Various

“ Then the shining of the sun, in a manner, dyes your stockings, creates beauty, makes gold, and diamonds, and paints the leaves green?
Fiam. I think it doth.
Pasq. Now mark! There be gems in the earth, qualities in the flowers, creatures in the air, the Duke ne'er dreams of. There be treasuries of gold and silver, temples and palaces of glorious work, rapturous music, and feasts the gods sit at, and all seen only by a sun, which to the Duke is black as Erebus.
Fiam. Lord! Lord! Where is it, Master Pasquali? ”

“ He too was flushed with the hopes of youth, and spread out his vigorous energies like the green bay tree. He too realized the measure of his glory, and proudly exulted in his power and possessions. But, alas! he too is fast wasting in the last stages of decline and death. So it is with the Indian of Central America. From the fruition of his hopes and numbers, and the full consummation of his glory, he has sunk to the deepest degradation, to numerical insignificance, and to the most abject wretchedness. A stronger contrast in the relative condition of a people can nowhere be found. ”

“ The present is the age of bores. No skill can avoid them. Like the enemy of your soul's salvation, they go about seeking whose peace they may destroy. They infest every society, and their name is Legion. If you were to seek a cave in some far-off mountain, they would find you out; or if, in despair, you should drown yourself, in the sea, the ghost of some bore would be sure to rise with yours from the waters, and torture your shade on its way to 'kingdom [320] come.' Whether you sit down, lie down, read, write, or reflect, you must be annoyed by the presentiment of bores and coming evils. ”

“ It is a mistaken notion, scarcely less common than that which considers the cultivation of a garden as a useless expenditure of time and labor, which holds that nothing worthy the name of garden can be had without much expense, and that it is better to make no attempt, than to dabble in few flowers, and rude specimens of garden architecture. Many are doubtless deterred by the despair of ever attaining, with their opportunities and means, any degree of the beautiful and picturesque that should attract the commendation of those versed in a better and costlier style of the art. ”

“ He who has seen the many huge and ungainly, though perhaps less rickety and flimsy, palaces that frequently adorn a wide landscape, cannot think that the age of air-castles has wholly departed: it lacks but the relics of the old family wardrobe, petticoats, hats and breeches, thrust in the windows, to complete the idea, that one is in the land and age alluded to by the same veracious historian I have mentioned. How far an inside view of our modern shingle palaces might betoken a similar want of energy or means in the proprietors, it does not beseem my present purpose to inquire. ”

“ A whipping-post ought justly to be considered an emblem of the dark ages; yet, to our disgrace be it told, public whipping is still practised in some few of our northern states; and fourteen years ago, I myself witnessed in Jersey City, opposite to New-York, an aged woman, a white woman, taken to a post and publicly whipped for stealing a few articles of clothing! We hope the day is not far distant, at least not forever distant, when men shall be so taught, as to love and practice virtue for its own sake. ”

“ For full three hours after, George was missing; and when the twilight made us stir to find where he could be, there by the garden-gate he stood, with the old wheel-barrow at his side; his handkerchief spread out upon it, as he was wont to do when he used to wheel his little play-mate in it years agone; there was he, waiting till she should come to ride. Poor, poor creature! He had no idea of the journey that she meant when she told him she was going for a ride. He knew that he had been her coachman many a time and oft, and he thought of no other carriage than that which he had driven. ”

“ Goold Brown's efforts as a writer have proved his merits to be of that order which can never command the attention of the public, nor be crowned with any considerable degree of popularity or success. In his style, he displays many of those lighter graces and excellencies which pass for cleverness with such as look more at smoothness of diction and accuracy of expression, than at force of argument, or depth and strength of thought. In his criticism of my Grammar, he has displayed as little of the manly vigor of a scholar, as of the courtesy or candor of a gentleman ”

“ Were the enemies of slavery to predicate their sentiments on other grounds than the alleged cruelties practised upon the persons of slaves, southern people would probably bestow on them that degree of attention which the subject justly merits. Were they simply to assert that it is at variance with the enlightenment and liberality of the present age; that mere matter of expediency would one day render slavery a greater curse than it already is; that England has set an example which she expects us to follow, and that the eyes of all Europe are upon us ”

“ The American drama, if indeed we have any claim to such a possession, is such as may reasonably be expected, more lean and wretched than the drama of any of the more cultivated nations. But we have no national drama, as yet, although we think the corner-stone of its structure has been laid, and that there is bright promise of a noble edifice, in the aspiring efforts of the many able writers whom a few years have brought to light, as well as in the encouragement which the taste of the American people seems inclined to afford to this branch of literature. ”

“ I was acquainted with the parties, where a slave, advanced in years, was offered his freedom, for a small sum of money which he had saved by over-work, by his young master, who soon after taking possession of his property became embarrassed. 'No, massa George;' said the man, 'I hab carried massa in my arms when him was a baby; and if I leave him now, who will take care of me when I get old?' The slave was right; for when they get past work, their old age is made comfortable. In fact, the amount of labor required from a prime man or woman is comparatively light. ”

“ Cooper is equally just and felicitous in many of his comments upon American society. The mere tyranny of public opinion he sets forth in its true light. He very justly, too, repudiates the influence of those among us, whose narrow souls never moved in a wider circle than the circumference of a dollar, and who carry their brains in their pockets; and he ridicules, with proper motives and good grounds, the American propensity to use 'great swelling words' to express the commonest ideas, or merest matters of fact, which he illustrates by a characteristic anecdote. ”

“ As farmers, and in nearly all the useful arts, they are a century behind the English. Madame Trollope, methinks, might here indulge her satirical pen, to her heart's content. But we were entering Geneva.
It was on a 'soft and lovely eve,' at six, when this pretty town and prettier lake, with the charming walks and gardens of the environs, first greeted our admiring vision. The frowning Jura looks down upon the lake on one side, and the distant snow-capped Alps, with Mont Blanc duly conspicuous, bound the horizon on the other. ”

“ To avoid being misunderstood, I must be permitted to say, that however much I may contemn the abuse, yet no man entertains a more profound respect for the use, of true criticism, than myself; and had my antagonist treated me with but a moderate share of decency, and one-half the liberality that candor and justice demanded, he would have received my bow, and have saved himself the present castigation. I delight not in contention. I never sought it with any one. No man can accuse me of ever having assailed a brother-author, or of having laid a straw in the path of a rival. ”

“ That slavery is an evil, that it is a great and a growing evil, none who think at all on the subject can deny; slave-holders themselves are well convinced of this truth, and many of them would rejoice to have the evil removed, could proper means be devised, independently of robbing them of their lawful property. They cannot consent to make themselves and their children beggars, which would be the case, were slavery immediately abolished; for without a sufficient force to work their land, it is worth nothing. ”

“ Availing itself of these inevitable results of old age, the power that is slowly but effectually crushing him, rises elastic and buoyant upon the dead body of the old native. The free Indian of United America, in like manner, is fast closing the scene of his glory and the fulness of his manhood. ”

“ A mere experiment, in this most difficult department of literature, is worthy of praise. Whoever has considered the difficulties attendant upon the production of a play, of any class of the drama, would shrink from the task of bringing an original tragedy before the public, unless urged on by that firm confidence which genius gives to its possessor, and upheld through all by the hope of that ample reward which must attend the successful dramatist. ”

“ It is indeed fast approaching at the present moment urged on as it is by the mad ambition of the Caucassian, who, in his turn, is rapidly approximating the zenith of his power and numbers. Throughout the world this may now be seen at a glance. The native of India is rapidly falling before the gigantic power, the cunning, and the oppression of England, now herself at the acmé of her strength and numerical force. Ignorance, superstition, and imbecility, press the Indian forward to his last hopes. ”

“ I had heard tales of overseers, which made me blush to think myself a man, so foully were they pictured, and which, if true, must have made the earth groan to bear such monsters on its surface. I regarded a slave-holder as lost to all the finer feelings of humanity, and an involuntary sympathy for their unfortunate dependants occasioned in me a constant watchfulness over every word, and look, and act, that passed between master or mistress and their slaves. ”

“ An ordinary share of industry and taste will prepare and arrange these, so that there shall not be an entire lack of beauty, even though it should want in elegant sculpture, in costly vases, in cascades and fountains, or in distant views of enchanting scenery. The expense of all this need not deter any one who has a free use of the faculties with which nature has endowed him: it may be saved often in the retrenchment of a single superfluity, and of these there is no lack with those who live what the world would term decently. ”

“ Heaven, pitying the dull clod of nature's 'prentice work, sends an ethereal solace to your aid, and when the blessing comes with three-fold charms, to make the bounteous gift more welcome still, you seek, with whetted, graceless appetite, to abuse it, and know no bounds that limit less than infamy, to make up the mortal sum of your ingratitude.
I was roused from my reverie, by the perseverance of the good dame, who thus took up the thread of her discourse that my exclamation and subsequent reflection had broken:
'Ah, poor dear Mr. George! if he had lived, all would have been well. ”

“ These were men, reasoning and feeling men, like ourselves; why, then, should we not reason upon the times and the events which marked their discovery of the 'new world?' We might imagine, perhaps, something like those events, or conceive of the records to which they might have given birth, when, without the compass that guided Columbus, or the means which safely protected him against the fury of the elements, they made successive discoveries of, and peopled, so vast a continent. ”

“ Nothing can be wider from the truth. There is not an individual who can better [315] employ a portion of his time and industry, than in the cultivation of a small spot about his dwelling. It is the nursery of elegant taste and refined feeling, and aids essentially in the cultivation of those elevated sentiments which bind men together in the bands of social union. 'Who,' says an elegant French writer, a century agone, 'who does not love flowers? ”

“ And if so, why, we might very naturally inquire, is all history silent upon the subject, and without even a hint of its truth, or the possibility of the performances?
The wreck on our shores of some solitary vessel, a circumstance dwelt upon by all who have attempted to get over the difficulties in accounting for the origin of the American people, is equally unsatisfactory; for it is but a bare supposition at best. We might as reasonably suppose any other means of peopling this continent. ”

“ Cooper in London, as in Paris, was not without the idea that the American republic was represented in his own person. Such certainly appears to have been his impressions, if one may judge from his deductions from any real or imaginary slight or discourtesy which may have crossed him in society. He is ever on the rack, lest his pretensions should be overlooked. He instantly resents what he deems indifference, and yet seems to be suspicious of any one who is particularly civil, without some apparent reason. ”

“ The style of Miss Horton is so highly finished and pure, and governed by so much taste and judgment, that her execution is as easy, smooth, and tranquil, as the gentle current of a brook. She makes no effort which she does not accomplish. ”