how we shall carry ourselves. Mrs. Gaunt no sooner set her foot in that dock, and saw the awful front of Justice face to face, than her tremors abated, and all her powers awoke, and she thrilled with love of life, and bristled with all those fine arts of defence that Nature lends to superior women. ”

“ If mothers could only see the series of books that are sold behind counters to boarding-school boys, whom nobody warns and nobody cares for,—if they could see the poison, going from pillow to pillow, in books pretending to make clear the great, sacred mysteries of our nature, but trailing them over with the filth of utter corruption! These horrible works are the inward and secret channel of hell, into which a boy is thrust by the pressure of strict outward rules, forbidding that physical and out-of-door exercise and motion to which he ought rather to be encouraged, and even driven. ”

“ What provision is there for the amusement of all the shop girls, seamstresses, factory girls, that crowd our cities? What for the thousands of young clerks and operatives? Not long since, in a respectable old town in New England, the body of a beautiful girl was drawn from the river in which she had drowned herself,—a young girl only fifteen, who came to the city, far from home and parents, and fell a victim to the temptation which brought her to shame and desperation. Many thus fall every year who are never counted. They fall into the ranks of those whom the world abandons as irreclaimable. ”

“ The State itself which has generated this wonderful growth had no place in the Union until after Harvard had celebrated her two hundredth birthday. In twenty-five years, in a country five hundred miles from the seaboard,—a country which fifty years ago was known only to the fur trade,—a University has sprung up, to which students flock from all parts of the land, and which offers to thousands, free of expense, the best education this continent affords. Such is the difference between public and private patronage, between individual effort and the action of a State. ”

“ The red-hair of the Lord of the White Elephants waved his followers to victory; Colonel Gilmore's "hat, with the long black plume upon it," is the signal of triumph to his marauders. Both, finally, are loved by the ladies, and are alike extravagant in their devotion to the sex. Colonel Gilmore, indeed, withholds no touch that can go to make him the hero of a dime novel; and there is not a more picturesque and dashing character in literature outside of the adventures of Claude Duval. ”

“ To women of any culture it was almost the only tangible form of creative art they could command, and the love of the beautiful implanted in their souls must find some expression. The great pattern-book of nature, filled with graceful forms, in ever-varied arrangement, and illuminated by delicate tints or gorgeous hues, suggested the beauty they endeavored to represent. Whether religious devotion, human affection, or a taste for dress prompted them, the needle was the instrument to effect their purpose. ”

“ Every available hand, not occupied in aiding the conductor and postilion to unharness the diligence horses and put to the fresh team, was enlisted in the service of the boat-hauling. Young gentlemen out for an evening's amusement, attired in sacks or tarpaulins thrown over their shoulders, while their nether garments were rolled up tightly into a neat twist that encircled the top of each thigh, were frisking about a line of men with weather-beaten countenances and blown hair, who tugged bare-legged at the sides of the fishing-boat, half in the water and half out. ”

“ WOMAN'S WORK IN THE MIDDLE AGES.
"King Arthur's sword, Excalibur,
Wrought by the lonely maiden of the Lake.
Nine years she wrought it, sitting in the deeps
Upon the hidden bases of the hills."
Sir Bedivere's heart misgave him twice ere he could obey the dying commands of King Arthur, and fling away so precious a relic. The lonely maiden's industry has been equalled by many of her mortal sisters, sitting, not indeed "upon the hidden bases of the hills," but in all the varied human habitations built above them since the days of King Arthur. ”

“ He wants to skate, and contrives ingeniously to dam the course of a brook, and flood a meadow which makes a splendid skating-ground. Great is the joy for a season, and great the skating. But the water floods the neighboring cellars. The boys are cursed through all the moods and tenses,—boys are such a plague! The dam is torn down with emphasis and execration. The boys, however, lie in wait some cold night, between twelve and one, and build it up again; and thus goes on the battle. The boys care not whose cellar they flood, because nobody cares for their amusement. ”

“ The public gardens are full of charming little resorts, where, every afternoon, for a very moderate sum, one can have either a concert of good music, or a very fair dramatic or operatic performance. Here whole families may be seen enjoying together a wholesome and refreshing entertainment,—the mother and aunts with their knitting, the baby, the children of all ages, and the father,—their faces radiant with that mild German light of contentment and good-will which one feels to be characteristic of the nation. ”

“ Rare accord of capital, machinery, arts of design, and finally chemical science, has produced those beautiful results to which England herself renders homage in buying them. Alas! all that cannot disguise the original poverty of the ungrateful tissue which has been so much adorned. If woman, who clothes herself with it in vanity, and believes herself more beautiful because of it, would but let her hair fall and unroll its waves over the indigent richness of our most brilliant cloths, what must become of them! ”

“ Yet, since the future is no possession of our own, but a dole and pittance, we know that the earth does not endure for us, but that when we shall have submitted to the conditions of eternal spirit, yesterday, to-morrow, and to-day must alike have ceased to exist, must have vanished like illusions; for eternity can be no mere duration of time, but rather some state of being past all our power of cognition. ”

“ More important than mathematics to the general scholar is the knowledge of history, in which American scholars are so commonly deficient. More important is the knowledge of modern languages and of English literature. More important the knowledge of Nature and Art. May the science of sciences never want representatives as able as the learned gentlemen who now preside over that department in the mathematical and presidential chairs. Happy will it be for the University if they can inspire a love for the science in the pupils committed to their charge. ”

“ Everywhere we behold him waving his steel (as he calls his sword) ; he wheels before our dazzled eyes like a meteor; he charges, and the foe fly like sheep before him. And no sooner is he come into town from killing a score or two of Yankees, than the ladies—who are all good Union women and have just taken the oath of allegiance—crowd to kiss and caress him; or, as he puts it in his own vivid language, he receives "a kiss from more than one pair of ruby lips, and gives many a hearty hug and kiss in return." ”

“ The rich men of the State have not been wanting to literature and science. They have not been wanting to this University. Let their names be held in everlasting remembrance. When the Memorial Hall, which your committee have in charge, shall stand complete, let its mural records present, together with the names of those who have deserved well of the country by their patriotism, the names of those who have deserved well of the College by their benefactions. Let these fautors of science, the heroes of peace, have their place side by side with the heroes of war. ”

“ Soon after the conquest of American independence, Governor Hancock, in his speech at the inauguration of President Willard, eulogized the College as having "been in some sense the parent and nurse of the late happy Revolution in this Commonwealth." Parent and nurse of American nationality,—such was the praise accorded to Harvard by one of the foremost patriots of the Revolution! Never may she cease to deserve that praise! Never may the Mother refuse to acknowledge the seed herself has propagated! Never may her seed be repelled by the Mother's altered mind! ”

“ Yet, in a far inferior way, every man is a poet to himself. In the microcosm of his own small round, every one has the power to vivify old incident, every one raises bawbles of the desk and drawer, not only into life, but into life they never had. With the flower whose leaves are shed about the box, we can bring back the brilliant morning of its blossoming, desire and hope and joyous youth once more ”

“ On the whole, we may say that modern literature did not exist, and the Oriental had not yet come to light. What wonder that the classics were received with boundless enthusiasm! It was through the influence of that enthusiasm that the study of Greek was introduced into schools and universities with the close of the fifteenth century. It was through that influence that Latin, still a living language in the clerical world, was perpetuated, instead of becoming an obsolete ecclesiasticism. The language of Livy and Ovid derived fresh impulse from the reappearing stars of secular Rome. ”

“ Half of the better known and most influential of German universities are of later origin than ours. The University of Göttingen, once the most flourishing in Germany, is younger than Harvard by a hundred years. Halle is younger, and Erlangen, and Munich with its vast library, and Bonn, and Berlin, by nearly two hundred years.
When this College was founded, two of the main forces of the intellectual world of our time had scarcely come into play,—modern literature and modern science. Science knew nothing as yet of chemistry, nothing of electricity, of geology, scarce anything of botany. ”

“ AN ITALIAN RAIN-STORM.
The coast-road between Nice and Genoa,—known throughout the world for its unrivalled beauty of scenery, the altitudes to which it climbs, and the depths to which it dives,—now on the olive-clad heights, now close down upon the shore shaded by palm or carob-trees, now stretching inland amid orange-grounds and vineyards, now rounding some precipitous point that hangs hundreds of feet over the Mediterranean,—is generally seen with all the advantage of an unclouded sky above, and a sea as blue beneath. ”

“ A great space, indeed, to miss the smile of Nature, in a single year of human life. Even out of the midst of happiness I have sometimes sighed and groaned; for I love the sunshine and the green woods, and the sparkling blue water; and it seems as if the picture of our inward bliss should be set in a beautiful frame of outward nature.... As to the daily course of our life, I have written with pretty commendable diligence, averaging from two to four hours a day ”

“ But that is the ideal of the past belonging to Belinda's waterfall, a trivial, common thing enough, yet one that has a right to its ideal, nevertheless, if we accept the ecstasies of a noted writer upon its [Pg 372] magic material. "In spinning and weaving," says he, "the ideal that we pursue is the hair of a woman. How far are the softest wools, the finest cottons, from reaching it! At what an enormous distance from this hair all our progress leaves us, and will forever leave us! We drag behind and watch with envy this supreme perfection that every day Nature realizes in her play. ”

“ It is melancholy to see that, while parents, teachers, and churches make no provision for boys in the way of [Pg 343] amusement, the world, the flesh, and the Devil are incessantly busy and active in giving it to them. There are ninepin-alleys, with cigars and a bar. There are billiard-saloons, with a bar, and, alas! with the occasional company of girls who are still beautiful, but who have lost the innocence of womanhood, while yet retaining many of its charms. There are theatres, with a bar, and with the society of lost women. ”

“ Each, in such work as now was occupying the doctor and Miss Ames, had need of the other's strengthening sympathy, day by day, and of all the consolations of friendship, such as royal souls are permitted to bestow on one another.
With the surgeon, not a young man in anything except happiness, it was as if there were broad openings, not rents, in the heavy leaden skies. Pure, bright lights shone along the horizon, warmth overspread the cold. ”

“ A yet more sacred gift was the scarf worn across the shoulder, an indispensable appendage to a knight fully equipped. The emotions of the human soul send an electric current through the ages, and women who during four years of war toiled to aid our soldiers in the great struggle of the nineteenth century felt their hearts beat in unison with hers who gave, with tears and prayers, pennon and scarf to the knightly and beloved hero seven hundred years ago. ”

“ We can picture to ourselves Diemudis in her conventual dress, seated in the scriptorium, with her materials for chirography. The sun, as it streams through the window, throws a golden light over the vellum page, suggesting the rich hue of the gilded nimbus, while in the convent garden she sees the white lily or the modest violet, which, typical of the Madonna, she transfers to her illuminated borders. ”