Lady Florence

“ On the subject of rational dress and the prevailing system of bringing up young people, Lady Florence is neither silent nor soft spoken; she has very pronounced opinions as to the way in which girls should be brought up, and she gives free expression to them. ”

“ Florence made an impatient gesture.
“You compare things which have no standard of comparison,” she said. “You are a lady and know how to behave and to keep your proper place. These creatures don’t. They must be taught. If you had taken that woman in the right way, and talked down to her and cheapened her well, she would have respected you, and she might have turned out a servant good enough.”
“Florence, dear,” pleaded Lucy, “I would not wish to take any woman into my house who could behave so. ”

“ And my corsets must vouch for the past!”
“But the truth, Lady Florence,” the young man cried,
“Credulity’s passing away;
You are cheerful, while Leaguers are bent on your death—
Oh, tell me the secret, I pray!”
“I am cheerful, young man,” Lady Florence replied,
“For my case doth both houses engage;
And Royalty’s sent to ask how I am—
In fact, I am just now the rage.”
Ohr. ——:o:——
The Lords and the Young Radical. ”

“ Is Florence of the same sex as New York, as Chicago? She is the sole perfect lady of them all; one feels towards her as a lad in his teens feels to some beautiful older woman with a ‘history.’ She fills you with a sort of aspiring gallantry. ”

“ Lady Verney had indeed a most attractive mind; she was very vivacious, inquiring, and highly gifted, both as an artist and as a writer. She was a perfect hostess, and her memory is pleasant to all who knew her. If she lacked some of her sister's stronger English characteristics, she had a light touch which Florence did not possess. And Florence felt the charm of all this. “No one less than I,” she wrote, “wants her to do one single thing different from what she does. She wants no other religion, no other occupation, no other training than what she has. ”

“ Florence's mother, a dear little old lady who did tatting and read the Christian Herald, was always the particular target of the fortune-hunters who pursued her daughter. It seemed such a brilliant idea to capture the mother first as the preparatory step of getting into the good graces of the heiress; and the old lady, who was one of the most guileless of her sex, never failed to fall into the trap and take the attentions all in earnest. Comte de Souvary used to say that if you wished to find the wickedest men in Europe you had only to cast your eyes in the direction of Florence's mother ”

“ Her ladyship, telegram in hand, has just knocked at Florence Ffolliott's door. Florence is a special favorite with the old lady: she approves thoroughly of her engagement, which was formally announced at Stokeham last year, and of the man of her choice, who at the present moment is lighting a cigar and cogitating in a somewhat ruffled frame of mind over the piece of news he has just been made acquainted with by his hostess.
"Florence, my dear," says her ladyship, "I am the most fortunate woman in the world. I have been longing for a new star in my domestic firmament, and, behold! it dawns. ”

“ There came among the other visitors, soon after Florence, one beautiful girl, three or four years younger than she, who was an orphan child, and who was accompanied by her aunt, a grey-haired lady, who spoke much to Florence, and who greatly liked (but that they all did) to hear her sing of an evening, and would always sit near her at that time, with motherly interest. ”

“ I was always aware you had the very devil of a temper, Florence, and now, after fifteen years of married life, I [Pg 32] make the discovery that you can be excessively—ahem!—unladylike.
Lady Flo: It's highly amusing to hear you express an opinion on the subject of how a lady should behave. When one remembers your sisters, one is inclined to believe you were not, perhaps, brought up in a school of the very highest standard.
Sir W.: You insult my sisters! (Becomes much excited and takes her by the arm.) Repeat that again!
(Enter Jem. Stands in amazement.) ”

“ AT the end of the bustling noisy Via Calzaioli, the Street of the Stocking-makers, rises the Oratory of Our Lady, known as San Michele in Orto, "St. Michael in the Garden." Around its outer walls, enshrined in little temples of their own, stand great statues of saints in marble and bronze by the hands of the greatest sculptors of Florence–the canonised patrons of the Arts or Guilds, keeping guard over the thronging crowds that pass below. This is the grand monument of the wealth and taste, devotion and charity, of the commercial democracy of the Middle Ages. ”

“ But,' said the Captain, as a quotation, 'Though lost to sight, to memory dear, and England, Home, and Beauty!'
'Do you live here?' asked Florence.
'Yes, my lady lass,' returned the Captain.
'Oh, Captain Cuttle!' cried Florence, putting her hands together, and speaking wildly. 'Save me! keep me here! Let no one know where I am! I'll tell you what has happened by-and-by, when I can. I have no one in the world to go to. Do not send me away!'
'Send you away, my lady lass!' exclaimed the Captain. 'You, my Heart's Delight! Stay a bit! ”

“ Evie Ravensdale’s face is before her in imagination. She sees the dear, dark, dreamy eyes, the clear-cut features, the beautiful forehead around which the raven curls are clustering; she sees him as plainly as though he stood before her, for is not his presence burnt into her mind with the exactitude of reality? She loves him with all her heart, and power, and soul, and mind. No sacrifice for his sake would seem hard. To die that he might live would be a joy. If Flora Desmond does not know what love means, then who does? ”

“ Isola. “No, Vulnar, ’tis impossible, I say; To mate where love is not is Hell enough, But then at least, indifference can dull And make one callous and like frigid stone. But no true Woman could treat thus, a man So noble and so kind as you, Vulnar. Men such as you are not so numerous, Hearts such as yours are jewels scarce and rare. 55 Isola would not wrong you as you ask; No, Vulnar, seek a fitter mate than me. And yet, if you will give her Friendship’s aid, She’ll cherish it as the most precious gift Which Vulnar’s Generosity can give, The dearest treasure left to her on earth.” ”

“ Woman and Man were born to be together, But Nature’s tie should bind the two as one. It is the marriage service, which no creed Should dare to trample on or overturn. See here I stand a disinherited, I am the Prince of Scota, yet denied By that false creed of Sanctimonious, The right to call myself legitimate. By that same creed my mother was condemned And called a Prostitute, while Isola, Who did not wish to wed my father, holds The empty title of a Consort Queen And stands by him his legal prostitute. ”

“ Upon horizon’s face Soft lights are dying, slowly, as I die; Dying, but only to be born again As all is born anew in Nature’s arms. Behind the fading evening, darksome Night Looms like a ghost, and yet a fair-faced wraith. Around whom brilliant worlds irradiate And glorify the endless Universe. Behind dark Night I see the face of Dawn, Dawn, dimpled-cheeked and rosy like a child, Dawn that proclaims the birth of a new day, The offspring of Eternal Evolution. There is no end, Vergli, there is no end, Who dares to say the infinite can die? ”

“ Oh! come to me, Success, ye whom I woo, Not that success for which Men strive so much. Not empty adulation and renown. I care as little for the world’s false praise As I care for its paltry condemnation. The true Success I ask to come to me, Is that the Truth, whose flag I hold aloft, And Justice and kind Love shall triumph o’er The reign of Falsehood, Cruelty, and Hate. For this I send forth thought waves far and wide, May their returning tide bring back to me My bride, Success, whom I court from afar. ”

“ My bores, Vergli and Vulnar you condemn, And youthful Fortunatus likewise stands, Marked as an object for the hangman’s rope. Would you commit so terrible a crime As to deprive those three of Nature’s breath, For acts which are not crimes? Pause, think, my bores, 85 Are they deserving of a death so drear? I pray you, join your signatures to mine, Ay, every member of The House of Bores, Entreating the King’s Gracious Majesty To pardon and accord fair Liberty To Vergli, Fortunatus, and Vulnar. They are not felons; two are noble men, One, a brave youth, full of enthusiasm. ”

“ On Erth the secret of Real Health was known, To eat as Nature bade and not to gorge. And everywhere pure air prevailed and dwelt By night and day within a people’s lungs, And dwelling-places overlooked fair scenes, The people living on their own loved land And drawing from its nurture health and strength. There lived on this bright Erth a King and Queen Whose names were Escanior and Isola, Who loved each other, whom the people loved And who in turn truly loved their people. ”

“ But the gem of the whole room is Lippo Lippi's Coronation of the Madonna (62) , one of the masterpieces of the early Florentine school, which he commenced for the nuns of Sant' Ambrogio in 1441. The throngs of boys and girls, bearing lilies and playing at being Angels, are altogether delightful, and the two little orphans, that are being petted by the pretty Florentine lady on our right, are characteristic of Fra Filippo's never failing sympathy with child life. On the left two admirably characterised monks are patronised by St. ”

“ Therefore it must have something kin to sound, Something in Nature like a zephyr sprite, Whose wings float round us, yet we hear them not, Whose lips caress us, though we see them not, Spirits we feel, but cannot hear or see, Life living, yet in form invisible. ”

“ A truly glorious day it has been, warmed by a brilliant sun, the heat of which has been tempered by one of those gentle zephyrs that love to play where all is warmth and sunshine.
But now the day is dying, fading, as it were, gradually away. Time, which the science of man can never stay, stalks slowly on his path. It is he who declares that the spell of life which has lit the day with its brilliance, must pass onward into the darkness of advancing night. ”

“ She had proved that there was room for nurses in British military hospitals. She had shown the way to a new and high calling for women. “What Florence has done,” wrote Lady Verney to a friend (April 1856) , “towards raising the standard of women's capabilities and work is most important. It is quite curious every day how questions arise regarding them which are answered quite differently, even when she is not alluded to, from what they would have been 18 months ago.” Lord Stanley, in the speech at Manchester already mentioned, had made the same point. ”

“ Peter and St. Paul; over the principal gate was Our Lady of the Flower herself, presenting her Child to give His blessing to the Florentines–and this is still preserved in the Opera del Duomo–by an unknown artist of the latter [270] half of the fourteenth century; she was formerly attended by Zenobius and Reparata, while Angels held a canopy over her–these are lost. Four Doctors of the Church, now mutilated and transformed into poets, are still to be seen on the way to Poggio Imperiale–by Niccolò d'Arezzo and Piero di Giovanni Tedesco (1396) ”

“ Almost as pale as a mask of the dead, the face she saw was that of a man on whom every form of suffering seemed to have left its mark. The hollow eyes were full of unspeakable sadness; the deep lines about the mouth were those of illness or sorrow rather than of age; while even the thick sprinkling of gray hairs among the brown which Mabin detected in the searching cold light of the morning told the same tale of weight of grief rather than of years.
All these things the girl’s quick young eyes saw in one brief look. ”

“ She is a beautiful woman is Speranza de Lara, one upon whom Dame Nature has showered her favours freely. As the stranger, looking upon her for the first time, would deem her but a girl in years, and exclaim admiringly at her beauty, it would be difficult to convince him that her age is thirty-five, as in effect it is.
Speranza’s eyes are blue, with the turquoise shade lighting up their clear depths, and a fringe of silky auburn eyelashes confining them within bounds. ”

“ The scene around them was certainly magnificent,—dark forests in the foreground, behind them the towering, unbroken wall of the Cordilleras, and around them emerald glades and fairy nooks, where splendid flowers, with unknown names, lit up the dark forest background into radiance and light. ”

“ Where would all Truth have been but for its aid? Sometimes its shapes are vague and most obscure, As all conception is, e’en Life itself, Which from a speck becomes a thinking brain, Fruit of the tiny atom first conceived. Thus shall Thought be the ovule of a Life At present far beyond our comprehension. A life whose thought, in Evolution’s arms Shall far transcend the ovule of to-day, Bringing us knowledge that shall pierce the veil That veil which hides the secret of Creation. ”

“ Many of the people have brought flowers with them, and as the procession approaches they cast them loosely in the air, out of which they descend in a shower of many colours to carpet the way, along which Gloria must pass, with their bright and variegated bloom. ”

“ A wild gust of wind shrieks angrily above board as the smack rises and plunges in the trough of a choppy sea. The blood-red sun has vanished, an inky darkness has set in, and the wind is rapidly increasing from a fresh breeze into a regular fierce and nasty gale. ”