Stanley

“ Stanley speedily found his whole battery of persuasion exhausted; he withdrew in some wonder as to what the real state of things might be, and full of the deepest compassion. She had indeed scarcely veiled the truth to him; for, calling to mind the fate of the wretched Margaret of Anjou, she asked him, whether, like her, she should expose the young orphan York to the fate of the Lancastrian Prince Edward. But Stanley shrunk from being privy to such disclosures, and hastily withdrew. ”

“ Stanley, Coronado was at his best. How he rolled out the English language! Our mother tongue hardly knew itself, it ran so fluently and sounded so magniloquently and lied so naturally. He praised everybody but himself; he praised Clara, Thurstane, and the two soldiers and the horses; he even said a flattering word or two for Divine Providence. Clara especially, and the whole of her heroic, more than human sex, demanded his enthusiastic admiration. How she had borne the terrors of the night and the desert! "Ah, Mrs. Stanley! only you women are capable of such efforts." ”

“ Sir William Stanley is quite a man of fashion.—Do you know enough of the world to understand all that title comprehends? If you do, you will sincerely regret your Julia is married to a man of fashion. His passions are the rule and guide of his actions. To what mischiefs is a young creature exposed in this town, circumstanced as Lady Stanley is—without a friend or relation with her to point out the artful and designing wretch, who means to make a prey of her innocence and inexperience of life! ”

“ This wonderful achievement was accomplished in the face of difficulties so great that they could have been overcome only by such a man as Stanley proved himself to be—a man of inflexible will, who having conceived a vast design carried it to its conclusion regardless of any obstacles, sparing neither himself nor his associates and, if opposed, prepared to shed blood to attain his object. ”

“ Stanley has done so much to make us acquainted with, hides him from us at present in her innermost recesses. [1] Speculation is rife not only as to his whereabouts, but even as to his being alive. Mystery always enshrouds the doings and fate of him who ventures beyond those gloomy barriers of forest, mountain, swamp and river, which screen Central Africa from even the faint and reflected gleams of civilization. ”

“ To you, Stanley, I can say everything which I dare whisper to my own heart; but this is a matter which even my own private bosom tries to eschew. It seems—it seems that the unhappy old man is narrow-hearted—a miser, as they term it here; and that for some low petty thefts he was subjected by some fellows of the village to the above ducking. I know well, Stanley, you will not despise me for all this, nor because I must now wear my own name of Crabbe, which I am determined, in justice to that unhappy old father, henceforth to do. ”

“ I only came down to tell you, because Radie, you know you proposed it yourself; you must come, too—you must, Radie.'
'Oh, Stanley, Stanley, Stanley!'
'Why, d— it, it can't be helped now; can it?' said he, with a peevish malignity. But she was right; there was something of the poltroon in him, and he was trembling.
'Why could you not leave me in peace, Stanley?'
'I can't go without you, Rachel. I won't; and if we don't we're both ruined,' he said, with a bleak oath.
'Yes, Stanley, I knew you were a coward,' she replied, fiercely and wildly.
'You're always calling names, d— you; do as you like. ”

“ Were Stanley alive now, instead of lying beneath the sea off Gallipoli, he would be twenty-seven years of age, very junior in his profession, and therefore much younger than when he was a house-captain of nineteen: and he would admit that on this famous occasion he and his fellow-prefects were highly pleased with the transaction entrusted to them. For at twenty-seven we are people who have been old and now are young again. ”

“ Stanley announced.
[85] “I will hear your words, but let your speech be brief, for I am weary.”
“The great vehicle would carry the Inca into the sky, high above the tallest mountain-peaks, where the air is pure and where not even the condor dares venture; out of reach of the contaminating earth, to play among the clouds and to bask in the bright sunlight; it would take him so high that the radiance of the sun could descend upon his sacred person; men would be blinded by the dazzling splendor of the great king,” Stanley announced solemnly. ”

“ Such boys as Stanley go far towards making the solid men who are much more the real leaders of the nation, than the brilliant talkers and thinkers that float lightly along on the surface of events but, like all other driftwood, lodge and stick fast when they come to a rock in their passage. And moreover, silent and unresponsive as Stanley was generally thought to be, Lieutenant Wilde and his intimate boy friends knew him better. True, the lad could not talk easily, partly from shyness, partly from utter inability to rattle off the random nonsense which was the delight of the other boys ”

“ Stanley unlocked the gate cautiously, hesitating before he permitted his fair companion to pass on, in the fear that some mischievous boy or prying servitor might be there to wonder at and question wherefore he led the maiden from the queen's garden through a door, sacred, and never opened, into the resort of wild and dissolute youth. As he unclosed the wicket, at its very entrance, standing so that in spite of every caution a full view of Monina was at once afforded, stood a young man, whose countenance bespoke him to be ever on the alert for gamesome tricks or worse mischief. ”

“ To him he spoke openly of the treason of the queen: he even ventured to say, that he was sure that some mystery lurked beneath; he commissioned Stanley, therefore, to notify the order of council to her majesty; but at the same time to show her, that disclosure, and reliance on the king, would obtain her pardon. Sir William Stanley was a courtier in the best sense of the term; a man of gentle manners; desirous of doing right, easily excited to compassion, but ambitious and timid; one in truth than whom none could be more dangerous ”

“ When Stanley had reached the borders of the grove in which the party had dined, he cast his eyes upward on the hills where he had climbed in search of Jessy Ellet. Curiosity suggested to him to ascend again to the spot where he had beheld the strange apparition. Fear for himself knew no place in his brave young soul. He felt that his virtuous and strong heart was even proof against the power of Satan and his agents. ”

“ Stanley, from its own intrinsic importance, from the many advantages it has already procured me, from the hopes with which it is connected, and from the grateful recollection, that to the friendly affection of my benefactor I owe its possession, yet, I solemnly affirm, in the hearing of hundreds of witnesses, that there is no honest occupation, however humble, no labour, however toilsome, that I would not at this instant cheerfully exchange for it, rather than retain that inheritance one hour from its rightful owner, could I believe him to be living. ”

“ Younger than Lord Stanley he had not Lord Stanley's solidity and caution; but he had much more of original ability; he had brilliant ideas, great readiness in debate, and a perfect genius for saying bitter things in the bitterest tone. The younger son of a wealthy peer, he had, in consequence of a dispute with his father, manfully accepted honorable poverty, and was glad, for no short time, to help out his means by the use of his pen. ”

“ What, Barttelot! that tireless man with the ever-rushing pace, that cheery young soldier, with his dauntless bearing, whose soul was ever yearning for glory. A man so lavishly equipped with Nature's advantages to bow the knee thus to the grey craftiness at Stanley Falls! It was all an unsolved riddle to me. I would have wagered he would have seized that flowing grey beard of Tippu-Tib and pounded the face to pulp, even in the midst of his power, rather than allow himself to be thus cajoled time and time again. ”

“ Stanley dreaded meeting his friends, as a man does who stands convicted of having done something foolish, and while he was wondering whom he had better encounter first, Lady Isabelle settled the question for him by meeting him in the great hall. ”

“ It was thrown at Stanley, afterwards, that in courting the Muses, he had profited only too well by Fairfax’s aid: but the charge, if ever a serious one at all, was absurdly ill-founded. It may have been based on a wrong reading of that very generous acknowledgement beginning: ‘If we are one, dear friend,’ which is printed in this volume; for the muddled misconstruing mind has existed in every intellectual society. Nothing is plainer than that Stanley, both by right of natural genius and of fastidious scholarship, was more than capable of beating his music out alone. ”

“ Our poet does not appear to have contributed towards the religious literature of a day when the torrent of intense life in human hearts bred so much heaven-mounting spray, as well as so much necessary scum and refuse. But his was a temperament so religious that one almost expects to find somewhere a manuscript volume of ‘pious thoughts,’ the shy fruit of Stanley’s Christian ‘retirements’ at home. ”

“ Stanley’s fastidious strength, his wayward but concentrated grace, his spirit of liberty and scorn in writing of love (which was one of the novel characteristic notes of Wither’s generation, and of Robert Jones’s before him) ; the sunny, fearless mental motion, like that of a bird flying not far, but high, seem to our plodding scientific wits as unnatural as a Sibyllic [xvii] intoxication. He strikes few notes; he recognises his limits and controls his range ”

“ The fifty feet seemed to require a century to traverse in Stanley’s estimation. Once when about half way of the distance Abner touched Stanley’s head and came to a top. Stanley immediately repeated the signal to Bub, and the three might have been so many pieces of rock, scattered over the ledge. Stanley felt an almost irresistible impulse to yell out and make one try for the woods. A stick snapped on their immediate left and with painful carefulness Stanley turned his head. ”

“ Stanley was the earliest outsider to build himself a home in the sequestered neighbourhood, and not many as yet had followed his example, at the time we speak of. If it had been dull in his lifetime, his daughters found it doubly so after his death, and but for the horrors of moving they would have migrated back to the city. As we grow older it becomes ever more painful to root up formed habits, while new ones are less and less able to take their place; and Miss Stanley, at least, acknowledged that she had reached the age when change grows irksome. ”

“ On the other hand, the more the true man of action is tried, the stronger he appears. Perhaps no man that ever lived had his energy and endurance more taxed than Henry M. Stanley, who for years on end has suffered all that any great African explorer has suffered, with the addition of heavy responsibility to and for others, and who through it all has steadily grown greater in himself as well as in the world’s eyes. ”

“ Stanley, "don't you perceive that not only the purity of Mr. Stanley's motives, but religion itself would suffer, should we be forward to promote this connection? Will not this Mr. Aston say, that sinister designs influenced all this zeal and kindness, and that Sir George's estate was improved with an eye to his own daughter? It will be said that these religious people always know what they are about—that when they seem to be purely serving God, they are resolved not to serve him for nothing, but always keep their own interest in view. ”

“ CHAPTER II. Stanley’s Mission. “I THINK I can walk,” were the first words she spoke, as they were dragged out of the water.
“I don’t think you can,” returned Stanley Downs positively. “I will carry you.”
He did so. There were half a dozen stone steps from the wooden boat landing to the top of the wall. From there, it was a trip of some five hundred feet to the veranda of the hotel, which faced the broad lake and the magnificent vista of mountain, where the verdure-clad slopes were bursting into the fresh green beauty of spring. ”

“ Stanley could hardly believe his eyes. “The Quizquiz who was king was treacherous, cruel, [217] cowardly, and bloodthirsty; the person who stands before us has proved by his actions to-night that he does not know fear, at least, and such valor must have other noble qualities for companions.”
“The same body, but not the same spirit, stands before you. Yesterday I was king, with all the evil traits you mentioned, and more too. To-day, I rank with the lowliest—I am nobody in the sight of men, but I have found my true self. That is worth all it cost.”
“Tell us, how did you get into the crater?” ”

“ In geographical discoveries Stanley accomplished more than any other explorer of Africa, with which continent his name is indissolubly connected. Notwithstanding his frequent conflicts with Arabs and negroes, he possessed in extraordinary degree the power of managing native races; he was absolutely fearless and ever ready to sacrifice either himself or others to achieve his object. His books differ widely from the ordinary books of travel. Stanley had a gift of dramatic narrative, and his power of portraiture was remarkable. ”