Viken

“ Magnus the Blind and his men said, wherever they happened to meet with chiefs, that Norway lay quite open to any great chieftain who would attack it; for it might well be said there was no king in the country, and the kingdom was only ruled by lendermen, and, among those who had most sway, there was, from mutual jealousy, most discord. Now Karl, being ambitious of power, listens willingly to such speeches; collects men, and rides west to Viken, where many people, out of fear, submit to him. ”

“ But why should Vickers have given up what seemed to him right, what was his life and hers, just for our prejudices about not having our names in the papers?"
"That wasn't all!"
"Well, I shall always believe in Vick, no matter what comes of it.... Marriage—the regular thing—doesn't seem to be such a great success with many people, I know. Perhaps life would be better if more people had Vick's courage!"
Isabelle forced her point with an invalid's desire to relieve a wayward feeling and also a childish wish to shock this good cousin, who saw life simply and was so sure of herself. ”

“ Frere laughed—in his heartiest manner. “I think I will,” he said. “I'm dog tired, and as sleepy as an owl,” and he descended the poop ladder. Pine took a couple of turns up and down the deck, and then catching Blunt's eye, stopped in front of Vickers.
“You may think it a hard thing to say, Captain Vickers, but it's just as well if we don't find these poor devils. We have quite enough on our hands as it is.”
“What do you mean, Mr. Pine?” says Vickers, his humane feelings getting the better of his pomposity. “You would not surely leave the unhappy men to their fate.” ”

“ Now Vicki's fender and babies and busy happy life have vanished into the land of Never Will Be's. She will not find some one else to take his place. She has a story attached to her: a fatal thing here for a girl. Unlike your Miss Cheriton, who gently waves you aside and engages herself without the least difficulty to a duke, Vicki is a marked person, and will be avoided by our careful and calculating young men. She is doomed never to spoil and tease those babies, never to spoil and worship that husband. ”

“ The Vicar stood aghast, with his smoking gun in his hand. It was no bird at all, but a youth with an extremely beautiful face, clad in a robe of saffron and with iridescent wings, across whose pinions great waves of colour, flushes of purple and crimson, golden green and intense blue, pursued one another as he writhed in his agony. Never had the Vicar seen such gorgeous floods of colour, not stained glass windows, not the wings of butterflies, not even the glories of crystals seen between prisms, no colours on earth could compare with them. ”

“ There are vicars and vicars, and of all sorts I love an innovating vicar--a piebald progressive professional reactionary--the least. But the Vicar of Cheasing Eyebright was one of the least innovating of vicars, a most worthy, plump, ripe, and conservative-minded little man. It is becoming to go back a little in our story to tell of him. He matched his village, and one may figure them best together as they used to be, on the sunset evening when Mrs. Skinner--you will remember her flight!--brought the Food with her all unsuspected into these rustic serenities. ”

“ The worthy Vicar, deserted by wife and child—beset by an intriguing woman—sinks down before his writing-desk and buries his face in his hands. After a few seconds of silent agony he rises, straightens himself—like a man determined to bear his burden with unbent back—and strides from the room. ”

“ But in the vicar's nature was that which passed beyond her knowledge. As Brangwen had power over the cattle so the vicar had power over her husband. What was it in the vicar, that raised him above the common men as man is raised above the beast? She craved to know. She craved to achieve this higher being, if not in herself, then in her children. That which makes a man strong even if he be little and frail in body, just as any man is little and frail beside a bull, and yet stronger than the bull, what was it? ”

“ While at the Manor House all was bliss, life dawdled on comfortably enough at the Vicarage, where the good, easy-tempered, hard-working Vicar had begun to be reconciled to the idea that his only son was to be an idler all his life ”

“ As he spoke he stepped out into the moonlight, and Vickers saw his long, thin, clever Yankee face. “Just going?” he went on, glancing at his guest, [Pg 112] who as a matter of fact had no such intention. “I’ll walk a little way with you.”
Vickers was surprised at the Great Man’s cordiality, but his surprise was short-lived. Indeed it lasted no further than the corner of the piazza.
“I always think, Mr. Lee,” Overton began at once, “that if a disagreeable thing has to be said, the sooner the better. ”

“ The Trouble of the Barbed Wire.
XXXVIII.
So, ingloriously, ended the Angel's first and last appearance in Society. Vicar and Angel returned to the Vicarage; crestfallen black figures in the bright sunlight, going dejectedly. The Angel, deeply pained that the Vicar was pained. The Vicar, dishevelled and desperate, intercalating spasmodic remorse and apprehension with broken explanations of the Theory of Etiquette. "They do not understand," said the Vicar over and over again. "They will all be so very much aggrieved. ”

“ At home, even so near as Cossethay, was the vicar, who spoke the other, magic language, and had the other, finer bearing, both of which she could perceive, but could never attain to. The vicar moved in worlds beyond where her own menfolk existed. Did she not know her own menfolk: fresh, slow, full-built men, masterful enough, but easy, native to the earth, lacking outwardness and range of motion. Whereas the vicar, dark and dry and small beside her husband, had yet a quickness and a range of being that made Brangwen, in his large geniality, seem dull and local. ”

“ We were standing just inside the room, and Vicky held her hand on a chair-back for support. There was the faintest light from the street, enough for us to distinguish one another's forms, but no more. Vicky wore a street gown of some sort, and a long cloak. On her head was a small hat, and a black net veil. This was tied so tightly that it interfered a little with her speech, I thought, though when I had looked at her face by my flashlight, the veil had not been of sufficient thickness to conceal her features at all. ”

“ The Vicar represses and reproves the violence of his enraged parishioners. The drawing is good; but it is not a subject we delight to look at; and we begin to fear that further on we shall fare worse. Why did not Mr Mulready give us the interview between the Vicar and his old acquaintance, Mr Jenkinson? Artists of skill like to show it in grouping, and prefer that to giving character. ”

“ I do not believe that there was a man in the whole Light Division but would have died to save that noble soldier. When the news flew that Vicars had fallen it seemed to work upon our men, and they were wrought up to a state of frenzy; and with all the enemy’s boasting, and with the overwhelming odds against us, we managed to shift them, and, so to speak, almost pitched them out of our batteries and trenches with the bayonet; and I should like to know what sort of a Briton he would be that would not follow such a man, such a two-fold soldier, as Captain Vicars. ”

“ Not until she entered the great bend of Vicksburg did she once come into contrast with anything that could in any degree diminish her regal supremacy. There, as day was breaking, she entered the deep shadow of the southernmost "Walnut Hill." The town on its crest was two hundred feet above her lower deck, and the stiff Yazoo squire, his kindly brother-in-law and sister and the Vicksburg merchant and his wife, waiting down there while she slowed up to the wharf-boat at its foot to let them and others off, were proud of the bluff and of the two miles of sister hills hid by it and the night. ”

“ And although we laugh at Moses and his gross of green spectacles, and the manner in which the Vicar's wife and daughter are imposed on by Miss Wilhelmina Skeggs and Lady Blarney, with their lords and ladies and their tributes to virtue, there is no laughter demanded of us when we find the simplicity and moral dignity of the Vicar meeting and beating the jeers and taunts of the abandoned wretches in the prison. ”

“ IV. But soon the Food was to enter upon a new phase of its work in him. In spite of the simple instructions of the Vicar--instructions intended to round off the modest natural life befitting a giant peasant, in the most complete and final manner--he began to ask questions, to inquire into things, to _think_. As he grew from boyhood to adolescence it became increasingly evident that his mind had processes of its own--out of the Vicar's control. The Vicar did his best to ignore this distressing phenomenon, but still--he could feel it there.
The young giant's material for thought lay about him. ”

“ The dispersion and departure of the good Vicar's family was an additional misfortune that his parishioners had not looked for. The living, more valuable for its pleasant house and pretty glebe than for its revenue, was in the gift of one who through life had been, not in appearance or profession only, but in most true sincerity, the attached friend of the late incumbent; and Edward Wallace, his eldest son, was bred to the church with the express understanding that the next presentation should be his. ”

“ The vicar sighed and closed his eyes—those full blue eyes that had once been bold and winsome, that were still keen. The old live mostly in the past, they are not often dull or lonely. At will they can summon a whole pageantry of love, and friendship, and eager strife. The vicar of Redmarley was much given to warming his hands at the fires of recollection. ”

“ At this the vicar held his peace in despair.
'I'd be a gipsy queen,' chimed in Deborah's treble voice. 'Dost not love the gipsies, Master Vicar? When I am a woman grown I'll run off and travel over the world—I will! Charlie does not love Latin; no more do I love Dame Marjory's lessons.' And forgetting her fear, she nestled up to the vicar's side and gazed up with her laughing dauntless eyes. ”

“ When Vico identifies truth with the made, he is aware that he must, according to a dogma of our religion, distinguish between what is created and what is uncreated. What is created is made; what is uncreated, begotten. He admires the divine elegance of the Holy Scriptures in calling the wisdom of God, in which the ideas of all things are contained, and the elements of ideas themselves, his Word: but when he would explain the conception of the Word, his expressions are very inexact ”

“ All individuals, all societies, all sciences, are thus concatenated and regarded as diverse aspects of a single all-comprehending unity. As a metaphysician and a jurist, Vico's claims to attention are very high, but do not properly fall within our scope. They are fully set forth by Professor Flint in his volume on Vico in Blackwood's Philosophical Classics. We can only treat of Vico where he comes into contact with history and literary criticism, as he does very remarkably in his criticisms upon Roman history and upon Homer. ”

“ Vike, who had been observing him, sprang right off the bulwark and tried most energetically to head him off.
The bird and dog met face to face, and it really seemed as if a conversation somewhat as follows took place.
Old Pen: "Hullo, what's your game?"
Viking: "I'm going to rush you back to your ship."
O. P.: "Your grandmother! I won't be rushed. I can swim better than you, and dive like a fish-hawk. So don't let us quarrel. In spring, you know, a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love. ”

“ The talk drifted to church and parish matters, and, as soon as he decently could, the curate took his leave, looking very much more depressed and anxious than ever. As he raised the latch of the Vicarage gate, a voice, whose sound he knew only too well, called to him by name; and, turning, he beheld Miss Caroline Cope, the Vicar’s daughter, pursuing him skittishly down the garden path. Miss Caroline was not young, neither was she amiable, and her appearance was quite remarkably unattractive. ”

“ Every one put on goloshes to climb or descend the hill to church. The Vicar and his wife came stepping over from the Vicarage close by like a pair of storks and when the bell stopped ringing it was as though another cloak of silence had been flung over Bridnorth village. ”

“ The little vixen!—Half an hour at the triangles! Ha-ha! ha, ha, ha!”
“She is a strange child,” said Vickers, “and talks strangely for her age; but you mustn't mind her. She is neither girl nor woman, you see; and her education has been neglected. Moreover, this gloomy place and its associations—what can you expect from a child bred in a convict settlement?”
“My dear sir,” says the other, “she's delightful! Her innocence of the world is amazing!”
“She must have three or four years at a good finishing school at Sydney. ”

“ What power had the vicar over Tom Brangwen—none. Yet strip them and set them on a desert island, and the vicar was the master. His soul was master of the other man's. And why—why? She decided it was a question of knowledge.
The curate was poor enough, and not very efficacious as a man, either, yet he took rank with those others, the superior. She watched his children being born, she saw them running as tiny things beside their mother. And already they were separate from her own children, distinct. Why were her own children marked below those others? ”