Various

“ Alice could not utter a syllable—but cast on him a heart-rending look of mingled disappointment, mortification and astonishment!—"False!—ungrateful! cruel!"—at length she murmured—and hastened to her chamber, at once to indulge and conceal the bitterness of her feelings.
"Alice is mourning herself to death, for that worthless, heartless Gordon," said Margarette to Montague, some time after their marriage.
"She is doing what she has ever done," said Montague—"thinking only of herself, and cherishing feelings that are totally destructive of all that is valuable in character." ”

“ The simplest narrative of her life, is the profoundest eulogy to her memory. Born in an age too rude to afford her the precepts and the instructions of virtue, while the condition of her sex seemingly precluded her from opportunities for the display of shining merit, she has yet left examples so signal, that after-times will best evince their progress to refinement, by their successful emulation of her mercy, redeeming and saving from captivity and death—and of her capacious charity, feeding a famished people from her hand—and that people a stranger and an enemy. ”

“ Eschewing all species of puffery, the Messenger goes to work upon several of the most popular novels of the day, and hacks and hews with a remorselessness and an evident enjoyment of the business, which is as rare as it is amusing, in an indigenous periodical. Of the justice of the criticisms, we have not qualified ourselves to judge; but their severity is manifest enough; and that is such a relief to the dull monotony of praise which rolls smooth in the wake of every new book, that a roughness which savors of honesty and independence is welcome. ”

“ Claremont's parlor, one not dissimilar was carried on in the street betwixt the gentlemen, Montague and Gordon.
"Who is this new cousin of yours, Montague?" asked Gordon.
"I cannot claim her as a relation," said Montague. "She is cousin to my cousin only, and a perfect stranger to me."
"N'importe," said Gordon. "But what do you think of her?"
"I have not had time to form an opinion," said Montague.
"You received some kind of impression, necessarily," said Gordon. "No one can be almost alone with a stranger for an hour or more, and not form some idea of what the character may be." ”

“ This publication is worthy of the Harpers. It is an honor to the country—not more in the fine taste displayed in its getting up, than as evincing a just appreciation of an invaluable work. How fondly do we recur, in memory, to those enchanted days of our boyhood when we first learned to grow serious over Robinson Crusoe!—when we first found the spirit of wild adventure enkindling within us, as, by the dim fire light, we labored out, line by line, the marvellous import of those pages, and hung breathless and trembling with eagerness over their absorbing—over their enchaining interest! ”

“ His interest in Gordon's progress, led him to notice Margarette more particularly than he would, perhaps, otherwise have done. Gradually, and unconsciously, he was taking her up as a study; and the more he observed her, the more interesting did the study become. "She is a perfect enigma!" thought he. "I can never decide whether the variations in her countenance have their origin in the head or the heart. Her smile is the brightest—the most joyous—the most beautiful I ever beheld! ”

“ It is not only the neatest in typographical execution—in whiteness of paper and elegance of type, of any American publication of the kind, but contains also a greater amount of useful and entertaining original matter, both in prose and poetry—especially the latter, which, taken en masse, is quite different from the namby-pamby trash that is spreading like an epidemic over the republic of letters—choking and smothering with its noxious weeds those gems and flowers of purer mould, which are the offspring and inspiration of nature and of genius. ”

“ Let us suppose two writers having a reputation apparently equal—that is to say, their names being equally in the mouths of the people—for we take this to be the most practicable test of what we choose to term apparent popular reputation. Their names then are equally in the mouths of the people. The one has written a great work—let it be either an Epic of high rank, or something which, although of seeming littleness in itself, is yet, like the Christabelle of Coleridge, entitled to be called great from its power of creating intense emotion in the minds of great men. ”

“ Not one person in ten—nay, not one person in five hundred, has, during the perusal of Robinson Crusoe, the most remote conception that any particle of genius, or even of common talent, has been employed in its creation! Men do not look upon it in the light of a literary performance. Defoe has none of their thoughts—Robinson all. The powers which have wrought the wonder have been thrown into obscurity by the very stupendousness of the wonder they have wrought! ”

“ Wo to my country, when the public sentiment shall be so far corrupted, as to think that heroism, and what is known by the name of glory, can compensate for the want of true, consistent, undying virtue!"
Montague chanced to be looking at Margarette when Mr. Claremont began to speak, and the look she gave Mr. Gordon fixed his attention upon her, though he heard not the remark that called it forth. He watched her countenance with deep interest, as it gradually lighted up to a glow of admiring approbation, strangely intermingled with a shade of sadness. ”

“ Rising with shame from my debasing posture, I encountered the eye of Pilton, fixed on me with a firm, cool, and deliberate gaze, and in an instant, my dirk was pointed to his heart. I looked in his face with a stern, malignant, and merciless triumph, yet his color neither blanched—nor did his countenance quail. "Let him alone!" cried twenty voices, "he is unarmed, give him fair play;" and I thank God, that in the tempest of my rage I was sufficiently alive to this appeal to my manhood, suddenly to throw the vulgar weapon away. ”

“ Has the importance of Education become one of those propositions which from being universally admitted, have ceased to interest the curiosity or engage the attention of mankind? Has the policy of former ages of keeping in ignorance the great body of the people, in order that they might be the more readily oppressed by the enlightened few, who held the reins of government, grown into a custom too inveterate for the more enlarged speculations of modern times to remove? These inquiries we will not pursue, but will proceed to offer some observations on the advantages of Popular Education. ”

“ Her sensibility results in good to no one, for she has no sympathy. Her character used to interest me, until I saw it contrasted with one so much more valuable—so much more exalted!—It was you, my dearest wife, who first taught me the strong distinction betwixt sympathy and sensibility,—and how utterly useless the latter is, when unaccompanied by the former. With Alice, it is not love for Gordon, but self-love that is the cause of her thus pining. Let some other romantic looking knight appear, and sue for her hand, and her affections would be at once transformed. ”

“ Thomas Chatterton died in 1770, aged seventeen years and nine months.
VI. From the days of old Thomas the Rhymer the barren glens and bleak hills of Scotland have been holy earth. An essence strong and mystic, an invisible presence, a something undefined, but powerful, hangs above and rests upon them. "The mantle of historic poetry is upon her soil!" and the floating and fragmentary images on this mantle—in their influence, like those upon the Arras tapestry in the haunted chamber of Monkbarns—fashion the dreams of one looking upon it rarely. ”

“ In the glare of noon—at the dead hour of night—in sickness or in health—in calm or in tempest—in moonlight or in shadow—the young Metzengerstein seemed rivetted to the saddle of that colossal horse, whose intractable audacities so well accorded with the spirit of his own.
There were circumstances, moreover, which, coupled with late events, gave an unearthly and portentous character to the mania of the rider, and to the capabilities of the steed. ”