Various

“ Any one must have a singularly empty mind and heart not to be struck by the grandeur of the scene. Those who always take a petty view of things, because they can take no other, may laugh at the discordant music and the clumsy dancing of some of the pilgrims. For myself, when I see the same belief, centuries old, translated by thousands of men into bold, spontaneous action, I cannot restrain my admiration. Before the intrepidity with which these men, trampling under foot all human respect, honor with consecrated rites their patron saint, I feel moved and impressed. ”

“ Then came the thunderbolt of his father’s death, and Alba and all the world were forgotten. But grief cannot hold its sway in human souls beyond a given time. As the days go by they bear away its sting upon their wings, that touch the bleeding places with a balm. Hermann was young, and as the weeks passed youth vindicated itself, and rebelled against the stagnant, lonely life, and longed for action and for the sweet companionship of kindred youth. If he could not fight, he could at least love; but who was there at Gondriac to love? ”

“ It is pleasant to us, as Americans, to know that the voice which proclaimed our freedom and independence was heard in Ireland, as it has since been heard throughout the earth, rousing the nations to high thoughts of liberty, ringing as the loud battle-cry of wronged and oppressed peoples. The great discussions which the struggle of the American colonies awoke in the British Parliament, and in which the very spirit of liberty spoke from the lips of the sublimest orators, sent a thrill of hope through Irish hearts, while the Declaration of Independence filled their oppressors with dismay. ”

“ Yet, as will be seen, the strange dress that he has chosen for his creation fits it admirably, and moulds itself at will to the strenuous freedom of the combative athlete, the scorn of a man of fine feelings and bright intelligence, the meditative mood of the student, or the softer movements of a lover. His instrument is now a clarion call to battle, now a lover’s lute, now a dirge. It has the strength and simplicity of the Gregorian chant, which in a few notes and changes expresses the heights of inspiration and exultation, the depths of dread, the saddest sorrow of the human heart. ”

“ The cherishing of great names, the clinging to noble memories, the use of poetry, music, sculpture, painting, architecture, or any art, to give form and vividness to glories, heroisms, martyrdoms, are but the expression of this consciousness that the present is only the fuller and more living past. No vanity, much less scorn or hate, should prompt any one to lift into the light the glory or the shame of a people’s history. ”

“ Hail, holy face of our Redeemer, in which shines the image of the divine Splendor, imprinted on a veil white as snow, and given to Veronica in token of his love!
Hail, glory of the world, mirror of the saints, whom the celestial spirits long to behold. Purify us from the stain of every vice and bring us to the society of the Blessed!
Hail, our glory, in this rough, uncertain life, so soon to pass away! Lead us to our true country, O blessed symbol! that with a pure heart we may behold the face of Christ. ”

“ Nothing can be more fantastic than this irruption of dancing and music in the house of God. The spectacle in the church is beyond description; you feel as if you were dreaming, and your spirit floated in the domain of the impossible. What do the people mean? Have they come to pillage and destroy? Is this tumultuous throng the prey of a sudden delirium, of a dancing mania? Or, if it be worship, does it not revive the solemn orgies of ancient Greece, where certain deities of Oriental origin were honored by the leaps, the cries, and the races of their idolaters? ”

“ The passion which urges the human mind back to ages more and more remote, until the gathering darkness shuts out even the faintest glimmer of light, is not mere curiosity, nor even the inborn craving for knowledge; rather is it the consciousness that those ancient times and far-off deeds still live in us, mould us, and shape our ends. We were with Adam when he plucked and ate the forbidden fruit, and that his act should work in us yet, like a taint in the blood, seems to be a postulate of reason not less than a truth of tradition or revelation. ”

“ What knew the readers of daily newspapers of the hoarded treasures of literature, ever ready with eloquent voices? What knew the Christians of one communion in the year, and one Mass when there was obligation, of long, delicious hours in churches when there was no function to stare at, nor music to talk through? The world has no such society as the cultivated mind can fill its house with; and there are no receptions so splendid as those given by the imagination. Bores never come, tattlers and enemies never are admitted, late hours never weary, and the wine never inebriates. ”

“ There, on the hill sacred for so many ages, under the shade of the lindens that screen the courtyard of this modest edifice, in the presence of the wide and peaceful landscape, the heart feels at ease, the mind is in repose. It is like a haven of rest or like some enchanted country. The hideous, infernal tumult of the church’s enemies dies away in this Catholic oasis. ”

“ Percy Bingham raked up his eye-glass and gazed ardently at Mary Joyce, who returned the stare with compound interest. Irish gray eyes with black, sweeping lashes, hawthorn-blossoms on her brow, apple-blossoms on her cheeks, rose-buds on her lips, purple blood in her veins, youth and grace and modesty hovering about her like a delicious perfume.
“May I ask by whose authority you are fishing here?” Mr. Joyce was pale, and suppressed anger scintillated in his eyes. There are a great many things to be done with impunity in Connemara, but poaching is the seven deadly sins rolled into one. ”

“ Eloquence was thought by the ancients to be so intimately connected with music that the orators of Greece and Rome had a flute-player standing at a proper distance behind them while they spoke, who kept up an undertone of musical sound, now swelling as the speaker rose with his theme, now gently falling when, as in panegyrics on the dead or in pleadings for mercy, he sought the chords of sorrow or sympathy in the human heart. ”

“ Michael—that immense establishment, which contains a little world within itself, where beauty and charity dwell together; where the young find protection and instruction, and the old a refuge, under the same roof; where music, sculpture, painting, and kindred arts have made their home. Here the poor, instead of being swept away like dead leaves from a garden, to decay in obscure disgrace, slip, consoled and unashamed, into the grave, like fallen leaves that die in peace between the embracing roots of the green tree they once helped to adorn. ”

“ Even if one who had never seen the glorious light and splendor of a happy clime were suddenly transported from the icy regions of the polar circle to the charming shores of the Bay of Naples, there is a latent image in the depths of the human heart, the original of which external things are the copy, whose presence makes one feel, even at the first glance on the sublime spectacle of the outward world, that all belongs to him and exists within his soul. ”

“ What it would be to set the world aside, sit aloft on some tower there, listen to the announcements rung out from belfry after belfry, meditate, and look with the eyes of faith on what comes! What faces of young maidens, delicate spouses of Christ, bent like clusters of living flowers to listen to the voices that praise them, turned again heavenward to ask for blessings on their clients! What queenly women incline their crowned heads, when the Sacrifice goes up in their name, to see who of those who offer it is worthy and sincere! ”

“ The girl who stood there was not beautiful, though there was nothing in her features to displease the artist’s eye; indeed, the absence of mere material beauty made more marked the impression conveyed in movement and feature and face. Of all colors in the world—and Van was passionately fond of color—he loved best the gold that is sometimes seen in the western sky near where the sun is setting: a clear, fair hue that does not dazzle but rests the eyes that gaze upon it. Van thought of that color when he saw Jane’s face with its look of unclouded peace. ”

“ Yes, perhaps it did, Virginie thought, as she bent a wistful smile on the young dreamer’s face. Alba’s face was full of dreams—beautiful and passionate, changeful as the sunbeams, tender and strong, pleading and imperious by turns. How would the dreams evolve themselves from out that yearning, untamed spirit that shone with a dangerous light through the dark eyes? Would they prove a mirage, luring her on to some delusive goal, and leaving her to perish amidst the golden waste of sands, or would they be a loadstar beckoning faithfully to a safe and happy destiny? ”

“ The population flocked in from thirty miles round to attend the funeral. Five hundred men followed the crimson-draped car with palms and laurel branches; children clad in white bore crimson banners that fluttered in the breeze, while their voices rose in hymns of victory, giving glory to God and the Christian soldier; the voices of the multitude made response in chorus, and the waves, breaking in low thunder against the rocks, sounded their everlasting amens as the procession wound its way by the sea-shore to the cemetery. ”

“ Send us, O Lord! legions of angels; fight for the cause of civilization and right; save France, and may there no longer be amongst us a single soul which does not by its worship glorify thee!
The news from Metz is reassuring in that direction—Metz, which has been our ruin! The inhabitants are admirable in their patriotism, and engage to defend the city if Bazaine and the one hundred thousand men can make themselves an opening. Without a miracle, however, can the aspect of events undergo a change? Bitche continues to resist. O my France! must thou, like Ireland, also be crucified? ”

“ I have just been leaning over my balcony and looking long at this grand spectacle: the blue sky, the green sea, in the grand and majestic silence of immensity. Was there not a Christian meaning in the words of the philosopher of antiquity who said: “God does all in silence”? How fine is this expression!
Dear Kate, bless me! I go out, move about, wish to be useful; I work with Gertrude, with my mother, with René. But I drag heavily the cross of your absence. I complain to God without ceasing. Love makes everything sweet and light: I have, then, no love? ”

“ Rome was founded, sat on her seven hills the proud mistress of the world, fell, and was swallowed up in the rush of succeeding generations. Christianity, starting from its humble Judean home, spread from sea to sea, from the peasant’s hut to the royal palace, revolutionized the world, civilized nations, and, encircling the globe, led back its proselytes to unfold its sacred truths to the descendants of its apostles. ”

“ I dare not make a complete narrative of our disasters, and I know not how to speak of anything else. “Revolutionary France is no longer the France of Christ. She has kept the name, but repudiated the heart. O France, France! nation of so many centuries, of such men, and of so much glory, crouched beneath the boot of Flourens, before the sword of the Prussian.” These are the words of Louis Veuillot. Paris is wrought upon by rioters, the dregs of the Revolution. Bismarck is said to have uttered the pride-inflated words that “there is nothing but Prussia in the world: there is no more Europe!” ”

“ The rarer and the more beautiful is the noble, religious spirit that breathes through the Poet’s Garden, the more do I wish that its authors might put forth all their strength. And so it would be, if it were not for a particular theory which lies at the bottom of the poetry—a theory whose foundation I do not know, but whose evident peculiarity strikes the eye, bewilders the reader, forces the Muse, and in its purposed negligence of language goes so far as even to disfigure it. The Muse craves freedom above all things, if she is to express what comes from the innermost of our heart or our mind. ”

“ It was impossible to pass with a preoccupied mind amid all that beauty; impossible not to feel one’s individual life dwindle in view of the life of centuries there made visible. The Campagna slipped past like an old monotonous song that has been sung over one’s cradle, and heard in quiet intervals all up the years, till every note has grown to be something more than a simple sound, and is rather a long series of octaves caught along the heart-strings. ”

“ Prose and poetry will for ever dispute over human society, and will seek to model it after two opposite fashions. We live to-day in a prosaic age. Prose triumphed with the French Revolution and has passed through western Europe with a hammer, destroying, together with works of art, all the flower of Catholic institutions and habits. They will revive, but slowly, and this generation will not see their complete restoration. Now, despoiled of all which lent a charm to existence, society languishes in a desert of monotony. ”