Various

“ She sprang from her bed, and felt on the pallet—Gerald was there; again she felt—she called—she passed into the next room—"Abel, Abel, my child! as you value your mother's blessing speak!" There was no reply. A dizzy sickness almost overpowered her senses. Was her husband's horrid threat indeed fulfilled? and had he so soon taken their child as his participator in unequivocal sin? She opened the door, and looked out upon the night; it was cold and misty, and her sight could not penetrate the gloom. The chill fog rested upon her face like the damps of the grave. ”

“ The scornful as well as undaunted expression of his countenance had changed to one of painful intensity; he took her hand within his, and pressed it to his lips, without articulating a single syllable. Slowly she moved her face, so that their eyes encountered in one long mournful look. Ten years of continued suffering could not have exacted a heavier tribute from Grace Huntley's beauty. No language can express the withering effects of the few hours' agony. Her husband saw it. ”

“ True, [pg 388] the rich spices, the perfumed woods, the fragrant oils, which would feed the sacred fire of my funeral pyre, would save my mortal remains from that corruption which makes the disgust of death even worse than its dread. A few odoriferous ashes alone would be left for my urn. Yet not the less must I share the common doom of my race—I must die!
"Nay, my beautiful!" said the voice, which was to me as the fiat of life and of death, so utterly did it fill my existence: "why should we thus yield to a vague terror? ”

“ From that hour a new existence opened before me. I loved, and I was beloved—love, to which imagination gave poetry, and mind gave strength, was the new element added to my being. Alas! how little do the miserable race to which I belong know of such a feeling. They blend a moment's vanity, a moment's gratification, into a temporary excitement, and they call it love. Such are the many, and the many make the wretchedness of earth. ”

“ The love which alters, in its inconstancy may set up a new idol, and worship again with a pleasant blindness; but the love which leaves the heart with a full knowledge of its own vanity and nothingness,—which saith, The object of my passion still remains, but it is worthless in my sight—never more can I renew my early feeling—I marvel how I ever could have loved—I loathe, I disdain the weakness of my former self;—ah, the end of such love is indeed despair! ”

“ She returned to her bed-room, dressed, and, wrapping her cloak closely to her bosom, was quickly on her way to the Smiths' dwelling, on Craythorpe Common.
The solitary hut was more than two miles from the village; the path leading to it broken and interrupted by fragments of rocks, roots of furze, and stubbed underwood, and, at one particular point, intersected by a deep and brawling brook. Soon after Grace had crossed this stream, she came in view of the cottage, looking like a misshapen mound of earth ”

“ Never more could each heart be the world of the other.
Our feelings are as little in our power as the bodily structure they animate. My love had been sudden, uncontrollable, and born not of my own will—and such was my hate. ”

“ Grace appeared to read the expression of his countenance. "I am not mad, Sir Thomas Purcel," she continued, in a suppressed tremulous voice; "not mad, though I may be so soon. Keep back these people, and return with me. Mr. Glasscott knows I am not mad."
She passed into the study with a resolute step, and held the door for Sir Thomas to enter. Her father followed also, as a child traces its mother's footsteps, and looked around him, and at his daughter, with weak astonishment. One or two of the servants, who were loitering in the hall, moved as if they would have followed. ”

“ A few unwholesome dews on a summer night were mightier than all his science. For a time I struggled not with despair; but youth is buoyant, and habit is strong. Again I pored over the mystic scroll—again I called on the spirits with spell and with sign. Many a mystery was revealed, many a wonder grew familiar; but still death remained at the end of all things, as before. One night I was on the terrace of my tower. ”

“ The excitements of the morning in the crowded London streets, had completely tired the rustic couple, who being susceptible of no farther excitement, sought repose at this early hour, and were both soon wrapt in deep sleep. Leaving them to enjoy their repose, we return to Grosvenor-square. The noble pair returned to a family dinner, and on entering the house, read, with strained eyeballs, the card deposited that morning by the Flybekins, and with some such an expression of countenance as one may be supposed to assume in discovering something in a drawer more than was anticipated. ”

“ Aristotle affirms that beauty is better than all the letters of recommendation in the world: Homer, that it is a glorious gift of nature; and Ovid calls beauty a favour bestowed by the gods, which this same Ovid shows the gods to have been jealous of among mortals." Certainly the moderns do not wage war for a beautiful woman, as did the ancients: we fear they would rather fight for an old castle. ”

“ Grace is the daughter of a village schoolmaster. She loves "not wisely, but too well," "Joseph Huntley, the handsomest youth in the retired village of Craythorpe." The father consents to their union. The real character of the husband appears early; his fond love soon dwindles to painful neglect: how truly does the writer observe, "the rapidity with which love may glide from the heart of man is a moral phenomenon for which it would puzzle philosophers to account. ”

“ It so teems with moral pathos and touching beauty, that we are at a loss to abridge it throughout so as to preserve that acquaintance with the finest feelings of our nature, which marks every page with sterling value. ”

“ The clergyman groaned audibly;—he had known Grace from her childhood, and felt what the declaration must have cost her. Sir Thomas Purcel was cast in a sterner mould.
"We are put clearly on the track, Mr. Glasscott," he said, "and must follow it forthwith; yet there is something most repugnant to my feelings in finding a woman thus herald her husband to destruction." ”

“ A fire-escape would impart security to sleep, and might be taken down into the country. Accordingly the check string was pulled, the manufactory entered, the machines inspected, an economical one selected by each: and in an hour after their arrival at home to dinner, the fire-escapes were duly mounted in one of the front bed-room windows.
Their evening meal being finished at the barbarous hour of nine, the Flybekins began to yawn over the events of the past day, and the prospective engagements of the morrow. ”

“ Like yourselves, the knowledge of our race goes on increasing, and our experience, like your own, hath its agonies. None have dared what I am about to dare, and the future of my deed is even to me a secret. ”

“ In the broom-sellers' cottage, across the common, on the left side of the chimney, concealed by a large flat stone, is a hole—a den; there much of the property taken from Sir Thomas Purcel's last night is concealed."
"I have long suspected these men—Smith, I think, they call themselves. Yet they are but two. Now, we have abundant proof, that three men absolutely entered the house."
[pg 398] "There was a third," murmured Grace, almost inaudibly.
"Who?"
"My—my—my husband!" and, as she uttered the word, she leaned against the chimney-piece for support, and buried her face in her hands. ”

“ Benedict, at Casinum.15 The good fathers must have felt no little pride when strangers beheld, in their secluded and obscure retreat, a relic which a long succession of the most illustrious princes had gloried in possessing.
The next place to which we can trace the Cross is Palestine, during the crusades, to which it had doubtless been conveyed for the purpose of restoring it to its more ancient and appropriate station, at Jerusalem. ”

“ I am a sad scoundrel, and that's the truth." Joseph deserts her, and in less than eight years after their marriage, her little family are entirely dependent upon her for support. The husband returns, and sets the eldest boy to rob his mother; the villany of the father is reproved by Grace, meekly but firmly. Joseph takes the boy under his guidance, and becoming acquainted with "John and Sandy Smith, (two poachers,) who lived together in a wretched hut on the skirt of Crayton Common," he soon initiates the little fellow into crime. ”

“ Joseph gets into debt, and upon Grace offering to sacrifice a favourite article of dress to enable him to keep a "promise to pay," we find the following exquisite paragraph: "there is something so commanding, so holy, in virtue, that, though the wicked may not imitate, they cannot withhold from it their admiration." ”

“ By the way, the ancients are excellent judges of beauty. Socrates calls beauty (we dare not use the contemptible it,) a short-lived tyranny: Xenophon says "Fire burns only when we are near it; but a beautiful face burns and inflames, though at a distance: Plato calls beauty a privilege of nature: Theophrastus (arch fellow,) a silent cheat: Theocritus, (cunning elf,) a delightful prejudice ”

“ At the battle of Yermuck, the imperial forces were totally routed, and Heraclius, downcast and dismayed, returned to Constantinople, bearing with him, as a source of consolation, the invaluable fragment, whose alleged miraculous powers were never exerted for its own protection.9 It is rarely that, when a sovereign despairs of success, his subjects have the courage (it would, perhaps, be termed the disloyal presumption) to prolong their resistance ”

“ The pilgrims also, who thronged to Jerusalem during a long course of years, were always eager, and often successful, in obtaining a small fragment of the cross for themselves; so that at length, according to the strong expression of St. Cyril, the whole earth was filled with this sacred wood. Even at present, there is scarcely a Roman Catholic cathedral which does not display some pretended pieces of this relic ”

“ The happy pair were on the pinnacle of provincial glory; he was expected to return with the true state of foreign affairs, and the nation, from the intercourse he would enjoy with the peer; she was expected to import news of operas, plays, music, novels, writers, balls, routs, drawing-rooms and dresses, from her intercourse with the peeress. ”

“ Where we see one fraud, we may justly suspect another. From this period, however, the history of this fragment of wood may be clearly and accurately traced during the twelve succeeding centuries.
In spite of its frequent partitions, the Holy Cross, say the monkish writers, thus remained undiminished at Jerusalem, receiving the homage of innumerable pilgrims, until the year 614, when that city was besieged and taken by the Persians. ”

“ Mrs. Flybekin of ——— in this county, while upon a visit to their noble relatives, Lord and Lady B. in London, narrowly escaped being burnt to death. The devouring element almost destroyed the lower part of the family mansion in Grosvenor-square, over which the lady and gentleman slept, who had retired early to bed, and who by the accidental return of Lord and Lady B. from a party, were awakened only just in time to effect their retreat by means of a fire-escape, fortunately attached to their bed-room window. ”

“ Their barbarous fanaticism reduced to ruins or burnt to the ground nearly all the sacred buildings, and made a great slaughter of the Christians, in which they are said to have been actively assisted by the resident Jews.6 The bishop and the relic in question were removed into Persia, and continued in that country fourteen years, until the victories of the Emperor Heraclius led to an honourable peace, in which the restoration of this most precious treasure was expressly stipulated. ”

“ A wealthy citizen of Amalfi, whose name is not recorded, had long felt a wish to exchange active life for the cloister, and had selected the monastery of Casinum as the place of his future retirement. Being present in the Eastern capital during the tumultuous deposition of Michael the Seventh, he perceived in the general confusion a favourable opportunity for appropriating this precious fragment to himself. His zeal did not forget at the same time to secure the golden case, richly embossed with jewels, which contained it, and both were laid as a welcome offering before the shrine of St. ”

“ The next day was occupied in searching for, and entering, suitable lodgings; and the following day, having hired a carriage, which their unpractised eyes considered most elegant in style and equipment, they sallied forth, armed with a card-case, and a long list of commissions, the practised horses going at the full rate of six miles an hour.
A friendly and familiar visit over, to some Devonshire friends in Devonshire Place, they [pg 390] essayed next to discharge the now almost dreaded call of state ”

“ To this class likewise belongs a Pilgrimage to the Holy Sepulchre, from the accomplished pen of Contarini Fleming. The lighter papers are tinged with a high moral feeling; and we do not think that better evidence will be found than in the following of Mrs. ”