Thomas Miller

“ With napless hat in hand he after them doth spring.
In the far sky the distant landscape melts,
Like pilèd clouds tinged with a darker hue;
Even the wood which yon high upland belts
Looks like a range of clouds, of deeper blue. ”

“ After the close of the war, General Miller retired to his estate at Peterborough, New Hampshire, where he resided for some time, enjoying the sweets of quietude and the pleasures of agricultural pursuits; subsequently he received the appointment of collector of the port at Salem, Massachusetts, where he is now living in the bosom of his family. Although nearly deprived of the powers of articulation by paralysis, he enjoys his other faculties with comfort to himself and happiness to all around him. ”

“ ROMAN HYPOCAUST, THAMES-STREET.
But deep down it is rich in Roman remains; far below the invading legions tramped, upheaving the victorious eagles above the dim old tesselated pavements; for London has its Pompeii and Herculaneum. Unnumbered generations have trampled into dust its splendour, even as our own glory may one day be mingled in the urn that holds the ashes of empires. ”

“ It is a sight never to be forgotten, to see the steamers darting in and out amid the shipping below London Bridge, as if they had wills of their own, and could pick their way wherever there was space enough for them to pass, like aquatic birds that ever keep sailing around each other playfully upon the waters. ”

“ This resulted in the issue in numbers between 1755 and 1760 of two volumes containing together three hundred folio plates, drawn from plants in the Chelsea Garden.
Professor Thomas Martyn says of Miller: ‘He accumulated no wealth from his respectable connection with the great, or from the numerous editions of his works. He was of a disposition too generous and too careless of money to become rich.’ A curious comment on this is afforded by the papers of the Apothecaries' Company. ”

“ The very stones seemed to shape themselves into the faces of the dead, as if from the hard granite had started out the grey and eyeless faces of all the children of crime who had suddenly stept from that gloomy scaffold into the grave. ”

“ With fixed eyes the fearless warrior hurled his pointed javelins in every direction as he rushed thundering on—sometimes making a thrust with his spear or sword, as he swept by with lightning-speed, or dragged with him for a few yards the affrighted foeman he had grasped while passing, and whose limbs those formidable weapons mangled at every turn until the dreaded Briton released his hold. ”

“ In the red sunsets of the evening sky their heated imagination traced moving and blood-coloured phantoms, colonies in ruins, and overthrown temples, whose pillars were stained with human gore, and in the ridges which the receding tide left upon the shore, their fancies conjured up the carcases of the dead. ”

“ The high-piled City stands upon the dust of her millions of sons and daughters, who have ages ago sunk into the earth from whence they sprung. Even into the ancient church of Bartholomew itself we have now to descend as we enter—the remains of the forgotten dead have risen high above the antique floor; the youth and beauty of departed years are but a portion of the dark mould which rises around the hoary edifice. ”

“ The last trumpet, when it awakes the dead, will have no soft and silvery sound for the silken sons and daughters of luxury, but send out the same earth-rending peal, and startle all from their long deep slumber. ”

“ Statues or monuments, that would look well in open squares or spacious halls, startle us by their very nakedness, when they step out between the shadowy and solemn crypts, where death itself is roofed over and vaulted in at the foot of the mighty mound whose very majesty is overwhelming. ”

“ Even the imprisoned lark that hangs by the window feels his plumes ruffled by the breeze, and fancying for a moment that he is free, sends out his voice through the wiry cage, and sings as if he were again shivering his wings in some silvery cloud high above the opening daisies. ”

“ What we can see of the remote past through the half-darkened twilight of time, is as of a great and unknown sea, on which some solitary ship is afloat, whose course we cannot trace through the shadows which every where deepen around her, nor tell what strange land lies beyond the dim horizon to which she seems bound. ”

“ We may picture the herdsman hurrying his flocks into the forest fastnesses as he heard that solemn and distant tramp coming like subdued thunder upon the night-breeze, so unlike the wild shoutings and mingled rolling of his own war-chariots, amid which the voices of women and children were ever mingled; so solemn, deep, and orderly would march along those well-disciplined Roman troops, contrasted with the irregular movements of the Britons. ”

“ We have seen the shadow of this great king pass, through the clouds of sorrow and suffering, into the glory and immortality which still shed their lustre around his memory, after the darkness of nearly a thousand winters has gathered and passed over his grave. Even the gloomy gates of death could not extinguish, in the volumed blackness they enclose, the trailing splendour which accompanied his setting, without leaving behind a summer twilight, over a land where before there was nothing but darkness to mark the departing day. ”

“ Ought we not, then, to feel alarmed, who covet them so much, yet are everyway as transient? Are not all such things so? and are we not ourselves like a river, that hurries headlong and heedlessly along to the dark and illimitable ocean of time? Unhappy must we ever be if we let such things occupy our minds. ”

“ It makes the heart ache—while looking upon these stained and drooping flowers, that are growing amid such a wilderness of full-blown weeds—to reflect upon the deathly blight which must at last settle down and destroy them, unless they are transplanted by some kind and nurturing hand into a more favourable soil. ”

“ SUMMER MORNING.
Morning again breaks through the mines of Heaven,
And shakes her jewelled kirtle on the sky,
Heavy with rosy gold. Aside are driven
The vassal clouds, which bow as she draws nigh,
And catch her scattered gems of orient dye,
The pearlèd-ruby which her pathway strews;
Argent and amber, now thrown useless by.
The uncoloured clouds wear what she doth refuse,
For only once does Morn her sun-dyed garments use. ”

“ The timber of these old houses looks bleached and dead; and the very brick-work seems never to have been new. In them you find wide, hollow-sounding, decayed staircases, that lead into great ruinous rooms, whose echoes are only awakened by the shrieking and running of large black-eyed rats, which eat through the solid floors, through the wainscot, and live and die without being startled by a human voice. ”

“ With great difficulty, and after many inquiries, you find a tavern; for you know no more than the man in the moon what part of London you are in. You enter a dim, cheerless room without a fire, in which the gas burns faintly, as if unable to pierce the fleecy fog which surrounds it. You wonder whether the peg on which you hang your hat would bear your weight; and, as you lay hold of the bell-rope, cannot help trying the strength of it: the height of the ceiling also catches your eye, and you marvel that more people do not hang themselves on such a day. ”

“ But we will cross over the way, and visit Covent-Garden Market, the ever-open flower-show of London. Here, when “the wind and rain beat dark December,” the costly chrysanthemum may be purchased, with which beauty decks her waving ringlets, as she shoots the arrows of love from her eyes, regardless on whom they may alight. In spring, summer, autumn, or winter, the choicest treasures of the floral world are here collected; from the conservatory and the humble cottage-garden, flowers of all hues are gathered to grace the Covent-Garden colonnades. ”

“ Still less did those ancient Saxons, as they landed in the marshes of Essex, ever imagine that they were marching onward towards a town, whose renown would one day spread to the uttermost ends of the earth, a city which would at last arrest the gaze of the whole wide world, whose grandeur would only be eclipsed by its greatness, and stand the sun of the earth, defying all eyes to point out, amid the blaze of its splendour, where its brightness began or where it ended. ”

“ The young king had found favour in the eyes of the queen of East Anglia, and she reasoned with Redwald, and boldly showed him how base an act it would be, to give up their guest to the man who, having robbed him of his kingdom, now sought to take away his life. "A king should not violate his faith," said she, "for gold, for good faith is his noblest ornament." ”

“ Carts rolled by, bearing the produce of quiet fields and tree-sheltered gardens, to the market; the rustic driver turned his head for a moment; then, with eyes bent upon the ground, went musing along his way. The coach moved slowly along, severing in its course the closely-packed crowd; the warm-clad passengers glanced down the wide thoroughfare, with its dark pavement of human heads, upon the black and ominous beam that went spanning across, like the bridge of death, and ever would the same vision rise up before them all day long. ”

“ The grave that covers up and buries the past, inters not all pain and sorrow with the dead, but leaves a portion behind, that the living may feel what they once suffered—the agonizing shriek, and the heart-rending cry, ring for ages after upon our ears;—such sounds disturb not the silent chambers of the dead! ”

“ Here and there, mingled among the crowd, are seen the figures of women; some, whose countenances are marked with dissipation, yet bearing faint traces of former beauty, as if Nature was still reluctant to obliterate the fair image which she had first formed, though every trace of the pure spirit, which had once given it such light and animation, has long since perished. ”

“ One solid, impenetrable mass now bore down, like a mighty avalanche, upon the congregated Britons; a vast sea of spears, and shields, and swords, all heaving onward without resistance, Cæsar heralding the way, like the God of the storm, the armed cavalry thundering onward like the foremost wave, until the whole mass struck upon the iron stems of the gnarled oaks, which stood at the edge of the forest, then rolled back again into the plain, leaving a ridgy line of wounded and dead to mark their destructive course. ”

“ Light and darkness, summer and winter, have brightened and deepened thousands of times over the shadowy crypts in which their ashes repose—every thing grand and imposing is swept away excepting the mighty monuments, which scarcely seem the work of human hands; they rise like images of eternity, ever bending and keeping watch above their silent graves. ”

“ To His great works must we ever come with reverential knee, and before them lowly bow; for the grey rocks, and the high mountain summits, and the wide-spreading plains, and the ever-sounding seas, are stamped with the image of Eternity,—a mighty shadow ever hangs over them. ”

“ Smooth green pastures, where flocks and herds lowed and bleated, and long slips of corn waved in the summer sunshine, and fruit-trees which in spring were hung with white and crimson blossoms, and whose branches in autumn bowed beneath the weight of heavy fruitage, now swelled above the swampy waste, and gave a cheerful look to the grassy glade which had made room for the bright sunshine to enter into the very heart of those gloomy old forests. ”

“ We feel that we are in the presence of the mighty dead; and, as we gaze around, the deeds which throw a grandeur and a gloom over the pages of English history pass in vivid succession before the eye of the mind. The very pavement seems strewn with the ruins of crowns, sceptres, helmets, and swords, mitres and croziers, bent, crushed, dented, and broken; while, amid the dim gold and the rusted steel, the green laurels of the poet alone remain unchanged. What moving scenes have broken the lengthened shadows which those high-piled pillars throw over aisle and choir! ”

“ Alas, the sun rose upon a shore strown with wrecks, and blackened with the bodies of the dead! If the eye alighted upon the living, it every where settled upon a group of mourners. Death had gone like a gleaner through the land, and taken an ear from every field. ”

“ Thousands who pass along the Strand never dream of the shadowy region which lies between them and the river—the black-browed arches that span right and left, before and behind, covering many a rood of ground on which the rain never beats nor the sunbeam rests, and at the entrance of which the wind only seems to howl and whine, as if afraid of venturing farther into the darkness. ”

“ Death and danger were disregarded; they fought as if the fate of a kingdom rested upon the blows dealt by each single arm. For a moment the sunlight fell upon a mass of dazzling armour, gilding the plumed helmet, the pointed spear, the uplifted sword, and broad-edged battle-axe, and the rich banner, which, as it was borne onward amid the hurried charge, fluttered in gaudy colours, high over the heads of the eager combatants ”

“ Instead of the tall towers and walled cities, whose glittering windows now flash back the golden light, the sinking rays gilded a barrier of felled trees in the centre of the forest which surrounded the wattled and thatched huts of those ancient herdsmen, throwing its crimson rays upon the clear space behind, in which his herds and flocks were pastured for the night; while all around heaved up the grand and gloomy old forest, with its shadowy thickets, and dark dingles, and woody vallies untrodden by the foot of man. ”