Wantage

“ He threw himself into the work with his usual enthusiasm, startled his brother officials with a proposal that they should visit the ‘out-poor’ at home, and once successfully chased a supposed bigamist, who had left a wife ‘on the parish’ at Windsor, into Oxfordshire. He took the opportunity of visiting the house at Burford reported to have been Lord Falkland's, and pushed on to Wantage, that he might see the birthplace of King Alfred. In 1817 he edited and published an edition of Fairfax's ‘Tasso’ (Singer's edition appeared in the same year) . ”

“ It is a righteous, holy cause you serve. I have sworn to the dead, pledged myself, to encompass a certain vengeance, which must not escape me now. I have lived for no other purpose. If I have seemed a cold, unfeeling father, stern, unsympathetic, and unloving, it is because I have a mission in life greater than that of a father. It is you who must help me to attain this ambition. Vengeance—honest, righteous vengeance—for a wrong done me and mine is a holy cause. No Japanese girl can regard it otherwise. The Prince of Mori is our bitter enemy. ”

“ Ay! Louder, Vengeance, much louder, and still she will scarcely hear thee. Louder yet, Vengeance, with a little oath or so added, and yet it will hardly bring her. Send other women up and down to seek her, lingering somewhere; and yet, although the messengers have done dread deeds, it is questionable whether of their own wills they will go far enough to find her!
“Bad Fortune!” cries The Vengeance, stamping her foot in the chair, “and here are the tumbrils! And Evrémonde will be despatched in a wink, and she not here! See her knitting in my hand, and her empty chair ready for her. ”

“ But how far will the ardency of desire prompt us on? For notwithstanding the many disputes and perplexities I had with myself, I at length resolved, right or wrong, to get one of these savages into my hands, cost what it would, or even though I should lose my life in the attempt. ”

“ Gaunt was a happy woman, and the saving of yourself into the bargain. Well, now, Captain Gaunt, will you deny another man, and that man a sailor, the very salvation that you had yourself?
Gaunt. Salvation, Christopher French, is from above.
Kit. Well, sir, that is so; but there’s means, too; and what means so strong as the wife a man has to strive and toil for, and that bears the punishment whenever he goes wrong? Now, sir, I’ve spoke with your old shipmates in the Guinea trade. Hard as nails, they said, and true as the compass: as rough as a slaver, but as just as a judge. ”

“ And in a while, having read these papers, I laid them by and rising, stumbled towards the open casement.
"Well, my lord?" says she in strange, breathless fashion, "And what now?"
"Why now," says I, wearily, "it seems my vengeance is yet to seek."
"Vengeance?" she cried, "Ah, God pity thee! Doth life hold for thee nought better?"
"Nought!"
"Vengeance is a consuming fire!"
"So seek I vengeance!"
"O Martin Conisby, bethink you! Vengeance is but a sickness of the mind—a wasting disease—"
"So seek I vengeance!" ”

“ A lasting, implacable vengeance was his, from the contemplation of which he drew a satisfaction which no possession of property could have given him. Nature had, with incorrigible perversity, cut him out for a life of ease, whilst endowing him with a character capable of very great things. ”

“ I wish it were. A will, deposited in the safe there, has disappeared. I cannot even guess at the consequences; ruin probably to me and to one of our best clients. Not only that. If things are to vanish so unaccountably from our strongholds, we must have an enemy at work, and it is impossible to foresee where it may end."
"How very strange! What was the will like? I mean, what did it look like? I have a reason for asking you."
"It was a folded parchment. You saw your father's will, Annabel: it looked very much like that. Why do you ask?" ”

“ In all disputes,——male or female, —whether for honour, for profit, or for love,—it makes no difference in the case;—nothing is more dangerous, Madam, than a wish coming sideways in this unexpected manner upon a man: the safest way in general to take off the force of the wish, is for the party wish’d at, instantly to get upon his legs—and wish the wisher something in return, of pretty near the same value,——so balancing the account upon the spot, you stand as you were—nay sometimes gain the advantage of the attack by it. ”

“ The young gentleman was by me, kneeling, kissing my hand, and with tears in his eyes, beseeching me to forgive him, and offering all the reparation in his power⸻It is certain, that could I, at the instant of regaining my senses, have call'd out, or taken the bloodiest revenge, I would not have stuck at it: the violation was attended too with such aggravating circumstances! though he was ignorant of them, since it was to my concern for the preservation of his life, that I owed my ruin.
But how quick is the shift of passions from one extreme to another! ”

“ If you seize the opportunities, which are many, you may have what you please by wishing for it. But the condition is in every case the same: the nature of the wish must be kept secret. You may journey to Jarrow, and sitting in Bede’s chair, make your wish; or, nearer at hand, there is a stone seat at Finchale Priory credited with the same power. If you see a horseshoe or a nail, pick it up, throw it over your left shoulder and wish; and wish also if you see a piebald horse, but you must manage to do so before you see its tail. ”

“ Has reason got anything to show in justification of this preliminary sacrifice of a conviction on which men have to act, whatever their theories may be? Must I surrender the conviction, that when I am seeing or touching I am actually having revealed to me something that is extended and solid, and that, as such, must be more and other than the private sensations and ideas of the person that is seeing and touching? Must this conviction, and others like it, on which human experience practically depends, be all sacrificed on the altar of authority and conjecture? ”

“ At least, if there be such an union, a conventual life is sure to give it every advantage in its range of internal debility, and external seductiveness.—That pretence of a wish to assist, without the power, or even the wish, that is so flattering both to the weak minds that exercise it, and the weaker on whom it is exercised. ”

“ He is just. As he has authority to avenge wrong, so it is his nature, and property, and honour. This also is implied in the title here given to him and repeated with such an emphasis, O God! to whom vengeance belongs, who wilt not suffer might always to prevail against right. This is a good reason why we must not avenge ourselves, because God has said, Vengeance is mine; and it is daring presumption to usurp his prerogative and step into his throne, Rom. ”

“ She had seen him flying from the house without waiting for the girl to recover consciousness. What finer scheme of vengeance could any woman hope for—and she had always heard that women were revengeful—than that which had been placed within her reach? ”

“ At any rate, we went to the wishing well, and the boon we sought we can now call our own. The question remains, are all desires granted, either through visits to wishing-wells or in any other way? The experiences of life give a definite answer in the negative. How then are believers in the power of wishing-wells to account for such failures? The rites were duly attended to, yet there was no result. Why was the charm not effectual? Any sincere answer to the question ought to be an acknowledgment of ignorance. ”

“ We would be more contented, no doubt, if we saw that sight visibly; our sense of justice is not satisfied with less; but then, in this world where so much is always hidden, we must take the actions of vengeance, as we take other things, on trust. With these few words, offered humbly, as an excuse for the good fortune that fell to the share of some culprits we have known, let us leave the village to virtue and indignation, and visit those culprits for the last time in their home. ”

“ Somewhere, perhaps on God's earth he wanders outcast, forsaken, loveless. I have my vengeance, but it is like Dead Sea fruit, all bitter ashes to the taste. I am a miserable, heart-weary wreck,—a woman with fame, without love.
"Vengeance is an arrow that often falleth and smiteth the hand of him that sent it." ”

“ Vengeance spoke in those ropes and in the carefully spread-out cards, and murder in the smothering pillow. The vengeance of one who had watched her corroding influence eat the life out of my honour and whose love for our little Roger was such that any deed which ensured his continued presence in the home appeared not only warrantable but obligatory. ”

“ But when our neighbors do wrong, we sometimes feel the fitness of making them smart for it, whether they have repented or not. The feeling of fitness seems to me to be only vengeance in disguise, and I have already admitted that vengeance was an element, though not the chief element, of punishment. ”

“ Tender-conscience. Sir, said Tender-conscience, I was recommended to you by one Good-will, who keeps yonder wicket-gate: For traveling from the town where I was born, in the valley of Destruction, toward the region of life, I came to the wicket-gate, as I was directed, and as soon as I had knock’d there, I was shot with these arrows that you see now sticking in my flesh, and when the gate was open’d, I made my condition known to Good-will, and told him, I was afraid some of my wounds were mortal, desiring him to acquaint me where I might find a physician ”

“ If his spirit of vengeance was justified, the spirit which had involved him in it was vile. Yet assuredly, sinner as he was, he had atoned a hundredfold. His back (he showed it me) was scored with ineffaceable marks of that discipline. His soul (and he showed me that too) was still deeper scored. He was delivered, had delivered himself, a fearful brand of retribution into my hand. ”

“ In this life the old miser never knew that his first judgment had been the just one, but the doubt which seems always to have haunted him—whether he had not helped to condemn the innocent—was the reason of his bequest to the convict’s wife, and explained much of the mysterious wording of the will. ”

“ I RENEW AN OLD ACQUAINTANCE For three days I remained shut into my rooms at the “Orient,” not daring to go out, a prey to the utmost nervousness and agitation. Do not suppose that on that account I was the less determined in my plans for vengeance. But revenge that lays itself open to retribution misses the better half of itself. I remembered my old friend Mr. Roper’s dictum, and beat my brains only for the means to strike with impunity. I was not from the first without a design. The difficulty was to give it practical effect; because for the moment I could not use Gogo. ”

“ It is your own thoughts that take bodily shape to haunt you. But this sad accident calls loudly for reparation and repentance. Confess your sins to God, Henry. Ask Him to forgive them—tell Him everything—your unhallowed wishes and desires, your hasty temper and revenge, your disregard of advice and entreaty. ”

“ He was quick to take an advantage, long-suffering, sly, nursing his revenge in silence like a vindictive slave, until at last the moment of retribution should be his; sufficiently truthful and brave to have grown noble in another atmosphere, but with a ready bent to underhand and brooding vengeance. ”

“ But when concession is made, when tears of penitence are wept, and when, in moments of returning confidence, that luckless tendency of temper is candidly confessed, and sincerely bewailed; when all the different acts committed under its influence, are acknowledged to have been wrong, how complete ought to be the reconciliation thus begun, and how zealous our endeavours for the future to avert the consequences of this sad calamity! ”

“ The slightest hint of my mission, the faintest breath of distrust, would lead to throat-cutting—and the throat would be mine; while the longer I lay in the village, the greater suspicion I should incur, and the closer would be the watch kept upon me.
In such a position some men might have given up the attempt in despair, and saved themselves across the border. But I have always valued myself on my fidelity, and I did not shrink. ”

“ This intensity of purpose, this readiness for fierce action if by no other means its ends could be attained, this constancy in vengeance which would wait through half a lifetime rather than forego punishment, these the qualities of an earlier time, of a simpler and freer world than his, fascinated him by their force and their absolute unlikeness to anything in his own life. ”

“ Since then, popular vengeance has considerably relaxed and the devising of painful forms of punishment has become almost a lost art. The new-born science, with its first powers of articulation, loudly repeat the words of Revelation, "Vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord." ”

“ No hunting down the adversary, no trampling upon him, no tearing away the suckling from the breast, for the sweetness of being revenged, have characterized our doings. Vengeance have we repudiated, or rather, I should say, not dared to handle, being, as we conceive, an attribute belonging solely to God, and too fearful to be entrusted to fallen man. ”

“ How many fall from Affluence to Want, from Splendor to a Goal, thro’ the Inveteracy of Revenge! Not all the Concessions of the opposite Party, not all the Tears of his Wife, nor the impending Ruin of his Children, can appease the Revengeful: Savage-like, he quits not his Hold till his Fury is glutted, till his Adversary is destroyed. Besides these, there are many other Species of Revenge, less obvious indeed, but perhaps not less criminal: there are Men whose Fury is less, but whose Malice is equal: Men with cooler Heads, but with inveterate Hearts. ”