Various

“ And he began to picture to himself the arrival of all [Pg 415] the villagers from church, the sad gaze of the Parson, the bent brow of the Squire, the idle, ill-suppressed titter of all the boys, jealous of his unblotted character—character of which the original whiteness could never, never be restored! He would always be the boy who had sat in the stocks! And the words uttered by the Squire came back on his soul, like the voice of conscience in the ears of some doomed Macbeth. "A sad disgrace, Lenny—you'll never be in such a quandary." ”

“ He looked out on the terrace where he had seen the unknown form. He took the lace veil and examined it as if he now saw it for the first time. Men are often cruel to themselves, and find a secret pleasure in turning the knife in the wound, and making their suffering severe as possible. To tell the truth, when he thought of his conversation with Aminta, and analyzed its phases, he was led by its elevation and frankness to blush at his suspicions. After all, said he, the letter she received from Gaetano is perhaps only a child's-play between them. ”

“ Here was the fitting scenery for tales of preternatural terror or fiendish crime. Lucille felt her heart sink within her as she entered this vast and awful labyrinth. But she felt that, be her destiny what it might, she had herself no power to mend it. What resource was left to her? Necessity retained her amidst the menacing solitudes of this half-ruined mansion.
Blassemare left her to the care of the old crone, who, to judge from appearances, was hardly an improvement upon the ungracious attendant she had left at the Chateau des Anges. ”

“ You know it was you who would not let me go to church; it was you who told me to—"
"Fit a young gentleman, and break the Sabbath," said Mr. Stirn, interrupting him with a withering sneer. "O yes! I told you to disgrace his honor the Squire, and me, and the parridge, and bring us all into trouble. But the Squire told me to make an example, and I will!" With those words, quick as lightning flashed upon Mr. Stirn's mind the luminous idea of setting Lenny in the very stocks which he had too faithfully guarded. ”

“ The scenery of these hills is not grand—it is not romantic; it is scarcely striking. Long low moors, dark with heath, shut in little valleys, where a stream waters, here and there, a fringe of stunted copse. Mills and scattered cottages chase romance from these valleys; it is only higher up, deep in amongst the ridges of the moors, that Imagination can find rest for the sole of her foot: and even if she finds it there, she must be a solitude-loving raven,—no gentle dove. If she demand beauty to inspire her, she must bring it inborn: these moors are too stern to yield any product so delicate. ”

“ Aid me, O ye Nine! whom the incomparable Persius satirized his contemporaries for invoking, and then, all of a sudden, invoked on his own behalf—aid me to describe that famous battle by the stocks, and in defence of the stocks, which was waged by the two representatives of Saxon and Norman England. Here, sober support of law and duty and delegated trust—pro aris et focis; there, haughty invasion, and bellicose spirit of knighthood, and that respect for name and person, which we call honor. Here, too, hardy physical force—there, skilful discipline. ”

“ A hard-featured hag, in a faded suit of an obsolete fashion—the genius loci—received the party. She scrutinized Lucille with a protracted stare of audacious inquisitiveness, and when she had quite satisfied her curiosity, she led the way through several halls and lobbies up the great staircase, along a corridor, through a suite of rooms, upon another lobby up a second staircase, into a great dreary passage, through half a dozen waste and desolate chambers, and so at last into a room which had a few pieces of furniture at one end of it, and a log of wood smouldering and smoking on the hearth. ”

“ The motion thus made or some other circumstance aroused her.
"Where am I?" said she, looking uncertainly around her; seeing Maulear at her feet, she continued:
"A man here—with me—in my room—"
She sought to rise, but being yet under the influence of the half sleep, sank again on her chair.
"Be silent, Signorina!" said Maulear, in a low tone.
"You! you! Signor," said Aminta, recognizing him and drawing back with terror. "You at my feet, at night, for all is dark around us, and the light is burning. But where am I? this room—it is the one in which I promised Gaetano to place the light." ”

“ Hazleton had been expatiating to Mr. Marlow upon all the high qualities and points of excellence in her friend Mrs. Warmington. She was too skilful, moreover, to bring her good taste and judgment into question with her young friend, by raising expectations which might be disappointed. She therefore threw in insinuations of a few faults and failings in dear Madam Warmington's manner and demeanor. But then she said she was such a good creature at heart, that although the very fastidious affected to censure, she herself forgot all little blemishes in the inherent excellence of the person. ”

“ But not to contemplate them had Monte-Leone come to the church. A deeply-rooted sentiment forced him, for a few moments, to pause beneath the old portico before he entered the sanctuary.
Nothing is more touching, more poetical, and more mysterious, than the old Christian temples, which like giants of stone have braved the ravages of time and the hands of men. Generations, as they pass away, worship beneath their arches, and the prayers of many centuries have echoed in their walls, which are yet open to coming time. ”

“ The people who form the obedient mass of the Catholic body are not without a share of this miraculous light in the soul; not indeed for the discernment of any new truth, but for the apprehension of the old. The moment the disciple is incorporated in the church, faith bursts into sight; he passes from opinion into knowledge; he perceives the objects of his worship, and the truth of his creed, with more than the certainty of sense ”

“ In sculpture the summit of manual skill was reached. But religion, the mistress and tyrant of Egyptian art, prescribed for the images of the gods her unalterable and often hideous forms, and the rules of an hereditary craft, which fixed certain proportions for each part of the statue, and gave the execution of the several parts to several workmen, laid another chain on the genius of the artist. Painting seems not to have advanced beyond the barbarous excellence of brilliant colors. Drawing and design were monstrous, and the laws of perspective and even of vision unknown or disregarded. ”

“ Carey in the Past and Present is a broad one—broader than that of any other book of our time—for it discusses every interest of man. The ideas are original—whether true or not, they are both new and bold. They are based upon a great law of Nature, and it is the first time that any system of political economy has been offered to the world that was so based. The consequence is, that all the facts place themselves, as completely as did the planets when Copernicus had satisfied himself that the earth revolved around the sun. ”

“ Maulear was about to continue, when Aminta recovering her energy, said with a voice full of emotion, but in a tone instinct with a pure and chaste heart:
"You need not defend me, Marquis; it is useless to repel suspicion from me. A young woman of my character and name, the daughter of the Rovero, need not justify herself from the imputation of a crime, which she would die rather than commit." ”

“ We have seen the career of a young literary man commenced with the first grand requisite of all excellence worth achieving—enthusiasm; high notions of moral honor, and a warm devotedness to that "calling" which lifts units to a pinnacle formed by the dry bones of hundreds slain. We have seen that enthusiasm frozen by disappointment—that honor corrupted by the contamination of dissipated men—that devotedness to the cause fade away before the great want of nature—want of bread—which it had failed to bestow. ”

“ Society is distressed beyond expression; so is the murderer, who is all sorrow and tenderness for the departed. There is general weeping, and great unavailing regret, and much commiseration for the widow: and then a mock trial, and no end of speechifying, beautiful remorse on the part of the survivor, lovelier tributes to the memory of deceased, a verdict of not guilty, and a dismissal of the murderer and his accomplices into the world, which is worthy of them as they are worthy of it. ”

“ Mr. Caxton, clapping his hands gently.—"Excellent—capital! Nothing can be better; simple, natural, pertinent, concise—"
Pisistratus.—"What is it, sir—what is it! Have you really thought of a title to My Novel?"
Mr. Caxton.—"You have hit it yourself—'My Novel.' It is your Novel—people will know it is your Novel. Turn and twist the English language as you will—be as allegorical as Hebrew, Greek, Roman—Fabulist or Puritan—still, after all, it is your Novel, and nothing more nor less than your Novel." ”

“ Every body in the world has his peculiarities, his whims, caprices, crochets if you will. Mrs. Hazleton had gazed over the handsome, the glittering and the gay, with the most perfect indifference. She had listened to professions of love with a tranquil, easy balance power, which weighed to a grain the advantages of matrimony and widowhood, without suffering the dust of passion to give even a shake to the scale. ”

“ With facts like these before us, how can we talk of libraries of 700,000 or 800,000 volumes in the ancient world? When we find it so difficult at the present day, in spite of the testimony of intelligent travellers, and of all the advantages we possess for making our estimates, to ascertain the truth with regard to the great libraries of modern Europe, how can we give credit to the contradictory and exaggerated statements which were promulgated in ages of the darkest ignorance concerning ancient Rome and Alexandria? ”

“ In the history of English literature there is no name that inspires a profounder melancholy than that of the "marvellous boy" Chatterton, of whom it must be said that in genius he surpassed any one who ever died so young, and that in suffering he had larger experience than almost any one who has lived to old age. ”

“ How much more would the balance lean towards the moderns were we to add all the varieties of the French, German, English, and Scottish schools, to say nothing of those whose tenacious subtleties have procured them the name of schoolmen! If, going a step further, we consider that reading, which the peculiar cast of modern civilization has classed among the luxuries of life, is one of those luxuries, in the enjoyment of which all classes come in for a share, we shall find here also a wide distinction between ancient times and our own. ”

“ His meditations, as he went, were altogether upon the subject of the young stranger; for, as I have shown, Sir Philip rarely suffered two ideas to get any strong grasp of his mind at the same time. He revolved, and weighed, and dissected every thing the young man had said, and the conclusion that he came to was even more favorable than at first. He seemed a man after his own heart, with just sufficient differences of opinion and diversities of character to make the Baronet feel a hankering for some opportunity of moulding and modelling him to his own standard of perfection. ”

“ In vain have eloquent counsel risen to prove that the prisoner bore his antagonist no ill-will; that he did not 'wickedly and maliciously' challenge his victim to fight; that he had recourse to the sole means within his power to right himself with the world; that society would have branded him eternally for a coward had he held back; that he took up his weapon in self-defence precisely as a man levels his gun at the house-breaker or the midnight assassin;—the expounder of the law has still been proof against sophistry which, once accepted, must tend inevitably to social disorganization. ”

“ Gaetano assured me. But this evening in the park he confirmed all, and has promised to go to Naples to be present at the trial."
Aminta at once became silent, and sitting in an arm-chair near the window, appeared to sleep soundly, for the noise of her breathing was alone heard. Maulear, erect, motionless, with an icy brow, neither saw nor heard. A thousand confused ideas filled his mind. A revelation, strange and unforeseen, put an end to his suffering and dissipated his fears, by exhibiting the incomprehensible mystery under which he had been. Aminta was sleeping. ”

“ We have had a Comic History of England—one of the dreariest and least excusable of jokes, and capable of for ever vulgarizing in the young mind the great deeds and noble life of our forefathers—and we have had burlesques in which the loved fairy tales that have charmed the imaginations of thousands, or subjects of mythology that belong to the religious history of the greatest people on record, are turned into coarse pot-house jests, with slang for wit, but without the playful elegance by which Planché justifies his sport. ”

“ Unthought of—not, indeed, uncared for—but unthought of by the happy, the carriage rolls along, passing the hospital and the prison in its rapid progress; the golden youth, listlessly reclining in happy indolence, hears not the voice of pain, sees not the hectic glow of suffering on the cheek; nursed in the sweet sorrows of romance, dreams not of living agonies more fearful than those which the greatest actor can portray, and of death as a reality. ”