Various

“ The Church seizes upon the convictions of grown men; reaches the young by her admirable systems of education; impresses all by her living, persuasive propagandism, made beautiful by the zeal and devotion and holiness of her missionaries. Simple and dignified, without the affectation of dignity— austere, without fanaticism—their presence alone roots up old prejudices, while their preaching and example fill the soul with new lights and with anxieties which nothing but their instructions can set at rest. ”

“ And whence did Shakespeare derive his models? Some are lofty queens, others most noble ladies, some foreigners, some native; different types in mind and heart, as in the lineament or complexion. Where did he find them? Where did he meet them? In the cottages of Stratford, or in the purlieus of Blackfriars? Among the ladies of the court, or in the audience in his pit? No one can say—no one need say. They were the formations of his own quickened and fertile brain, which required but one stroke, one line, to sketch him a portrait to which he would give immortality. ”

“ In the world they know not what a confessor is—a man who is a friend of our soul, our most intimate confidant, our physician, our light, our teacher—a friend who binds us to him, and is bound to us; who gives us peace, who opens heaven to us, who speaks to us while we, kneeling, call him, like God, our father; and faith truly makes him God and father. When I am at his feet, I see nothing else in him than Jesus listening to Magdalen, and pardoning much because she has loved much. Confession is but an expansion of repentance in love. ”

“ Greek intellect, Greek taste, wit, and beauty, in the sunniest hour of its bloom, mingled with its like in the grandest city that, perhaps, the earth has ever seen. The very harbors, and temples, and palaces were an education. The first rounding of the Pharos—when the six-mile semicircle of granite quay and marble emporia burst on the view, with the Egyptian sun flashing from white wall and blue sea, and glancing and sparkling amidst the dense picturesque multitude that roared and surged on the esplanade—disclosed a sight to make the soul grow larger. ”

“ But this unity, how exuberant in its fertility! The unity of the Church is the source of her catholicity. The two stand or fall together. And, so, too, the oneness of Catholic art is the secret of its universality. It admits of no partial view, excludes no variety or difference. Unity of spirit binds all together in perfect harmony, just as diversity of race and multiplicity of individual gifts, in her members, are fitted together, organized, and held in balance by the unity of the Church. Unity is the basis and safeguard of catholicity; catholicity the glory and crown of unity. ”

“ And oh the grace, to nerve him and to lead, How patient, prompt, and lavish at his need! O man, strange composite of heaven and earth! Majesty dwarfed to baseness! fragrant flower Running to poisonous seed! and seeming worth Cloaking corruption! weakness mastering power! Who never art so near to crime and shame, As when thou hast achieved some deed of name; How should ethereal natures comprehend A thing made up of spirit and of clay, Were we not tasked to nurse it and to tend, Linked one to one throughout its mortal day? ”

“ Pagans as they were, they were the fairest portion of the whole world, for intellect, for manliness, for generosity, for wit, for beauty and strength of mind and body—natural gifts that, like the sun and the rain, are bestowed upon just and unjust. Their own intercourse with each other taught them far more than the speculations of any of the myth-hunting professors of the Museum. They crowded in to hear them, they cheered them, they would dispute and even fight for a favorite theory that no one understood, with the doubtful exception of its inventor. ”

“ Nor touch, nor taste, nor hearing hast thou now; Thou livest in a world of signs and types, The presentations of most holy truths, Living and strong, which now encompass thee. A disembodied soul, thou hast by right No converse with aught else beside thyself; But, lest so stern a solitude should load And break thy being, in mercy are vouchsafed Some lower measures of perception, Which seem to thee, as though through channels brought, Through ear, or nerves, or palate, which are gone. ”

“ It is strange and terrible to think of those watches, in the midst of the desolation, under that arctic sky, with the cold dense fog now swooping, now lifting, in the enforced stillness, with famine gnawing the watcher, and famine at home in the igloo, and the chance of food depending on the sureness of one instantaneous stroke, down through the snow, through the narrow orifice in the ice, into the throat of the animal with the sleek skin, and the mournful human eyes, which vainly implore mercy from raging hunger. ”

“ Nature is indeed beautiful in her northern strongholds, but her beauty shows only its terrible aspects, its dread grandeur. The face of the mighty mother does not soften into a smile for the feebleness of her youngest-born offspring, but is fixed in its awful sublimity. There is no point of contact between this ice-kingdon and European civilization, and men of our race and tongue shrink from it with an appalled sadness, for has it now been the tomb of many of our brave and beloved? ”

“ To-day I see nothing but road-tracks, and the marks of the feet of little birds. Lightly as they rest, they leave their little traces in a thousand forms upon the snow. It is so pretty to see their little red feet, as if they were all drawn with pencils of coral. Winter has its beauties and its enjoyments, and we find them every-where when we know how to see them. God spreads grace and beauty everywhere. ”

“ And in a crowd of light May morning dresses we drift into the huge concert hall, which is to hold thousands, and to echo to brass throats, and where there are the great organ, and the orchestra which holds the musical army a thousand strong: on the floor of which have grown up beds upon beds of human lilies that flutter and flutter again, whose flowers are white parasols and gossamer shawls. ”

“ On England that supreme power has lavished the choicest blessings of this worldly life; it has made it vast in dominion, matchless in strength; it has made it the arbiter of the earth, and mistress of the sea; it has made it able to stretch its arm for war to the savage antipodes, and, if it chose, its hand for peace to the utter civilized west; it has brought the produce of north and south to its feet with skill and power, to transform and to refashion in forms graceful or useful, to send them back, almost as new creations, to its very source. ”

“ As surely as the very first germ of the plant contains in itself the faculty of one day evolving from itself leaves, flowers, and fruit, so does genius hold, however hidden, however unseen, the power to open, to bring forth, and to mature what other men cannot do, but what to it is instinctive and almost spontaneous. It may begin to manifest itself with the very dawn of reason; it may remain asleep for years, till a spark, perhaps accidentally, kindles up into a sudden and irrepressible splendor that unseen intellectual fuel which has been almost unknown to its unambitious owner. ”

“ It is a bewildering occupation to a stranger to contemplate a map of London in order to acquire some distinct notion of the number and arrangement of the streets (an idea of the inhabitants is out of the question) , to ponder how the countless multitude can be fed and clothed, and to reflect that if old mother earth should lose her fruit-bearing qualities for one year, how little would avail the beauty, the bravery, the wit, the ingenuity, the industry, and the intelligence of the three million inhabitants, to prevent the circuit of famed London from becoming a vast charnel-house. ”

“ Not steadily and straight, as from above, But all athwart the little rippling waves The broken daybeams sparkling leapt aloft In glittering ruin; scarce a breath of air To stir the waters or to wave the trees; The flowers hung drooping, and the leaves lay close Against their branches, as if sick and faint With the dull heat and needing strong support. The city walls, the stones of every street, The houses glow'd, you would have thought that none Would venture forth, till that the gracious night Should come with sable robe and wrap the earth In softest folds, and shade men from the day. ”

“ There is, as it were, the image of a pure soul preserved ever from all stain, sent into the world to be joined to a perfect and immaculate body, and to become, in this twofold perfection and purity, the ineffable instrument of our salvation! It is thus the prophet deserved to see her, brilliantly resplendent with grace and innocence, with the clearness of eternal light, and the splendor of eternal or perpetual virginity. ”

“ After she had been received into the Church, Father Rozaven said to her: "I wish to establish in your heart a great love of God which shall manifest itself not by fine sentiments but by practical results, and shall lead you to fulfil with zeal and courage all your duties without exception. I want you to strive ardently to acquire the solid virtues of humility, love of your neighbor, patience and conformity to the will of God. I want to see in you a grandeur, an elevation, and a firmness of soul, and to teach you to seek and find your consolation in God." ”

“ Where this peculiar poetry at all adapts itself to the vogue of the modern muse, it is easy to see that Miss Barrett had very great influence in determining the mere manner of Lady Wilde's genius. When in the midst of one very powerful poem, "The Voice of the Poor," these lines come in—
When the human rests upon the human, All grief is light; But who lends one kind glance to illumine Our life-long night? The air around is ringing with their laughter— God has only made the rich to smile, But we—in our rags, and want, and woe—we follow after, Weeping the while. ”

“ In truth, no other author has perhaps existed who has so completely reflected himself in his works as Shakespeare. For, as artists will tell us that every great master has more or less reproduced in his works characteristics to be found in himself, this is far more true of our greatest dramatist, whose genius, whose mind, whose heart, and whose entire soul live and breathe in every page and every line of his imperishable works. ”

“ The terrible icebergs rear their menacing masses in the track of the ship; the sun pours its beams upon them, and bathes them in golden light; they appear in fantastic shapes of Gothic cathedral, of battlemented tower, of clear single-pierced spire, of strong fenced city, of jewel-mountain, of vast crystal hills; and so, as the voyager leaves art and civilization behind, their most supreme forms flash a mirage-like reminiscence upon him, intensifying the contrast of the prospect, and luring him to a frantic and futile regret. ”

“ It is this vision of the past which still hovers over England and makes, it beautiful, and full of memories of the kingdom of God. Nay, I loved the parish church of my childhood, and the college chapel of my youth, and the little church under a green hillside, where the morning and evening prayers, and the music of the English Bible, for seventeen years, became a part of my soul. Nothing is more beautiful in the natural order, and if there were no eternal world I could have made it my home. ”

“ There we mark the wandering footsteps, no longer obedient to the helm of reason. Another, with clasped hands, kneels, gazing on the purple stains which dye the ivory limbs of her slaughtered darling. Or the eye rests with awful compassion on a standing figure, another speechless Niobe, pale and unconscious as a statue, still pressing her dead infant to her breast. Upon one or two upturned faces a light has broken; the grand thought seems just to have flashed upon their souls —that the purple stains are the dye of martyrdom, destined by a loving Providence to adorn a robe of unfading glory. ”

“ To-day I have been to Lentin in the rain, with bitter memories, in solitude. But, my soul, calm thyself with thy God, whom thou hast received to-day, in that little church. He is thy brother, thy friend, the well-beloved above all; whom thou canst never see die; who can never fail thee, in this world or the next. Let us console ourselves with this thought, that in God we shall find again all we have lost."
One great desire was, however, left to her; that of publishing the letters and writings of Maurice, and of winning for her beloved one the fame which she so despised for herself. ”

“ If any one was capable of satisfying a generous mind as to which was the true philosophy, it was he who had travelled the world over in search of it. He could tell the swarthy Syrian that it was of no use to seek the classic regions of Ionia, for he had tried them, and the truth was not there; he could assure him it was waste of time to go to Athens, for the Porch and the Garden were babbling of vain questions—he had listened in them all. He could calm the ardor of the young Athenian, his countryman, eager to try the banks of the Orontes, and to interrogate the sages of Syria ”

“ If the Catholic faith be the perfect revelation of Christianity, the Anglican Reformation is a cloud of heresies; if the Catholic Church be the organ of the Holy Ghost, the Anglican Church is not only no part of the Church, but no church of divine foundation. It is a human institution, sustained as it was founded by a human authority, without priesthood, without sacraments, without absolution, without the real presence of Jesus upon its altars. ”

“ Rome was in truth a majestic empire, and even St. Jerome trembled at its fall: "Elle est captive la cité qui mit en captivité le monde."
St. Augustin was not a Roman, and was less overpowered by the terror of its fall. In the midst of the outcries which accused Christianity as the cause of the ruin which involved the world by the evident vengeance of heaven, the saint wrote his "City of God," and developed from the creation of the world to the times in which he lived the great Christian law of progress. A new empire—that of conscience—was to rule all nations. ”

“ It becomes that magic prism with which he intercepts a ray from the sun on his passage to earth; and as a bird seizes in its flight the bee laden with its honey, and robs it of its sweet treasure—even so he compels the messenger of light to unfold itself before us, and lay bare to our sight the rich colors which the rainbow had exhibited to man since the deluge, and which had lain concealed since creation, in every sunbeam that had passed through our atmosphere. ”