Various

“ We recognize portraits in the May-gallery, but are not familiar enough with nature's costumes to judge of the historical order. We can exult with the earth in the gladness of the season; we are permeated in a measure, as are all, with the influences of the bluer skies, the softer breezes, the more confident advance of the flowers. But when it comes to reading the succession of the changing clouds, harmonizing the melody of the gales, deciphering the hieroglyphics that spring's myriad fingers write in verdure on the woods and meadows, we feel that ours is but a city acquaintance with May. ”

“ What was it to me that her beak was too hooked, her eyes too hollow, and her head angular! beauty is the form of the ideal, not a material regularity. While autumn lasted I visited her every day at the hole of her aged parents, and before long we were bound together by ties of indestructible love. In the midst of our happiness winter separated us. What is winter? Why should this spoil-sport intrude on our fairest days? And yet, after all, nature has a right to be cruel and mischievous, since all her children are so! ”

“ It is necessary to have suffered for liberty of faith to know its price. It is necessary to have passed under the gibbets of schism, to be able fully to know what it is to breathe the atmosphere of truth. How often have I seen Madame de Swetchine's eyes fill with tears at the thought that she was in a Catholic country! How often has she been inwardly moved at seeing a good priest, a good religious, a good brother of the Christian Schools, in a word, our Lord's image on a sincere brow or in a virtuous life! ”

“ Truth is, no doubt, the great country of the mind; it is father, mother, brother, sister, and native land; but man has on earth another family and another country, the better he is the more he loves them, and virtue; in so far as it is human, makes them the cherished centre of all that is good, amiable, and generous. To these ties already so strong, religion adds its divine influence, and from the same table to the same altar man leads his happiness, and there attaches by a single chain time and eternity. ”

“ With all the questions of natural religion, as distinguished from revealed; with all the theorems of science and of art; with the dark mysteries of nature and the still darker mysteries of man; nay, even with those inferences from divine truth which make up systems of theology, reason is competent to deal. It may pierce the glittering nebulae of the Milky Way; it may fathom the recesses of the ocean and cleave the crystal bowels of the world; it may climb the dizzy heights of intellectual philosophy; it may conquer the vast problems of political and social happiness. ”

“ I allow that, without any extraordinary flights, imagination might pass from the buds, opening prematurely on the faith of a brilliant winter sun, to this young literature, which has burst into blossom before its time, and innocently exposed itself to the returns of frost that I predict to your woods and groves. But, my friend, will you, who rejoice so ardently at sight of an almond-tree in flower, will you reproach severely these trusting souls that have opened in the broad-day light and displayed with touching faith their treasures to the graces of heaven? ”

“ Nature never did betray The heart that loved her; 'tis her privilege Through all the years of this our life to lead From joy to joy; for she can so inform The mind that is within us, so impress With quietness and beauty, and so feed With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues, Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men, Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all The dreary intercourse of daily life, Shall e're prevail against us, or disturb Our cheerful face, that all that we behold Is full of blessings. ”

“ The divine authority dwells in the man, not in the volume. He holds the sacred book before the mirror of his reason. The image it presents, however imperfect or deformed, becomes to him the truth of the Eternal Word. He casts the pure wheat of God between the millstones of his human judgment and his human loves. The grist they grind is all the bread he has whereon to feed his soul. ”

“ A carol of joy, a carol of joy, For the glorious Christmas time; While the heavens rejoice and the earth is glad. Let the merry bells sweetly chime. Let us seek the crib where our Saviour lies— See, the shepherds are kneeling there; Let us offer, with Mary and Joseph, Our worship of love and prayer. A carol of praise, a carol of praise, With the angels let us sing; Let us welcome with notes of rapturous joy Our Saviour, our God and King. ”

“ Out of heart and sight and sound, Here I sit, like Judah's daughters, Desolate upon the ground. Strangers' feet the stream are stemming, Stranger faces pass me by, Willing some, and some reluctant, All have leave to cross but I— I, the hopeless, all bereaved, Loathing life, that long to die! Be the river ne'er so turbid, Chill and angry, deep and drear, All my loved ones are gone over, Daunted not by doubt or fear ”

“ The moment of consecration draws nigh. Books are laid aside, hands are clasped upon the breast, every head is bent. The sweet voices in the choir have been hushed; the organ's silvery tones, murmuring more and more softly, have at length died away, awe-stricken by the silence that fills God's house. Yes! silence fills it, for silence now seems a something—a breathless, pulseless, but mighty spirit feeling all this temple, as the cloud of God's glory once filled the tabernacle. ”

“ The government can reach no farther than to the bodies and goods of Catholics, and he who counts it an honor to suffer, a crown to die, for his faith, fears nothing that can be done to those, and is mightier than king or kaiser, parliament or congress. The Christians, as Lactantius well says, conquered the world not by slaying but by being slain. Woe to him who slays the Catholic for his religion, but immortal honor and glory to him who is slain! Men are so constituted that they rarely love that which costs them nothing, no sacrifice. ”

“ But higher and higher in my soul swelled the song of the forest, until I cried, "This is the voice of God, and he cannot lie:" and entering into myself I understood at last the merciful and providential law that governs nature, attaching to each suffering a consolation, to each pang a hope. To what was my contempt of life leading me? To the gradual debasement of my being, to a forgetfulness of the duties that God imposes on his creatures. Man is made for struggle, and he who deserts the field is a coward. If his strength fails, can he not draw fresh force from prayer? ”

“ Oh! what a wail of dark despair Rent the unblest, unhallowed air, As through the spheres the last dark utterance ran— There is no God! no deity for man! The glowing thoughts that thrill man's frame, And bid him glorious kindred claim. With all of brilliancy divine That through the dazzling circles shine; The thoughts unspeakable that swell The heaving breast to ecstasy, And cast their sweet and mystic spell Until, attuned to harmony, The winged soul is borne throughout all space To read the symbols of celestial grace ”

“ The immediate banks and links of the sea-side are usually treeless, and, to non-observant eyes, dreary wastes; but not a spot on this wide world is without its interest and beauty, and delightful it is, when rambling along the sandy beach, listening to the music of the waves on the pebbly shore, to find how many lovely blossoms are scattered even here, ornamenting the rugged sides of the chalky cliff or rock, weaving a flowery tapestry over the sloping links, and binding together with interlaced roots the loose substance of many a sand-bank. ”

“ Will you have it that the trees shunned by travellers, young maidens, and birds figure those renowned books, worthy of their fame as works of art, which do not contain a grain of the hidden manna, nor one of the sweet, beneficent thoughts that nourish the soul and relax it after fatigue?—books that maidenly hands dare not touch, and that put to flight everything fresh and innocent—a thought to make one die of shame and grief! ”

“ Oh! if you had, power over nature, what a discourse I would send you for your Thebaïd, to save it from the seductions of this perfidious spring whose perils I know so well.
Do you take all this seriously, my friend? I fear not, and that you will dismiss it with a smile, as the prattle of a child. I even fear that you may regard my letter as very eccentric, and say to yourself: "What nonsense is this? Talking of woods and flowers to a hermit; wandering on into homilies addressed to birds and flowers, when he is writing from Paris, and not one word of what is stirring in the world! ”

“ He looks forward to descend in honor into the grave wrapped in its folds.
Wherever that flag is raised, one glance leads us to behold the genius of our country standing up before us with all her claims to our devotion and our love. Let it receive but the slightest insult, and a thrill vibrates throughout the land, every heart is wounded, every hand is ready to be raised in its defence. ”

“ Nature cannot be denied with impunity, and the nature of woman is to believe, for it is her vocation to love. Happily Madame de Swetchine was strong and sincere; she could follow with her mind's eye her friend's thought, and penetrate, little by little, as she became accustomed to it, into those regions of truth where mockery had not left even a trace, and where imagination raised not a single cloud. Laughter ceases as we ascend nearer to God, and so also do tears without cause; the intellect becomes serious, and the heart contented. ”

“ Who but wails some beloved one snatched away with scarce a moment's warning?—the child from its mother's arms; the mother from the child's caresses; the youth standing, full of hope on the threshold of his manhood, when the warm blood froze suddenly in his veins, the glad visions of his future faded before him as the relentless hand of death seized him with a grasp of iron, leaving him upon the earth but one hour of agony, and the breath to say farewell ”

“ When we gaze with admiration at the gorgeous spectacle of the golden clouds at sunset, which seem drenched in light, and glowing like flames of real fire, it is hardly by an effort we can persuade ourselves to regard them as the very same objects which at noonday pass unnoticed as mere white clouds basking in the sun, only participating, from their great horizontal distance, in the ruddy tint which luminaries acquire by shining through a great extent of the vapor of the atmosphere, and thereby even losing something of their light. ”

“ Life shows to thee its brightest side; Why not be glad? Is not the earth most beautiful, What wouldst have more? Filled is thy cup with life's best gifts And running o'er. And all the grandeur and the grace Of noble art— Do they not beautify thy life, And cheer thy heart? ”

“ Why may there not be some means of communication surpassing in swiftness the flash of the lightning, or the influence of gravitation, as far as it exceeds the sweep of the comet or the slow progress of the pedestrian? Why must it be pronounced an idle dream, that we may hold one end of a chain of impulses vibrating from earth to heaven, lying along the future track of our emancipated and purified spirits? ”

“ In the history of astronomy, the queen of the sciences, the nineteenth century must be ever memorable as that in which was first established the appreciable parallax of some among the stars commonly called fixed; at once spanning the hitherto illimitable abyss which separates the solar system from those distant luminaries, and opening up to human intelligence clear and better defined views of the vastness of the universe. ”