Sous

“ To the South all is soft and delicious; the eye reposes upon a few rich pastures, a moderate reach of the river, sufficiently tranquil to form a mirror to the sun, and the bounding hills beyond, neither too near nor too lofty to exclude, even in winter, any portion of his rays. ”

“ In the twinkling of an eye we have come into the kingdom of the South. With a deep breath of the sharp-scented sunny air, we inhale the beauty of it, and{170} understand—how intimately!—that horror of high mountains which has distinguished every race capable of appreciating beauty. Our recollection of the black gorge, the barren peaks, the swirling torrent, renders still keener our feeling for the fertile plain where the blood-red boughs of the Judas-tree make their deep southern blots of colour against the blue of the delicate, serrated hills behind. ”

“ Here in my den it’s quiet; the sea-wind taps on the pane;
There’s comfort and ease and plenty, the smile of the South is sweet.
All that a man might long for, fight for and seek in vain,
Pictures and books and music, pleasure my last retreat. ”

“ Whenever I go southward, if it be only twenty miles, I begin to look out for the south, prepared as I am to find the careless grace of those latitudes even in things of which it may, be said that they may be south of something, but are not southern. ”

“ One in the North and one in the South, the great lonely rocks rise sheer from the sea as if set apart as resting-places where the glorious pinions might be folded for a while, and the effulgence of the angelic countenance, too overwhelming for man to bear as it comes straight from the Presence of God, a little tempered and veiled by the mists of sorrowful earth. ”

“ And though the way is long when one must creep and hide and crawl, and go to the south one day, to the southwest another, and the southeast another, yet the end cometh at last, and I have hope it be a good end. ”

“ Why need I travel to seek a site, and consult the points of the compass? My eyes are south windows, and out of these I command a southern prospect. The eye does the least drudgery of any of the senses. ”

“ Southward through day and dark,
They drift in close embrace,
With mist and rain, o'er the open main;
Yet there seems no change of place.
Southward, forever southward,
They drift through dark and day ”

“ The descent on the south side is much more precipitous and wonderful than the ascent from the north. On the south, the rocks are craggy and stupendous; the little river falls headlong down; it is not a stream, it is one broken, panting cascade far away in the gulley below, in the darkness. ”

“ Can any, the most inattentive Observer, be at a Loss to pronounce, in a Moment, which is the North or South Side of any Building in the Country? The same difference between the South or North Aspect of a Mountain or a Hill, or even a Tree, is equally striking to the Attention of an Indian ”

“ If I could fly, I would away to those realms of light and warmth—far, far away in the southern clime, where the wants of the body should [486] be few, and where the vigour of life should be great. The glorious south is, like the joyous time of youth, full of hope and promise: all is sunny and bright: there, flowers bloom and birds sing merrily. ”

“ We sat and laughed at them as we dashed by, swinging south, and southeast to east, and even to northeast, and then east again, southeast and south and on around to the west, a great double curve where the river nearly tied a knot in itself. ”

“ You have thus, easily and clearly memorable, twelve countries, distinct evermore by natural laws, and forming three zones from north to south, all healthily habitable—but the races of the northern-most, disciplined in endurance of cold; those of the central zone, perfected by the enjoyable suns alike of summer and winter; those of the southern zone, trained to endurance of heat. ”

“ So by the law of perspective, as we look up, we behold ridge below ridge of jewel- work resting on the golden columns, and glowing with transmitted light. The background, shutting in the court, is a screen of delicate metal work, the details standing out against the bright glare of day. ”

“ Your business in the South, Brother Junior?" J. W.—"As the sun in the South, at high meridian, is the beauty and glory of the day, so stands the Junior Warden in the South, the better to observe the time of high twelve; call the craft from labor to refreshment; superintend them during the hours thereof; see that none convert the hours of refreshment into that of intemperance or excess; call them again in due season; that the Most Excellent Master may have honor, and they profit thereby." M. E. M.—"The Senior Warden's place in the Lodge?" J. W.—"In the West, Most Excellent." ”

“ The North invents, the South supplies the tools, the East the hands, the West the patrons and critics of the work, while out of the yellow heart of the city comes the gold, the incentive to the North, South, and East. ”

“ Here is a view of life at the South. As a traveller accidentally catches a sight of a family around their table, and domestic life gleams upon him for a moment; as the opening door of a church suffers a few notes of the psalm to reach the ear of one at a distance, this letter, written evidently amidst household duties and cares, discloses, in a touching manner, the domestic relations of Southern families and their servants wherever Christianity prevails. ”

“ No mountains infringe on the curve. League after league the earth lies flat, heaves a little, is flat again. Only in the south, where a group of fists and fingers are thrust up through the soil, is the endless expanse interrupted. ”

“ A woman fully developed, heart and body full of the South from bright head to nimble feet, as the South is full of beauty; free as the birds that cleaved her native air with strong, untiring wings; unlearned in all emotion whether of love or of hate ”

“ South, as great a wit as a preacher, has separated, by an awful interval, the superior and the domestic. "A servant dwells remote from all knowledge of his lord's purposes; he lives as a kind of foreigner under the same roof; a domestic, yet a foreigner too." ”

“ Travel through the South and you will be struck with the general misfit and dilapidated appearance of things. Palings are missing from the fences, gates sag on single hinges, houses are unpainted, window panes are broken, yards unkempt and the appearance of a squalor greater than the real is seen on every side. ”

“ The lamps are lighted facing the south, and this is the only occasion on which this is done, because the south is the realm of death, and no one will sleep or have their house door opening towards that ill-omened quarter of the sky. ”

“ When I go out of the house for a walk, uncertain as yet whither I will bend my steps, and submit myself to my instinct to decide for me, I find, strange and whimsical as it may seem, that I finally and inevitably settle southwest, toward some particular wood or meadow or deserted pasture or hill in that direction. ”

“ High rocky hills, as blue as sapphire, closed the view, and between these lay ridge upon ridge, heathery, craggy, the sun glittering on veins of rock, the underwood clambering in the hollows, as rude as God made them at the first. ”

“ But the calmest region is the upland, where human life is spread out beneath the bodily eye, where the mind roves from the peasant’s nest to the spiry town, from the schoolhouse to the churchyard, from the diminished team in the patch of fallow, or the fisherman’s boat in the cove, to the viaduct that spans the valley, or the fleet that glides ghostlike on the horizon. ”

“ The scenery of the South below the mountain regions, seldom impresses at first, but it grows upon acquaintance; and in a little while, where once all things looked monotonous and unattractive, we learn to discover sweet influences that ravish us from ourselves at every step we take, into worlds and wilds, where all is fairy-like, wooing, and unchangingly sweet. ”

“ A sparhawk in the rain, breast torn away,
His beating heart in view, his burning eyes!
“But everyone will see, the North will see,
Our cause was theirs, the South’s cause was the cause
Of everyone both north and south. They’ll see
Their liberties not long survive our own. ”

“ They are very attentive to the Positions of the Sun and Stars, and on the Lakes can steer their Course by them. The different Aspects which the Hills exhibit on the North Side, from that which the South has impressed on their Eyes, suggest, habitually, at the Moment, in every Spot, an almost intuitive Knowledge of the Quarters of the Heavens which we, mechanically, mark by the Compass. ”

“ You and the North Wind have built your lodge strong, but each wind, the North and the East, and the West, and the South, has its time for the earth. Now South Wind is calling me; return you to your big lodge in the sky. Travel quick on your way that you [Pg 337] may not fall in the path of the Sun. ”

“ All the outspread miracle there lies fan-shaped to the south, south-east, south-west, having that warmth which so makes the heart rejoice the moment one passes over and looks southward from any mountain. ”

“ Look at the birds; there's not a colored bird in the north that hasn't come from the south; look at the shells and the corals, and the flowers and the people; look at the sun. No, the south holds everything worth having or seeing. ”

“ Here we managed with extreme difficulty and great peril to get again out of the shallows aforesaid, into which we had sailed as into a trap, between them and the land, for which happy deliverance God be praised; the shallows extend South and North, from 4 to 9 miles from the mainland, and are 10 miles in length from East to West. ”

“ I never saw the South Downs look so glorious or so mountainous as they looked with their crowning of mists and their dark shadowed bases. To realise the full beauty of the downs you must see them in all weathers and not in sunshine alone. Sunshine is cheerful, but sunshine is a tamer ”

“ The interior, so far from being lower, is higher than the level of the land outside of this range. Several rivers—perhaps we might say all of any importance that we are as yet acquainted with—take their rise inside of the range, and force their way through it to the sea. ”

“ Toward the southeast is a verdant sea of plants, without a trace of elevation, tree after tree, bush after bush, plantation after plantation, while houses, villas, and churches, dazzling with whiteness, peer out from among the green. ”

“ The South is a beautiful, a luxuriant region, where, ‘lapped in Elysium,’ you may dream your soul away; but the West is a magnificently vigorous land, whose clarion voice summons you to action. The South might be illustrated by a beautiful epicurienne, like India—the West only by a vigorous young Titan, like”——
251“Whom?”
“Mark Sutherland!” answered Rosalie, with her eyes sparkling with delight. ”

“ She thought of the golden zones in which gentlemen were bred, and figured with so excellent a grace; zones in which wisdom and smooth words, white linen and slim hands, were the mark of the desired inhabitants; where low temptations were unknown, and honesty no virtue, but a thing as natural as breathing. ”

“ THE BALLAD OF EAST AND WEST Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet, Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God's great Judgment Seat; But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth, When two strong men stand face to face, tho' they come from the ends of the earth! ”

“ Booth
But I have thought.
I know I shall be hated by the North,
And doubted in the South, it may be, yet
God’s will be done. For in a day to come
My name will shine as shines the name of Brutus,
Whose spirit is in me and speaks to me.
Could you have seen, as I have seen, the woes
And horrors of this war in every state,
Then you would pray, as I have prayed, to God
To give the Northern mind pity and justice,
And dry this sea of blood. Alas! my country! ”

“ I at once swum off to the south, for there was no telling how long I'd have to swim, and as the water was sort of cool, I thought best to go south, because the further south you go the warmer the water gets. ”

“ Night over isle and sea rolled her curtain of stars,
Then a trouble awoke in the air, the east was banded with bars;
Dawn as yellow as sulphur leaped on the mountain height;
Dawn, in the deepest glen, fell a wonder of light;
High and clear stood the palms in the eye of the brightening east,
And lo! from the sides of the sea the broken sound of the feast! ”

“ However, I will admit that the land that surrounds it has a trick of turning this way or that; and so, if one is standing upon the plain and facing north, he is likely to find himself suddenly facing west—or east—or south. ”

“ Now a very common trait in books of both kinds is the author's fondness for pointing out the differences between the people of the southern part of a particular country and the people living in the northern part. You are familiar with the distinction. The inhabitants of the south are hot-headed, amorous, given to mandolin playing, and lacking in political genius. The people of the north are phlegmatic, practical, averse to love-making, unimaginative, readers of the Bible, and tenacious of their rights. ”

“ Standing on the middle ground, between the angry sectionists of the North and the South, she will present a haven in which the rivals may meet, and learn to estimate each other's good qualities, and bury or forget those errors which are inseparable from humanity. ”

“ What "south lands," and "springs of water," are pictured in that beau-ideal "on earth as it is in heaven"! Well my second page has spoken of a land very far off from the haunted region described in the first; but to "turn over a new leaf" is easier in a letter than in a life. Thy idea of the next ten years altering us less than the last will perhaps prove true ”

“ In this underground region the talk of gentlemen, who have waxed warm over their cups, may be carried on ever so rudely, without danger of its reaching the delicate ears of those fair sylphs skimming through the corridors above. ”