Various

“ Frantz advanced to view a newly painted portrait, which hung last in the line of his predecessors; and then the young man started back, changed colour, and the deadly faintness of terror seized his relaxing frame; for in it he recognised, exact in costume and features, the perfect likeness of his adult spectral visiter!
"Good God!" cried Frantz, "how very extraordinary!"
"A nice looking man, sir," said the sexton, not noticing his emotion; "pity 'tis that he was so wicked."
"Wicked!" exclaimed Frantz, almost unconscious of what he said; "how wicked?" ”

“ Their pictures have been familiar to every eye; dealers transmitted them into every hand; their colourless extraordinary faces, their shapeless robes of every tint in the rainbow, and their sky-blue wigs, are as well known to every Englishman, as the head of his own revered monarch on a two-and-six-penny piece. Whenever there is any thing to be seen, an Englishman must go and see it ”

“ His seniors are in the grave; his contemporaries are scattered; the hearths at which he found a welcome are in the possession of those who know him not; the roads are altered; the houses rebuilt; and the common trees have grown out of his knowledge: but be it half a century or more, if man spare the old hawthorn, it is just the same—not a limb, hardly a twig, has altered from, the picture that memory traces of his early years.—Library of Entertaining Knowledge. ”

“ There is something about the tree, which one bred in the country cannot soon forget, and which a visiter learns, perhaps, sooner than any association of placid delight connected with rural scenery. When, too, the traveller, or the man of the world, after a life spent in other pursuits, returns to the village of his nativity, the old hawthorn is the only playfellow of his boyhood that has not changed. ”

“ In two of the congregations I happen to have a more numerous acquaintance, and know that numbers of the congregation have excellent judgment and good voices, and many are good performers on the piano-forte and harp. In conversing with several of them on this interesting and (to me) sublime subject, I have heard as an objection to their joining in the psalmody with any extensive power, that there are no persons, exclusively of the organist, to lead the voices, whether treble, counter, tenor, or bass, and yet what a delightful opportunity do these new churches afford ”

“ Shortly afterwards the church-door was opened by the sexton, who kept his pickaxe and mattock in a corner of the belfry, and Frantz remembering that as yet he had not entered the church, followed him in, and was struck with the appearance of many portraits which hung round the walls.
"What are these?" said he.
"The pictures, sir, of all your predecessors; know you not, that in some of our country churches it is the custom to hang up the likenesses of all the gentlemen who ever held the living?"
Frantz, in a tone of indifference, replied, that he fancied he had heard of such a thing. ”

“ To have style is to be always dressed to perfection, without appearing to care about the fashion; and to take the station and precedence which you are entitled to, without seeming to be solicitous about it. I have seen dowagers at watering-places in a fever of anxiety about their rank and their consequence! ”

“ It is delightful to hear English men and women talk of their dear country. There is nothing like Old England, say they; yet paramount as their love of country appears to be, their love of French frippery is a stronger passion! ”

“ BIRTH OF EDWARD THE SIXTH, AND DEATH OF QUEEN JANE SEYMOUR. (For the Mirror.)
Every hint, every ray of light, which tends, in the most distant manner, to illustrate an obscure passage in the history of our country, cannot we presume, while it affords great pleasure and satisfaction to the student attentively employed in such researches, be deemed either insignificant or uninteresting by the general reader. ”

“ He dug deeply into the secret histories of the foundations of our national buildings, saw through the disorders of the egg-shell school of architecture, kept clear of the tottering lath and plaster of some of the new buildings, acknowledging that if such materials did ever tumble down, it was a comfort to know that they were considerably lighter than stone and cast iron. He felt a great respect for such persons of rank as professed to be supporters of the drama, trusting that they would keep the ceilings of the theatres from tumbling into the pits. ”

“ With a violent effort he sprang up in his bed, and in his address to the speechless trio, had proceeded as far as—"In the name of—" when the children sank down into the very hearthstone upon which they stood, and the man—Frantz saw not whither he went—perhaps up the chimney—but go he certainly did.
The terrified young man leapt in a state of desperation from his bed, and searched the apartment narrowly, as people commonly, but foolishly, are wont to do in similar cases. ”

“ For instance, your gay people, who toil through nominal pleasures, dressing by rule and compass, lacing, bracing, patching, painting, plastering, penciling, curling, pinching, and all to go out and be looked at: going from party to party in the middle of the night, pretending not to be sleepy, suppressing each rising yawn, and trying to make the lips smile and the eyes twinkle, and to look animated in spite of fatigue: and all this for no earthly purpose—too old to care about lovers, and without daughters to marry. ”

“ Such is the honour of Mr. Rabbitts!"
To want Style.
"It is difficult for me to explain, because your majesty has not seen specimens of that class of the community which is devoid of style, tact, and taste; but we have them in town, and we meet with them at watering-places; there indeed it is less in our power to keep quite clear of them. They are to be seen all day and all night; if the sun shines, they are promenading in its beams; if a house is lighted up, they will enter its open door; if a fiddle is heard, they are dancing to its squeaking ”

“ The birth of Edward the Sixth must always be regarded as a bright star in the horizon of the Reformation, and one, which tended greatly to blast the prospects of those who were inimical to that glorious change in our religious constitution. ”

“ Then your man of pleasure, risking his life at every corner in a cab, with a restive horse; wearing all his clothes painfully tight to show off his figure, confining his neck in a bandage, pouring liquids down his throat, though he knows they will give him a headache, sitting up all night shaking bits of bone together for the mere purpose of giving somebody a chance of winning all his money, or offering bets on racehorses to afford himself and family an opportunity of changing opulence for beggary! ”

“ Men, in most countries, owe what they possess of suavity of manners to their intercourse with female society; after the drudgery of a professional morning, young men used to brush themselves up for their evening flirtations ”

“ It is the conviction not only of myself but of others who are in the same order of the musical profession, that the means of drawing forth the universal voices of congregations is by a number, not less than four, nor more than twelve, being appointed by the authority of the clergyman or minister, to sing with correct harmony, and with rather a louder tone than they might do if only an ordinary singer in the worship of the day as a congregational attendant. ”

“ How impossible it is to convey the exact properties of a foreign language by translation! Every word, from the highest to the lowest, has a peculiar significance, determinable only by an accurate knowledge of national and local attributes and peculiarites. ”

“ The ivy, in its infant or very young state, has stalks trailing upon the ground, and protruding rootlets throughout their whole extent; its leaves are spear-shaped, and it bears neither flower nor fruit; this is termed ivy creeping on the ground. The same plant, when more advanced, quits the ground, and climbs on walls and trees, its rootlets becoming holdfasts only ”

“ At many of your amusements, the chief attraction consists in the extreme bodily peril in which the exhibiter is placed. You took me to see a man walk up a rope, to an immense height, and had his foot slipped, he must have been dashed to pieces: the place was crowded with persons who were in raptures; yet had the man been dancing on level ground, he would have danced far better ”

“ Disappointment at the theatre is a bad thing: but the manager returning admission money is worse. Sheridan, who understood professional feelings on this subject in the most acute degree, was in the habit of saying that he could give words to the chagrin of a conqueror, on seeing the fruit of his victories snatched from him; or the miseries of a broken down minister, turned out in the moment when he thought the cabinet at his mercy ”

“ Prejudice he found too deeply rooted to be dug up very easily, whilst the fashions and follies of the day seemed to him to lie so entirely on the surface of the soil, and to be so shortlived, that to throw away any manual labour in an attempt to eradicate them, would be absurd. ”

“ Those four (or more) voices would have the effect, in a few months, of producing a great improvement in the singing by the congregation at large; but such an appointment must not be alienated from its main purpose. These voices, scientifically as they will be exercised, must not sing in solos, duos, trios, or quartettes; they must be faithful to their institution, and must lead the congregation; not merely exhibit themselves, [pg 115] like the professional singers in the Roman Catholic chapels, but direct the voices of all that may feel the animating force of the 89th Psalm ”

“ His search, as might have been expected, was useless; but not liking at present to alarm his domestics with a report of the house being haunted, he resolved to await further evidences of the supernatural visitation. Next morning at about the same hour, the apparitions again entered his apartment; and acting as they had previously done, gazed earnestly at him for some seconds ere they vanished. On the morning of the third day the trio appeared again, when the gentleman of the long robe, looking most earnestly at Frantz, pointed to the register, the children, and the hearthstone ”

“ But some will think otherwise, and smile at the sly shafts which are let fly at our national follies, of which, it must be owned, we have a very great share. We ought to premise that the framework of the satire is a visit of the Court Cards to our metropolis, a pretty considerable hit at some recent royal visits. Of course, they see every thing worth seeing, and some of their remarks are truly piquant. ”

“ The young ladies of Medina county, among other means of preventing the too frequent use of ardent spirits, have resolved that they will not receive the addresses of any young gentleman who is in the habit of using spirituous liquors. The young gentlemen in the same neighbourhood, by way of retaliation, have resolved that they will not seriously pay their addresses to any young lady who wears corsets. ”

“ SHAKSPEARE'S MACBETH.
During one of the progresses of James I. on passing the gate of St. John's College, at Oxford, his majesty was saluted by three youths, representing the weird sisters (sibyllae,) who, in Latin hexameters, bade the descendant of Banquo hail, as king of Scotland, king of England, and king of Ireland; and his queen as daughter, sister, wife, and mother of kings. The occasion is memorable in dramatic history, if it be true that this address, or a translation of it, led Shakspeare to write on the story of Macbeth. Much has been said for the probability of this supposition ”

“ Then you all delight in distortions; if a man can bend his back bone, or sit upon his head, you are in raptures, and seem to think it a good joke to see a fellow creature shortening his life. Then if any man will ride a dozen horses at once, without saddle or bridle ”

“ Before he was six years old, he was once discovered at the top of his father's barn, fixing up what he called a windmill of his own construction, and at another time, while he was about the same age, he attended some men fixing a pump, and observing them cut off a piece of a bored part, he procured it, and actually made a pump, with which he raised water. ”

“ Jane Seymour, or as is sometimes written de Sancto Mauro, eldest daughter of Sir John Seymour, Knight, and Margaret, daughter of Sir Thomas Wentworth, of Nettlestead, in Suffolk was born at her father's seat of Wolf Hall, in Wiltshire. From her great accomplishments, and her father's connexions at court, (he being Governor of Bristol Castle, and Groom of the Chamber to Henry VIII.) she was appointed Maid of Honour to Queen Anne Boleyn, in which situation, her beauty attracted the notice of Henry, who soon found means to gratify his desires, by making her his wife. ”

“ The wife takes her chop, and a half boiled potato at home, while her husband, who always has some excuse for dining at his club, is sure to enjoy every thing, the best of its kind, and cooked à merveille. The unmarried ladies lack partners at balls ”

“ Far more cheap, and far more commodious than hotels used to be, they assuredly are; and country curates, poor poets, and gentlemen who live on very small means, may now take a slice off the joint, with a quarter of a pint of sherry, for next to nothing at all ”