Underhill

“ And after the proclamation in Cheapside, all the Council rade to Poules, and there was Te Deum to be sung at evensong.”
“But who be ‘they’?” cried Mr Underhill. “Who told you all this jolly tale?”
“The keeper of Aldgate, and your friend Mr Newman, and George Ferris, and divers other. I gat not all from one man.”
“Newman and Ferris! Then it is true,” murmured Mr Underhill, very gravely. ”

“ Underhill, however, conjectured that it was the ballad. He "was nothing dismayed;" and in the morning went readily to the Tower, where he waited in the presence chamber talking to the pensioners.
Sir Edward Hastings passed through, and as he saw him, "frowned earnestly." "Are you come?" said Hastings, "we will talk with you ere you part, I warrant you." They were old acquaintances. Underhill had been controller of the ordnance at Calais when Lord Huntingdon was in command there. The earl being in bad health, his brother Sir Edward was with him, assisting in the duties of the office ”

“ And Mr Underhill told him that my Lord of Sussex would have ordered him to the Fleet, and Sir Richard Southwell cried out to have him to the Marshalsea: but neither should content Sir John Gage nor Secretary Bourne, and they made great ado that he were sent to Newgate, and prevailed. Arrived thither, Mr Underhill was delivered of the officers to Alisaunder the keeper (Note 5) , who unlocked a door, and bade him go up-stairs into the hall. ”

“ Anthony.’ The year 1672 saw Underhill as the first Justice Clodpate in Shadwell's ‘Epsom Wells,’ and Tutor in Arrowsmith's ‘Reformation,’ and in 1673 he was Fullam in Nevil Payne's ‘Morning Ramble.’ He was, presumably, in 1676, the first Jacomo in Shadwell's ‘Libertine’ (‘Don Juan’) , and was certainly the first Sanco in Ravenscroft's ‘Wrangling Lovers’ and Old Jollyman in D'Urfey's ‘Madame Fickle.’ During 1677 he appears to have been confined in the Poultry Compter (apparently for debt, at the suit of William Allen) . ”

“ Her gown was gray, and she wore a white kerchief crossed on her bosom like a Quakeress. Her fine muslin cap had the narrow plain border of that denomination.
Mr. Underhill made a brief explanation of his antecedents, and his removal to the city,—then mentioned hearing of them from Mr. Brockner.
"You are very good to hunt us up," she said, with a touching tremble in her voice. "I don't think now I could tell anything about my father's relatives. He was killed at the battle of Harlem Heights, and my only brother was taken prisoner. The Ferrises, my mother's people, owned a great farm here-about. ”

“ Underhill did not know how long he stood staring down at this macabre figure, when he looked up and saw a group of four figures standing above him on the bank. He was prepared for Bagshaw and his Irish captive, and he had no difficulty in guessing the status of the servant in the red waistcoat. But the fourth figure had a sort of grotesque solemnity that seemed strangely congruous to that incongruity. It was a stumpy figure with a round face and a hat like a black halo. He realized that it was, in fact, a priest ”

“ Lestrade might know the man was a foreigner merely because his department has to keep an eye on all foreigners; some would say on all natives, too. As a policeman I'm glad the police know so much; for every man wants to do his own job well. But as a citizen, I sometimes wonder whether they don't know too much."
"You don't seriously mean to say," cried Underhill incredulously, "that you know anything about strange people in a strange street. That if a man walked out of that house over there, you would know anything about him?"
"I should if he was the householder," answered Bagshaw. ”

“ If the Rochester knockings were an imposture, nobody was more imposed upon by them than myself, and nobody could have had a greater interest in learning how they were produced. I therefore sent out to buy a copy of The Commercial Advertiser of February 18, 1851, still damp from the press, in which I read the following authoritative scientific account of the way in which, for now nearly three years, my little sisters and myself had been wearing out [168] our knee-bones to impose upon the world, our family, and ourselves! ”

“ Many called in who were fishing in the creek, and all heard the same questions and answers. Many remained in the house all night. I and my children left the house. My husband remained in the house with Mr. Redfield all night. On the next Saturday the house was filled to overflowing. There were no sounds heard during the day, but they commenced again in the evening. It was said there were over three hundred persons present at the time. On Sunday morning the noises were heard throughout the day by all who came to the house. On Saturday night, April 1st, they commenced digging in the cellar ”

“ If that was only Sir Arthur's eloquence, then he certainly took a heavy responsibility in putting so much passion into it."
"He was a friend of poor Gwynne's, as a matter of fact," said Underhill, more gently; "a man I know saw them hobnobbing together after a great legal dinner lately. I dare say that's why he feels so strongly in this case. I suppose it's doubtful whether a man ought to act in such a case on mere personal feeling."
"He wouldn't," said Bagshaw. "I bet Sir Arthur Travers wouldn't act only on feeling, however strongly he felt. ”

“ McNaughton to spend the evening with us. He tried to excuse himself, but they insisted, and he finally consented to do so; they clearly understood that he was not to take any part in the investigation. They arrived at about eight o’clock P.M. Judge Hascall introduced the gentlemen as his friends and neighbors from Genesee County, N. Y. They were all distinguished men, holding high positions in their several pursuits.
No sooner had we taken our seats at the table, than the Spirits spelled out, “My dear son, repeat the Lord’s prayer.” ”

“ We want you to come to Cleveland. We will select a house here where you will be happy and comfortable. We pity those poor wretches who are ready to persecute those who are too good to breathe the air of the same neighborhood where they reside. But never mind, you know and we know there is truth in these new revelations, and the good work is destined to lead men from darkness and doubt, into the blessed light of truth and a hope which I despaired of ever obtaining. ”

“ The sunlight inebriates him, the winds delight him, the very effort of the journey is a joy. Magic presences throng the roadside, or cry salutations to him from the hidden fields. The rich world through which he moves lies in the fore-ground of his consciousness ”

“ To all who will receive it, news comes of a world of Absolute Life, Absolute Beauty, Absolute Truth, beyond the bourne of time and place: news that most of us translate—and inevitably distort in the process—into the language of religion, of beauty, of love, or of pain. ”

“ You, if you have a philosophic twist, may transcend such relative views of Reality, and try to meditate on Time, Succession, even Being itself: or again on human intercourse, birth, growth, and death, on a flower, a river, the various tapestries of the sky. Even your own emotional life will provide you with the ideas of love, joy, peace, mercy, conflict, desire. You may range, with Kant, from the stars to the moral law. If your turn be to religion, the richest and most evocative of fields is open to your choice: from the plaster image to the mysteries of Faith. ”

“ The surface must co-operate with the deeps, and at last merge with those deeps to produce that unification of consciousness upon high levels which alone can put a term to man’s unrest. The heart that longs for the All, the mind that conceives it, the will that concentrates the whole self upon it, must all be called into play. ”

“ There you have the mystic’s vision of the Universe, and the mystic’s way of purification, enlightenment and ecstasy, bringing new and deeper knowledge of reality as the self’s interest, urged by its loving desire of the Ultimate, is shifted from sense to soul, from soul to spirit. There is here no harsh dualism, no turning from a bad material world to a good spiritual world. ”

“ True and complete self-knowledge, indeed, is the privilege of the strongest alone. Few can bear to contemplate themselves face to face; for the vision is strange and terrible, and brings awe and contrition in its wake. The life of the seer is changed by it for ever. He is converted, in the deepest and most drastic sense; is forced to take up a new attitude towards himself and all other things. ”

“ The understanding, that gives light, shows to the soul the thing that she loves. And the soul that receives by light of understanding the nighing and the knitting by accord of union in plenteous love, sees the Being, where that she holds to have her seat; receiving gladly the light of knowing that brings her tidings of love. ”

“ Over and over again—as Being and Becoming, as Eternity and Time, as Transcendence and Immanence, Reality and Appearance, the One and the Many—these two dominant ideas, demands, imperious instincts of man’s self will reappear; the warp and woof of his completed universe. ”

“ Péguy saw France in the laborious and heroic past, with her ancient traditions of culture, liberty, and order: patient, scrupulous, diligent, tending her seedbeds and weeding her fields—for good work was always in his eyes the earnest of a healthy soul. ”

“ Going forth into the bareness and darkness of this unwalled world of high contemplation, you there find stored for you, and at last made real, all the highest values, all the dearest and noblest experiences of the world of growth and change. ”

“ You have had in your brief spells of recollection a first quick vision of that plane of being which Augustine called "the land of peace," the "beauty old and new." You know for evermore that it exists: that the real thing within yourself belongs to it, might live in it, is being all the time invited and enticed to it. You begin, in fact, to feel and know in every fibre of your being the mystical need of "union with Reality"; and to realise that the natural scene which you have accepted so trustfully cannot provide the correspondences toward which you are stretching out. ”

“ Then, the actual unchanging ground of life, the eternal and unconditioned Whole, transcending all succession: a world inaccessible alike to senses and intelligence, but felt--vaguely, darkly, yet intensely--by the quiet and surrendered consciousness. ”

“ The special atmosphere, the hoarded beauty, the evocative yet often archaic symbolism, of a Gothic Cathedral, with its constant reminiscences of past civilizations and old levels of culture, its broken fragments and abandoned altars, its conservation of eternal truths—the intimate union in it of the sublime and homely, the successive and abiding aspects of reality—make it the most fitting of all images of the Church, regarded as the spiritual institution of humanity. ”

“ Look at the mass of verse which was composed, under conditions of utmost horror, on the battlefields; poetry the most pathetic in the world, in which we see the passionate effort of spirit to find adjustment, its assertion of unconquerable power, even in the teeth of this overwhelming manifestation of brute force. There is the power of the future: the spirit of beauty and truth seeking for utterance. There is that quickening spring, bubbling up afresh in every generation; and ready, if we will help it to find expression, to transfigure our human life. ”

“ Subtle curves, swift movement, delicate gradation, that machinery cannot represent. It leaves them out. From the countless suggestions, the tangle of many-coloured wools which the real world presents to you, you snatch one here and there. ”

“ Ascending the mountain of self-knowledge and throwing aside your superfluous luggage as you go, you shall at last arrive at the point which they call the summit of the spirit; where the various forces of your character--brute energy, keen intellect, desirous heart--long dissipated amongst a thousand little wants and preferences, are gathered into one, and become a strong and disciplined instrument wherewith your true self can force a path deeper and deeper into the heart of Reality. ”

“ And as you do thus, there will come to you an ever clearer certitude that this darkness enveils the goal for which you have been seeking from the first; the final Reality with which you are destined to unite, the perfect satisfaction of your most ardent and most sacred desires. ”

“ Thus the primacy of the will is safe-guarded. It stands, or should stand, at the door; selecting from among the countless dynamic suggestions, good and bad, which life pours in on us, those which serve the best interests of the self. ”

“ To visit her grave in the beautiful hillside cemetery outside Lisieux, and watch the endless stream of pilgrims who come on every day of the year from all parts of the world to ask her help, to deposit letters explaining their needs, and lay on her tomb for blessing the clothes of babies or the food of the sick, is to understand what the shrine of a mediæval saint must have been like. ”

“ The place that you have come to seems strange and bewildering, for it lies far beyond the horizons of human thought. There are no familiar landmarks, nothing on which you can lay hold. You "wander to and fro," as the mystics say, "in this fathomless ground"; surrounded by silence and darkness, struggling to breathe this rarefied air. Like those who go to live in new latitudes, you must become acclimatised. ”

“ What would it mean for a soul that truly captured it; this life in which the emphasis should lie on the immediate percepts, the messages the world pours in on us, instead of on the sophisticated universe into which our clever brains transmute them? ”