Various

“ Intertwined and involved in the inner life, are occurring at all times the great things of human history. In the sanctuary of unrevealed bosoms, in the ‘silent, secret sessions’ of thought, and in the glow of individual feeling, in the field, at the fire-side, in the closet, or on the sleepless bed, there is man’s history: there, unfolding to act, or infolding itself to die, the soul is in its greatness, is in labor with itself, and struggling with big, burning thoughts, and ‘truths that wake to perish never;’ decreeing with solemn form and force what is to be done, and what endured. ”

“ To the inner life of man, in its gradual and successive unfoldings, belong those deep musings of the heart, which suggested perhaps by trifles light as air, become mighty, like pent-up fires in a mountain’s bosom, and tossing off the superincumbent pressure, burst forth in a flame of patriotism to unyoke a nation, or in heroic religious love to bless a world. In the inner life of man are born and nurtured those deep and intense affections which make a man willing to die for his country, his faith, and his friends ”

“ What age shall presume to vaunt itself for genius or for virtue above the age of Sydney and of Spenser?
Later times have added to the social and literary lustre of Penshurst. It has been still farther illustrated by the talents and fame of Algernon Sydney, whose name never fails to awaken the sympathies of every friend of liberty for his honorable labors and unhappy fate. It has numbered among its guests and its eulogists such men as Jonson, Waller, and Southey; finally, even in our own time it has seen its horizon momently illuminated by the brief but dazzling splendors of the poet Shelly. ”

“ Jacob stared at him, smiled faintly and half doubtfully, and then sank back in his chair without speaking.
‘Do you hear me?’ exclaimed Harson, seizing him by the collar and shaking him; ‘do you hear me? Why don’t you jump up and hurrah at the downfall of such a scoundrel? Ha! ha! We’ve been on his track for months; but we’ve run him down at last; and then he made a virtue of necessity, and told all—all about the children, and about you, and about Ned; all lies, all lies—every word of them: Ned he swore was as honest a fellow as ever lived, or something to that effect. ”

“ It was an every-day thing which struck him, in the aspect of our winter-sleighs, as he rode up in one of them a day or two ago; but this sketch of ‘The Snow-Omnibus’ is not so common: ‘Past midnight! The embers are dying. The thunder of the city becomes a dull roar, the roar a murmur: then comes a dead pause, interrupted sometimes by the watchman’s club as it rings on the pavement, or the shrill, solitary whistler executing the threadbare airs of the opera, or ‘Life on the Ocean Wave.’ The door opens without noise. ”

“ The single eye of Taric el Tuerto glowed like a coal of fire at this message. ‘Tell your commander,’ replied he, ‘that I have crossed the strait to conquer Spain, nor will I return until I have accomplished my purpose. Tell him I have men skilled in war, and armed in proof, with whose aid I trust soon to give a good account of his rabble host.’
A murmur of applause passed through the assemblage of Moslem captains. Theodomir glanced on them a look of defiance, but his eye rested on a renegado Christian, one of his own ancient comrades, and a relation of Count Julian. ”

“ I have no longer country or king. Roderick the Goth is an usurper, and my deadly foe; he has wounded my honor in the tenderest point, and my country affords me no redress. Aid me in my vengeance, and I will deliver all Spain into thy hands: a land far exceeding in fertility and wealth all the vaunted regions thou hast conquered in Tingitania.’
The heart of Muza leaped with joy at these words, for he was a bold and ambitious conqueror, and having overrun all western Africa, had often cast a wistful eye to the mountains of Spain, as he beheld them brightening beyond the waters of the strait. ”

“ All nature smiles and puts on the garments of beauty; the stars sing together, the trees of the forest rejoice, and the floods clap their hands. Thus the visible universe becomes a mere reproduction of the spirit of man that beholds it. Create a mind, and it creates for its residence an external world of its own hue and character. Make that mind happy, and its external world, from pole to pole and from the zenith to its centre, is resplendent with light and beauty; balm-like airs, soft and fragrant as those of uncursed Eden, breathe upon it, and all its life is love. ”

“ Yet does not his spirit commune with ours as we tread the halls once familiar with his presence, or gaze upon those all but animated portraits which Penshurst still numbers among the richest of its treasures? Does nothing survive here of so much honor, so much courtesy, so much courage, to elevate us by its example and to inspire us with new hope, ere we turn again to tread the toilsome mazes of the world? ”

“ He wounded Ataulpho slightly between the greaves of his armor, but the prince dealt a blow with his mace that crushed through helm and skull, and reached the brains; and Tenderos fell dead to the earth, his armor rattling as he fell.
At the same moment a javelin, hurled by an Arab, transpierced the horse of Ataulpho, which sunk beneath him. The prince seized the reins of the steed of Tenderos; but the faithful animal, as though he knew him to be the foe of his late lord, reared and plunged, and refused to let him mount. ”

“ Our manners, our customs, our national constitution itself, may be said to have grown up beneath the shelter of these venerable structures, whose associations ally them in a manner scarcely less striking with those wider developments of social and political reason in which we believe the welfare of our species to be involved. Who is there, that, standing within ‘the great hall of William Rufus,’ can forget how often it has been the theatre of those mighty conflicts, in which, however slowly and reluctantly, error and prejudice have been compelled to relax their hold on the human mind? ”

“ The head becomes giddy; the ghosts of well-remembered dinners pass in hideous procession through the mind. The seventh day comes, bringing increased lassitude and farther prostration of strength. The arms hang listlessly, the legs drag heavily. The desire for food is still left, to a degree, but it must be brought, not sought. The miserable remnant of life which still hangs to the sufferer is a burden almost too grievous to be borne; yet his inherent love of existence induces a desire still to preserve it, if it can be saved without a tax upon bodily exertion. ”

“ Blessed, we say, for Heaven has said it, blessed are they whose ministry of love is in that unquiet inner world; whose sympathies intertwine themselves with its strained, snapped fibres and ligaments; whose hand gently withdraws the barbed arrows of outrageous fortune, and into the ragged wound pours the oil of consolation and the balm of joy! Select, sacred, and heaven-ordained and anointed priests and priestesses they, of a God of love in a world of sorrow. ”

“ Will he?’
‘Wont he?’ ejaculated Harson, with a peculiar wink and nod of satisfaction, as if he and himself were on excellent terms, and understood what they were about perfectly well. ‘I tell you what it is,’ added he, in a more grave tone; ‘Jacob has had his own way, or rather Michael Rust’s way, in this matter, too long. He shall have it no longer. He shall not break his child’s heart. ”

“ The Arab chieftain had been rendered confident by continual success, and thought nothing could resist his arms and the sacred standard of the prophet. Impatient of the tedious delays of a siege, he led his troops boldly against the rock-built towers of Ceuta, and attempted to take the place by storm. The onset was fierce, and the struggle desperate: the swarthy sons of the desert were light and vigorous, and of fiery spirits; but the Goths, inured to danger on this frontier, retained the stubborn valor of their race, so impaired among their brethren in Spain. ”

“ It requires a mighty mind; one that can look beyond the landscape; he must be able to look even beyond the ocean; to grapple with all the intricacies and winding convolutions of the subject, and to map in his mind the whole length and breadth of its territories. Here, Sir, is a river, whose broad and deep stream meanders from Paducah through one of the most fertile tobacco countries in the world, to Ross’s landing, and at the terminus of the great Charleston railroad, and possessing a steam navigation of eight hundred miles, and giving commercial facilities to the briny ocean. ”

“ That is true benevolence, which with mingled faith, reverence, and love, descends in quest of the inner life beneath repulsive appearances, and tainted name, and shattered fortune, and from the depths brings up a bleeding heart, a scathed soul, and speaks to it of hope and consolation, and cheers it up to the purpose of self-recovery, and the recommencement of a virtuous life, and the reconstruction of a broken, blasted fame ”

“ His guide-book will tell him of grotesque rocks upon lonely heaths where Druids may have worshipped; and of Bayham Abbey, with its mouldering walls and ‘antiquary ivy,’ which still attests amidst its ruins the luxury and wealth of its ancient masters. He may look in one direction over the broad lands and towering spires of Eridge Castle, or turning in another, soon lose amidst the recollections of Penshurst and in the homage which the heart renders to departed virtue, all sense of the vexatious forms and frivolous though perhaps inseparable distinctions of modern society. ”

“ The whole may be a pretended treason to draw us on to our destruction. It is more natural that he should be treacherous to us than to his country.’
Among the generals of Muza was a gaunt swarthy veteran, scarred with wounds; a very Arab, whose great delight was roving and desperate enterprise; and who cared for nothing beyond his steed, his lance, and his scimitar. He was a native of Damascus; his name was Taric ben Zeyad; but, from having lost an eye, he was known among the Spaniards by the appellation of Taric el Tuerto, or Taric the one-eyed. ”

“ Approaching Penshurst from Tonbridge, we alight at the ancient church which stands in close contiguity with the family mansion. A ramble amidst its graves, a walk through its solemn aisles, a moment’s pause among its darkened monuments, seems to be but a suitable preparation for our farther researches. It is scarcely possible to enter one of these venerable religious edifices of the old world, which form so striking a feature in its scenery, without feeling in some degree an impression as if the dim and solemn fane were peopled with shadows ”

“ No one will then think of tracing Wordsworth, or Moore, or Southey, amid the dusky lanes and glittering saloons of the metropolis, but the lakes of Cumberland and the bowers of Wiltshire will still rejoice in the ever-brightening honors of associated genius. Even the hardier spirits of the isle, whose destiny has called them to the rougher paths of life, to the battle-field or the senate, away from the haunts of nature and the Muse ”

“ Behold this vast channel of commerce; this magnificent thoroughfare of trade; one grand, unbroken chain of inter-communication, like to a prodigious sarpent, with his head resting upon the shores of Europe, and his lengthened form stretching over the ocean and curling along this great winding stream in serpentine grandeur, proudly flaps his tail at Paducah! ••• Sir, the ball is in motion; it is rolling down in noise of thunder from the mountain heights, and comes booming in its majesty over the wide-spread plain. ”

“ Oh! there are such hearts all around us, still warm and beating, though pierced through with many sorrows, goaded it may be at once by a sense of guilt and the horrors of abandonment, yet not dead to virtue, nay, sensitively alive to it; ‘for as certain flowers open only in the night, so often in the dark hours of a great sorrow the human soul first opens to the light of the eternal stars.’ There are such hearts buried all around us ”

“ Marvellous, indeed, was the effect produced by it upon the infidel soldiery, who now cried out with eagerness to be led against the foe.
The gray summits of the rock of Calpe brightened with the first rays of morning, as the Christian army issued forth from its encampment. The Prince Ataulpho rode from squadron to squadron, animating his soldiers for the battle. ‘Never should we sheath our swords,’ said he, ‘while these infidels have a footing in the land. They are pent up within yon rocky mountain, we must assail them in their rugged hole. ”

“ We may doubt, for instance, whether beauty will ever array itself in apparel of more cost and profusion than that in which the high-born dames of Wresill and Penshurst swept through their stately apartments. Grandeur will never make its presence felt by a greater weight of ceremony, nor ever extend a more watchful and provident care to all the equipage of rank and ostentation. Flattery, we may safely assert, will never offer its incense in a more seductive form, than when it borrowed the pencil of Holbein and the lyre of Spenser. ”

“ His surcoat was of like color and adornment, and the plumes that waved above his burnished helmet were of the purest white. Ten mounted pages, magnificently attired, followed him to the field, but their duty was not so much to fight as to attend upon their lord, and to furnish him with steed or weapon.
The Christian troops, though irregular and undisciplined, were full of native courage; for the old warrior spirit of their Gothic sires still glowed in their bosoms. ”

“ For the rest, a serene and touching beauty lingers around and hallows every relic which attests the hand of Phidias, or marks the country of Pericles and Epaminondas. No lapse of time, no process of decay, will ever wholly exorcise that spirit of stateliness and command which sits enthroned amid the ruins of the ‘Eternal City,’ as her own Marius once sate amid the ruins of a rival capital. ”