Various

“ In the broad glare of day, and before the eyes of the whole world, was paraded every secret of Rust’s life. Witnesses who had been forgotten and had sunk from sight, and were supposed to be dead, sprang into life, all having some dark deed to record. Pamphlets, teeming with exaggerated details of the murder, were hawked through the streets; peddled at every corner; hung in every shop window. Rust’s own black life had prejudged him, and had turned public opinion into public hate; until every voice called out for blood. It was under this feeling that his trial came on. ”

“ A thousand youthful cavaliers surrounded the car; all of the noblest blood and bravest spirit; all knighted by the king’s own hand, and sworn to defend him to the last.
When Roderick issued forth in this resplendent state, says an Arabian writer, surrounded by his guards in gilded armour and waving plumes and scarfs and surcoats of a thousand dyes, it was as if the sun were emerging in the dazzling chariot of the day from amidst the glorious clouds of morning.
As the royal car rolled along in front of the squadrons, the soldiers shouted with admiration. ”

“ Allow it to fall imperceptibly into your mouth; nay, you cannot judge of its merits from a half trial, like that; it must be taken entirely in. Don’t exert yourself, in the least; another inspiration, and you are possessed. Ha! is it not good?—is it not sweet? He must be very fond of it, he holds on to it so hard! Astonished fish! he wakes up, and opens his eyes with wonder; there is more in it than he dreamed of! Strait up to the light here, and show your agitated countenance. Now please to open your lips, and disclose the cause of all your sorrows, while kind Mr. Piscator extracts it. ”

“ And Cromwell! what an Arch-Impudence was he! And Napoleon! he put Impudence itself to the blush. And have there been no Impudences among us? It cannot be denied that our Fourth-of-July-men made a very impudent declaration, to say the least of it. But these were all individual instances. The French are impudent as a nation. They have no sense of modesty. They insist that all the world shall eat French, drink French, talk French, dance French, and dress French. Did ever any traveller visit a city or town in any quarter of the globe in which a Frenchman had not set up a restaurant? ”

“ Pelistes had brought with him to the camp his only son, who had never drawn a sword except in tourney. When the young man saw that the veterans held their peace, the blood mantled in his cheek, and, overcoming his modesty, he broke forth with a generous warmth: ‘I know not, cavaliers,’ said he, ‘what is passing in your minds, but I believe this pilgrim to be an envoy from the devil; for none else could have given such dastard and perfidious counsel. For my own part, I stand ready to defend my king, my country, and my faith. ”

“ Ambition climbs the dizzy steeps of fame; the young and inexperienced, whose admiration is not worth a straw, applaud; but the wise, for whose good-will Ambition toils, look on with indifference; for they know the emptiness of human greatness. But while we stop to moralize, the reader grows a-weary; and even thou, Deidrich, who art so constitutionally polite, compressest thy labial muscles, and thumpest nervously the floor with thy gold-headed walking stick. What a pity that we cannot talk nonsense gracefully! ”

“ The fact of his never having been out of his native country, disposed critics to believe that his works must be deficient in that highest order of merit which exclusively belongs to the classic schools of Italy: they would not admit that species of excellence which knew how to adapt the highest subjects of art to the unlearned. Yet such was Murillo’s influence over the human heart, that his genius enabled him to embellish truth, and to present it with all its graces and attractions to the understandings of all those who are endowed with an innate love of the beautiful. ”

“ The courage of Don Roderick rose with his danger. Throwing off the cumbrous robes of royalty, and descending from his car, he sprang upon his steed Orelia, grasped his lance and buckler, and endeavored to rally his retreating troops. He was surrounded and assailed by a multitude of his own traitorous subjects, but defended himself with wondrous prowess. The enemy thickened around him; his loyal band of cavaliers were slain, bravely fighting in his defence; the last that was seen of the king was in the midst of the enemy, dealing death at every blow. ”

“ The Louvre is as much superior to Buckingham Palace as a Charlotte-Russe is to a Yorkshire pudding. Cookery and Architecture are the first arts practised by mankind, and the last in which they arrive at perfection. The French excel all other nations in both. The condition of one art might be ascertained with precision by examining the state of the other in any part of the world, or in any age. When cooks served up pastry with peacocks’ tails sticking out of the top crust, architects built gothic churches and campanile towers. ”

“ Piscator. But, good scholar! good scholar! you will certainly fall out there! I believe you are crazy, you look so wild!
Discipula. How the boat pitches over the little waves! And, Mr. Piscator, direct the boat toward the shore, so as to make it rock more. The heavens are all grey, and the waters are all black, and the wind is high and wild in its sport like an imprisoned bird let loose. Oh master, spread the other sail, and see if we can’t fly faster! ”

“ They will overturn your altars; trample on the cross; lay waste your cities; carry off your wives and daughters, and doom yourselves and sons to hard and cruel slavery. No safety remains for you but in the prowess of your arms. For my own part, as I am your king, so will I be your leader, and will be the foremost to encounter every toil and danger.’
The soldiery answered their monarch with loud acclamations, and solemnly pledged themselves to fight to the last gasp in defence of their country and their faith. ”

“ Thou hast represented thy king as detested by his subjects, and surrounded by secret treason, but I behold his tents whitening the hills and dales, while thousands are hourly flocking to his standard. Wo unto thee if thou hast dealt deceitfully with us, or betrayed us with guileful words.’
Don Julian retired to his tent in great trouble of mind, and fear came upon him that the Bishop Oppas might play him false; for it is the lot of traitors ever to distrust each other. He called to him the same page who had brought him the letter from Florinda, revealing the story of her dishonor. ”

“ All greatness is unconscious or it is little and naught. And yet a great man without such fire in him, burning dim or developed as a divine behest in his heart of hearts, never resting till it be fulfilled, were a solecism in nature. A great man is ever, as the transcendentalists speak, possessed with an idea. Napoleon, himself not the superfinest of great men, and balanced sufficiently with prudence and egoisms, had nevertheless, as is clear enough, an idea to start with; the idea that democracy was the cause of man, the right and infinite cause. ”

“ Regard in silence those features of the young and beautiful upon the bed of slow consuming death; with what a grace do they not awake from the momentary trance of sleep! thoughts, not given to be revealed, have been garnered by that precious spirit as it hath soared upward toward the Heaven that is now bending with a summons unto everlasting Life! How gently yet how touchingly do not its glances and its last regrets pass through the diaphanous covering that remains to it of mortality, upon the friend who gazes in equal love and wonder at its side! ”

“ The old ice-king has had a merry time of it, playing with the long branches of the graceful maiden-like elm, and wrestling with the gnarled and haughty oak. You might have heard him roaring in the depths of the woods, had you been here, venerable Deidrich, day and night for a sevennight, apparently just for the sake of making a noise, and compelling the obeisance of the forest. Like any other demagogue, he gains attention by his blusterings. How lowly that young poplar bent before him, while the old hemlocks scarcely deigned a show of reverence! ”

“ Is there any body in New-York with sufficient moral courage to sleep upon any thing short of a French bed-stead? Is there a chamber-maid who will lie upon any thing less than a paliastre? Are there any more fat, or plump, or round, or full people? ”

“ King Roderick listened to the crafty counsel of the bishop, and determined to advance without delay. He mounted his war horse, Orelia, and rode among his troops assembled on that spacious plain, and wherever he appeared he was received with acclamations; for nothing so arouses the spirit of the soldier as to behold his sovereign in arms. He addressed them in words calculated to touch their hearts and animate their courage. ‘The Saracens,’ said he, ‘are ravaging our land, and their object is our conquest. Should they prevail, your very existence as a nation is at an end. ”

“ The French at present know little more about us than that Doctor Franklin made lightning-rods, and that Cooper writes Indian novels. They eat nothing that we raise, they wear nothing that we make, they adopt none of our fashions, they use none of our phrases. You would look in vain in the carte of any restaurateur in Paris for such delicacies as apple-dumplings or corn-bread, and you might call in a Parisian café until you were hoarse, for a ‘cobbler’ or a julep, without getting either. Yet our uppish people will eat nothing, drink nothing, wear nothing that is not French. ”

“ Some communicative free-thinkers talk in their sleep, and altogether, they make a concerto and a diapason equal to that which Milton speaks of, when through the sonorous organ ‘from many a row of pipes, the sound-board breathes.’ At last, morning dawns; you ascend into pure air, with hair unkempt, body and spirit unrefreshed, and show yourself to the people of some populous town into which you are entering, as you wash your face in canal water on deck, from a hand basin! ”

“ How did she think we could live without French cookery, if we could not live without French dancing? What traveller has ever visited a remote village that a French modiste had not visited before him? Is it possible to dine any where, without having a French bill of fare thrust into your hand, and some dish with an à la under your nose? Is there a living being in any part of the world willing to make oath to having visited a ball-room or a church without encountering a French dress or a French bonnet? ”

“ They express sentiments that are permanent, feelings common to mankind; and those who would profit by a delicate delineation of the affections of the human heart, will love the poetry of Clark. Those who would have a broader seal set upon manners, and the peculiarities of the mind set forth in pleasant grotesqueness, will smile at the ‘Ollapodiana.’ But all will profit by all; and we regard it as a literary obligation conferred upon the age, and carrying with it a moral obligation also, to multiply the copies of such writings as Clark prepared. ”

“ His figure is foreshortened, and to such a degree that his legs are out of the canvass, instinct with life and motion. His flesh has the plumpness and transparency of perfect health, flushed with roseate tints; his appearance denotes a child of nine or ten months old, but without that expression of premature intelligence by which the infant Saviour is distinguished in the pictures of Raphael. He is, in short, just one of those angelic creatures fresh from the hands of the Creator, oftener found in the cradles of peasants than of princes. ”

“ What is the privilege of writing the songs of a nation, compared with the privilege of setting its fashions? The supremacy of the French in all matters of taste is not the effect of accident. Why do they rule the world by their elegancies? There is a philosophy in these things, as well as in every thing else, which is worthy of grave consideration.
The secret of French authority lies in the simple truth that they count every thing worthy of being well done which is worth doing at all. We have grades of usefulness. ”

“ He gives occasional instances of great sublimity of expression, but it is a sublimity which neither forces nor enlarges nature: truth and simplicity are never out of sight. It is what the painter sees, not what he conceives, which is presented to you. Herein he is distinguished from his preceptor Velasquez. That great master, by his courtly habits of intercourse, contracted a more proud and swelling character, to which the simple and chaste pencil of Murillo never sought to aspire. A plain and pensive cast, sweetly attempered by humility and benevolence, marks his canvass ”

“ He is a volcano rather than a sun, a destroyer more than a creator; and our sympathy is mingled with little of that which we feel for the martyr; who dies rather than sell his birthright, heaven, for any mess of earth’s pottage, or for him who spends his life in the search for truth, and in speaking it to mankind, taking no heed for himself what he shall eat and wherewithal he shall be clad. ”

“ A man in no case has any liberty to tell lies. It had been in the long run better for Napoleon too if he had not told any. In fact, if a man have any purpose beyond the hour and day, meant to be found extant next day, what good can it ever be to promulgate lies? The lies are found out; ruinous penalty is exacted for them. No man will believe the liar next time, even when he speaks truth, when it is of the last importance that he be believed. The old cry of the ‘wolf!’ A lie is no-thing; you cannot of nothing make something; you make nothing at last, and lose your labour in the bargain. ”