“ This doctrine, so gloomy, so grand, yet so terrible, was, to Paul, a conviction, which he almost made practical; nay, he seemed to realize a kind of poetic pleasure from reveries, which represented to him the universe, with the sun and the stars, and all living creatures—walking, flying, swimming, or crawling—going through their parts in the great melodrama of destiny, no one knowing how, or why, or wherefore, yet every human being believing that he is master of his actions, at the very moment that he might be conscious that his belief is only a part of the great law of necessity. ”

“ Is there no joy in the world? Are not the birds happy, when in the morning the woods resound with their song, and so, too, every animal after its kind? Are not children joyful when the house rings with their mirth? and have not men and women their pleasures of a thousand kinds? nay, might not I myself have been one of the happiest of beings, if, with the fortune which is to be left to me, that locket had been engraved with the name of Rachel Grierson in place of Agnes Ainslie? ”

“ Retracing her steps down the long dark stair, not a very efficient medium for the removal of impressions so unlike the results of our natural consciousness, Rachel Grierson found herself again among the bustling crowds of the High Street. Nor could she view these busy people in the light by which she saw them before entering the little dark room of the philosopher. Though she did not know the classical word, she looked upon them as so many automata; and the long chain of causes came into her mind so vividly, that she found herself repeating the very words of Paul. ”

“ The fellow, in short, hated me, because the year before, at Baden-Baden, I had taken two thousand out of him, and would not give him his revenge."
"He must have thought you honest," said I; "otherwise he would not have thus badgered you to play."
"No; he had not the generosity to think me honest. I repeat, no gambler ever thinks another gambler honest, and he lies when he says so. He knew himself to be a rogue, and thought it diamond in the teeth of diamond;" and, pausing and meditating, he repeated the word, "diamond—diamond—diamond." ”

“ I had known Graeme's crime and Gourlay's self-murder; but the crime was a trick among blacklegs, and the suicide was the madness of a gambler, who had risked his money and was ruined at the moment he wanted to ruin another. Surely Heaven had something else to do with its retributive lightnings than employ them, in subversion of all natural laws, in a cause so inferior in turpitude to others that every hour pass into oblivion, with more of a mark of natural, and less or none of supernatural chastisement. ”

“ What would ye with one so feeble and humble as I am, who am but as a tool, a mean instrument in the hand of the artificer?" And the speaker assumed a look of the deepest humility.
"I dare not utter it! I dare not utter it, General!" exclaimed Lady Rae, now giving way, for the first time, to that emotion which was agitating her whole frame, although she had hitherto endeavoured, and not unsuccessfully, to conceal it. "I dare not utter it," she said, "lest it should bring death to my hopes; yet came I hither for no other purpose."
"Speak, lady, speak," said Cromwell. ”

“ Seemingly very indifferent objects assumed in the new lights of his spirit gigantic and affraying features,—the sea-gull, with its torn back, bleeding and quivering, and those diamond eyes so bright even in its looks of agony—an object low indeed in the scale of nature, but here elevated by some overruling power into the very heart of man's actions and destinies, as if to show out of what humble things the lightnings of retribution may come. ”

“ I read them again and again, and could scarcely believe my eyes."
"And well you might not," said he; "but your simple heart has never yet informed you that love finds out strange inventions. I have been guilty of a ruse d'amour, for which I beg your pardon. Knowing that you were in the habit of visiting Paul's workroom, and seeing all the work of his cunning fingers, I got him to make the locket out of a piece of gold I got from my uncle, and the inscription was,"—and here he paused as if to watch her expression,—"yes, designed, to quicken your affection for me by awakening jealousy. ”

“ The conviction settled down and down into his heart, that that apparently simple affair of killing a bird—which, even with the aggravation of all the cruelty exhibited by the thoughtless, yet certainly pitiless youth, is so apt to be viewed carelessly, or only with an avowal of disapprobation—which, if too much insisted on as an act to be taken up by superior retribution, is more apt still to be laughed at—was the cause of all the ills that had befallen him. The diamond eyes proved to him no fancy. ”

“ But when we run the matter up a little further, we find it a very small affair: two responses, one to each of two chords vibrating for ever and ever throughout all nature—pleasure and pain, pain and pleasure, turn by turn—the last pain being death!"
"How can you live here, Graeme?" I said, as we stood under the old porch, looking out, or rather having our look blocked up by the thickness, and our ears deaved by the eternal screeching and cawing of five thousand crows overhead.
"There's gloom everywhere where man is," he replied, "and screeching owls in every brain. You can't get quit." ”

“ But, even admitting there was cruelty in the act, where is the link that binds it with the consequences which have brought me here? The bet upon the maternity was not an effect of the flaying of the bird. If it followed the prior bet, it would have followed another, in which I was gainer, equally the same. The mad energy which weaves in my head these day-dreams, and pursues me with these diamond eyes of wrath, is a lying power, and I shall master it by the strength of my reason, which at least is God's gift. Come, my Maria, as my good angel, and enable me to free my mind from illusions. ”

“ Agnes Ainslie was and is nothing to me; and I used her name merely because I thought that you would view her as a likely rival."
"Can all this be true?" muttered Rachel to herself, as the wish to believe was pursued by the doubt which revolted against a departure from all natural and rational actions.
Perhaps she was not versed in the ways of the world; but whether so or not, the difference in effect would have been small; for what man, beloved by a woman, ever yet pled his cause before his mistress without other than a wise man for his client? ”

“ In all which he at least proved the value of one of the arguments in favour of marriage; for trite it is to say, a bachelor bears to no one a love which reconciles him to will-making, while a father, in leaving his means to his children, feels as if he were giving to himself. But this plan of our merchant-burgess had in addition a spice of ingenuity in it which still more pleased him—he would so contrive matters that the daughter and the nephew would become, after his death, man and wife. ”

“ And then these small issues, the loss of a fortune by a man, and that of a lover by a woman, how mighty they are to the individual hearts and affections!"
"Mighty indeed," sobbed Rachel, who had loved Walter so long, and rejoiced to have it in her power to bestow a fortune upon him, and now found all her hopes dissolved into the ashes of grief and disappointment. "Mighty indeed; and these thoughts of yours are so dreary, how can one believe in them and live!"
"We are compelled to live," replied he, "even by that same decree which binds us to the infinite chain. ”

“ As she looked at her cousin, she thought that one of her evils was that the capture of her affections so early by Walter had prevented her from viewing Paul in any other light than that of an ingenious artist, and a man of kindly sympathies, however much he was separated from mankind by a theory of the world too esoteric for ordinary thought, and which yet, at some time of man's life, forces its way amidst palpitations of fear to every heart. ”

“ It is folly to speak of an honest gambler. The passion is a ten thousand times distilled selfishness, with no qualm of obligation to God or religion to keep it in check—only a little fear of that bugbear, society. Our club at the 'Red Lion' all knew this in our souls; but every one of us knew also that the moment he would be discovered cheating, he would be scorched with our hatred and contempt. He must leave our pure society on the instant—not of course that he was any worse than the rest of us, but only that he was unfortunate in being discovered. That night Gourlay and I were demons. ”

“ Ainslie left than Rachel was visited in her private parlour by Walter Grierson himself. He had seldom taken that liberty before, for her secret passion had been ruled by a stern virtue. A natural shyness, remote from coyness, demanded the conciliation of respect, though ready at a moment to pass into the generosity of confidence where she was certain of a return; but his presence before her might have been accounted for by his appearance, which was that of one whose excitement was only attempted to be overborne by an effort—a result more mechanical than spiritual. ”

“ I did not know then, but I knew afterwards, that that woman was she who called upon him in prison, and deposited the small bottle of wine. Her love for him had always overcome any of those feelings of enmity, or something stronger, generally deemed so natural in one who has been robbed of her dearest treasure, and ruined. She alone had indeed not assumed the diamond eyes. ”

“ THE AMATEUR ROBBERY.
If there is anything more than another of which civilisation has reason to be proud, it is the amelioration that has been effected in punishment for crimes. Nor is it yet very long since we began to get quit of the shame of our folly and inhumanity, if we have not traces of these yet, coming out like sympathetic ink dried by the choler of self-perfection and a false philosophy, as in such writings as the latter-day pamphlets. ”

“ I thought more of the fire inside, and the bottle of Burgundy, on which I had made as yet only a small impression.
"If I want darkness, I can as well shut my eyes," said I peevishly, "and I would even have the advantage of some phosphorescent touches of the fancy."
"Will you see that with your eyes shut?" he exclaimed triumphantly, as he bent his body forward to an angle of forty-five, and pointed with his finger to an object clearly illumined, and exhibiting distinctly a large card, with ten red diamonds sharply traced upon it. ”

“ The womb of fate is never empty; but no man shall dare to say what is in it till the issue of every moment proves itself. Nor does all this take away hope, for hope is in the ancient decree, like all the other evolutions of time, including that hope's being deferred till the heart grows sick; and," he added, as he looked sorrowfully into her face, "that is the fate of mine, for, know you, Rachel Grierson, I have long loved you, and have now seen that the riches you are to inherit put you beyond the sphere of my ambition. ”

“ I was now too proud to work as a mere journeyman, and I commenced business for myself; but I began without capital, and a gourd of sorrow hung over me, while I stood upon sand. I had some credit; but, as my bills became payable, I ever found I had put off, till the very day they became due, the means of liquidating them; then had I to run and borrow five pounds from one, and five shillings from another, urged by despair, from a hundred quarters. My creditors grew clamorous; my wife upbraided me; I flew to the bottle—to the bottle! ”