Various

“ The so often blamed national pride of the American, if not really praiseworthy, is at least pardonable; for a nation which could rise like a single man, and, at every sacrifice, throw off the yoke of England—a nation which has given birth to such men as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and many others whose names are mentioned with wonder all over this world—a nation which occupies the first rank in trade, commerce, and industry, may be proud, and must be proud, as long as its power is free from sloth and lethargy. ”

“ Bryant is what all his writings, poetical as well as prose, indicate. His life is that of a student of elegant and lofty literature. He is reserved in his manner, almost to repulsiveness, yet in the social circle is witty, amiable, and affectionate. When his sympathies are interested, the spirit of tenderness and benevolence gleams like a flame from his eyes, and plays around his features in a beautiful radiance. In his opinions of men, he endeavors to be just; but when he is not just, the leaning is towards the side of mercy. ”

“ And from this time the existence of Ella was changed.
She loved, with all the fervor and energy of her nature; and life took at once a new color. True love is of the infinite. None can have deeply loved—when or how in other respects it may have been—but they have entered into the unseen world; have breathed a new breath of life; have tasted of the true existence. ”

“ I could not listen to my heart, if it had beat for a lover without fortune, for to him I could then have brought but a burden, and betrayed him into a union with poverty and debt. Now it may be different. Now I may have the dowry that befits my birth. And now I may be free to choose according to my heart as woman, not according to my necessities, as one poor, harassed, and despairing."
"Ah," said Randal, interested and drawing still closer towards his fair companion—"ah, I congratulate you sincerely; you have cause, then, to think that you shall be—rich?" ”

“ It was never our good fortune to see Constantinople or Rio de Janeiro, the two noblest and most remarkable scenes of this kind, as we have understood, known to the traveller. But we much question if either will endure the test of rigid and severe examination better than the celebrated Gulf of Napoli. The color of the water, alone, is a peculiar beauty of all the Mediterranean bays: it is the blue of the deep sea, carried home to the very rocks of the coast. In this respect, the shores of America, also, have less claim to beauty than those of Europe, generally. ”

“ Randal did not consider his time thrown away in cultivating Madame di Negra's friendship. For despite much that was whispered against her, she had succeeded in dispelling the coldness with which she had at first been received in the London circles. Her beauty, her grace, and her high birth, had raised her into fashion, and the homage of men of the first station, while it perhaps injured her reputation as a woman, added to her celebrity as fine lady. So much do we cold English, prudes though we be, forgive to the foreigner what we avenge on the native. ”

“ True it is that in America it is no very easy matter to become intimate with a man or establish one's self in his family circle—but he who has once attained this point, becomes a home friend in the fullest sense of the word, and will find hidden beneath the stern, earnest exterior of the American, a warm heart, and in his conversation a remarkable degree of familiar confidence. ”

“ The man, however, who is free from prejudice will not fail to admire a nation, wherein the poorest is on an equality with the richest, and where the rich, at least, do not take it on themselves to assert their superiority. Seldom, indeed, do we find a native American, conscious of his right to equality, giving a stranger (his possible superior in intelligence or education) to understand that he considers himself quite as good as any one—the right is to him a thing so natural, that it never even occurs to him to boast of it. ”

“ I doubt if there be one person in the world, who has attained a high reputation for talent, who has not met somebody much cleverer than himself, which said somebody has never obtained any reputation at all! Men, like Audley Egerton, are constantly seen in the great positions of life; while men, like Harley l'Estrange, who could have beaten them hollow in any thing equally striven for by both, float away down the stream, and, unless some sudden stimulant arouse the dreamy energies, vanish out of sight into silent graves. ”

“ Ah! my friend, let the dead rest in peace: you must have observed that from the first moment of our connection, I never mentioned or alluded to M. de Fosseux,—you must have made me forget him. Oh! believe me, my chevalier, I swear—and you know how sacred I hold an oath—I never loved M. de Fosseux as I love you. Do not then allow such painful fancies to harass you; think how happy we are—as happy as it is possible to be in this world,—so happy that every body envies us. ”

“ Nothing but a steadfast observance of the faith pledged to me, and you have not now to learn how I have kept that which I myself plighted. I ask no contract; I demand no guarantee. I live upon the present without one thought of the past, or one anxiety for the future, confiding in the honor of the man I love with a feeling of security, which is at once my joy and my pride; faithful, I never asked but for faith; and, poor as I am, have I not rejected offers to be rich? Thus much then have I done for you and for M. de Fosseux; but M. de Fosseux deceived me ”

“ Perhaps the most remarkable feature of the Rhine is its termination, for after embellishing and serving the purposes of such an extent of country in the very heart of Europe, it disappears, as it might be, in a number of straggling, uninteresting, turbid waters, among the marshes of Holland. This is a very different exit from that which characterizes the majestic flow of the Hudson into the Atlantic.
England has no great rivers to boast of, though she has a few of singular claims to notice, on account of the great flow of the tides and the vast amount of commerce that they bear on the bosom. ”

“ I have neither the virtue nor the industry. I tell you, I am utterly good for nothing. I am a rascal—a scoundrel, and a despicable knave. I played for a large sum—meaning to take it if I won it—and not being able to pay, I lost it—and that, I have still sense of honor enough left to call a rascally proceeding. Now there is one way, and one way only, of cancelling all this in the eye of the world. When a man destroys himself, the world is sorry for him—half inclined to forgive him—to say the least of it, absolves his family. ”

“ Carlyle and teachers like him have undermined. Some betake themselves to literature, as Sterling did; some fill up the void with the excitement of politics; others feebly bemoan their irreparable loss, and wear an outward seeming of universal irony and sarcasm. Mr. Carlyle has no right, no man has any right, to weaken or destroy a faith which he cannot or will not replace with a loftier. We have no hesitation in saying, that the language which Mr. Carlyle is in the habit of employing towards the religion of England and of Europe is unjustifiable. ”

“ To be sure, one might run—one might play the part of a cowardly, dishonorable rascal, and run for it, Ella, if you like that better. Between suicide and the escapade of a defaulter, there is not much to choose; but I will do as you like."
"I would not willingly choose your dishonor," said she, shuddering; "but between the dishonor of the one course or the other, there seems little to choose. Only—only—if you lived, in time you might be able to pay. Men have lived, and labored, until they have paid all."
"Live and labor—very like me! Live, and labor, until I have paid all—extremely like me! ”

“ Spoiled, flattered, allowed to indulge every evil temper with impunity, Ella's faults were numberless; more especially to her helpless sister, whose languid health and feeble spirits excited little sympathy, and whose complaints seemed to irritate her.
"I declare you are the most tiresome, tormenting thing, sitting there looking as miserable as ever you can, and with that whining voice of yours, enough to drive one mad. Why can't you brighten up a little, and come and play? You really shall come and play, I want to play! Nurse! O! she's not there! Do make Clementina come and play." ”

“ When we sacrifice to Bacchus, we are not favored by Mercury; and the well-known adage of "wine in, wit out," is but an abbreviation of the equally well proved axiom, that wine raises the imagination, but depresses the judgment.
Neither is the highly bred gentleman, if much addicted to intoxication, quite safe to be admitted into close friendship, inasmuch as he renders himself, by the practice, unworthy of confidence. Wine so unlocks the cabinet of the heart, that it is easily looked into when we are off our guard. ”

“ He abandons without scruple, a beloved mistress for a wealthy wife, and speaks of it openly without shame or reserve, whilst a woman would blush at the bare idea of such an act. Woman's love lives on self-denial, grows by sacrifices, and expands under the pressure of misfortune. I do not say that such is the love of all women, but it is of that chosen few with whose feelings it is dangerous to trifle, and who are not to be cast off with impunity. I have dwelt the more at length on my connection with Zephirine, because her name will re-appear in the course of the history of my first real love. ”

“ Any well delineated view of a high-class Swiss scene, must at once convince even the most provincial mind among us that nothing of the sort is to be found in America, east of the Rocky mountains. Nevertheless, the Adirondack has claims to a wild grandeur, which, if it do not approach magnificence, is of a character to impress a region with the seal of a very noble nature. The lovers of the picturesque sustain a great loss by means of the numerous lines of railroads that have recently come into existence. This is true of both Europe and America. ”

“ To make a woman forget a faithless lover is an easy task; to render her fickle, under ordinary circumstances, is an enterprise in which many succeed; but to efface the recollection of so bloody a catastrophe, whilst pressing my suit in perhaps the self-same well-remembered words and expressions of its lamented victim, seemed so all but hopeless an undertaking, that it required the stimulus of the most ardent passion not to shrink from it in despair. I had, however, some chances in my favor; I was young, though some years older than Mademoiselle d'Ermay ”

“ It is becoming fashionable among our young and imperfectly educated magazine and newspaper writers to "pity the weakness" which receives the Christian religion as it was held by our fathers. The drivel of which the veriest fools were made ashamed half a century ago, is revived as if it were a new and immortal flowering of philosophy. By the wise and thoughtful this sort of stuff is regarded with just contempt, and with confidence that though it may exist for a while as scum upon the surface, it will before long sink with kindred filth to the bottom of the stream. ”

“ I was about to compliment him on the correctness of his conception and the force of his elocution, but he waived his hand, as if pained by the images produced on his mind by the scene he had just read, hastily restored the book to its shelf, and turned the conversation to some topic of the day, which, with other trivial matter, occupied us till I proposed to retire. Shaking my hand warmly, my friend jocularly expressed his hope that, "as I had less on my conscience than Lady Macbeth, so I should rest better," and we parted for the night. ”

“ Even stern winter has something pleasant in his countenance, and is kind enough to make them sometimes long for his return while enjoying the smiles of seasons more congenial; for they with rapture anticipate a meeting with the friends whom he assembles; the sweet congratulations, the merry tales, the laughter-exciting songs, which will then burst forth from affectionate and happy hearts, and make the blazing hearth a scene of unalloyed ecstasy. But it is not thus in the arid and joyless East. We watch the approach of spring with apprehension, for it brings in its train disease and death ”

“ In one of the principal apartments of that hotel in which foreigners may discover what is meant by English comfort, and the price which foreigners must pay for it, there sat two persons, side by side, engaged in close conversation. The one was a female, in whose pale clear complexion and raven hair—in whose eyes, vivid with a power of expression rarely bestowed on the beauties of the north, we recognize Beatrice, Marchesa di Negra. Undeniably handsome as was the Italian lady, her companion, though a man, and far advanced into middle age, was yet more remarkable for personal advantages. ”

“ Wealth and distinction are like old wine, the better for keeping. Time adds a value, mellows, gives a certain body—an inappreciable something. Newly-acquired wealth and distinction is like new wine—trashy. I rather pity the man who possesses them, therefore."
"And I do not"—"And I do not,"—and "A fig for your philosophy!" ”