Historical Novels

"Time, of which so little has been measured, seems so very long — we soon learn the worldly lesson, that friends are easily replaced, and still more easily forgotten."

"There is a grief which may darken a whole life, shut up the heart from every influence but its own, remain unchanged through every change of various fortune, flinging its own shadow over all that is fair, its own bitterness into all that is sweet; but that grief is the silent and the secret — it goes abroad with a smooth brow and a smiling lip — it knows not the relief of tears, and words it disdains. None have fathomed its depths, for its existence is denied; pride is mingled with its strength, for the hidden soul knows there is that within which parts it from its kind, and perhaps triumphs even in such agonising consciousness. With such the spirits often seem buoyant without a cause — often too guy for the occasion. The truth is, that society is to them as a theatre; and what actor is there who does not occasionally over act his part ? Few ever penetrate their dark and weary seclusion, for few ever look beyond the surface, unless actuated by some hope, fear, or love of their own, and then their feelings blind their judgment. Such motives turn all objects into mirrors, which reflect some likeness, even if distorted, of themselves. We conjecture, question, desire, anticipate — do everything but observe. And slight, indeed, are the tokens by which the seared heart betrays itself. But it has its signs ; there is that real disregard of the pleasures in which it shares, half as a disguise, half to avoid the trouble of importunity. But the eye, however trained to attention, will wander; the set smile becomes absent — weariness is pleaded as an excuse — and lassitude serves as the cloak to indifference. Moreover, though almost unconsciously, the words have a biting and shrewd turn — the opinions are either harsh or given with undue levity — contradiction is almost habitual — and the feelings, denied the resource of sympathy, take refuge in sarcasm."

"But the heart is its own world, and the outward influence takes its tone from that within."

"That certain sign of intense selfishness — he never gave any one credit for a good motive, for he believed no one better than himself."

"A high and generous nature is always trustful."

"Who has not observed in the daily intercourse of domestic life, that the very subject we have been striving to avoid, or planning to disclose, is sure to defeat our best-laid scheme, and start up before us when least expected?"

"There is something peculiarly mournful in the sound of the autumn wind. It has none of the fierce mirth which belongs to that of March, calling aloud, as with the voice of a trumpet, on all earth to rejoice ; neither has it the mild rainy melody of summer, when the lily has given its softness and the rose its sweetness to the gentle tones. Still less has it the dreary moan, the cry as of one in pain, which is borne on a November blast ; but it has a music of its own — sad, low, and plaintive, like the last echoes of a forsaken lute — a voice of weeping, but tender and subdued, like the pleasant tears shed over some woful romance of the olden time, telling some mournful chance of the young knight falling in his first battle, or of a maiden pale and perishing with ill-requited love. Onward passes that complaining wind through the quiet glades, like the angel of death mourning over the beauty it is commissioned to destroy. At every sweep down falls a shower of sapless leaves — ghosts of the spring — with a dry, sorrowful rustle ; and every day the eye misses some bright colour of yesterday, or marks some bough left entirely bare and sear; and ever and anon, on some topmost branch, as the foliage is quite swept off, a deserted nest is visible — love, spring, and music, passed away together."

"There is nothing more dreary than a new-made grave — so bare, so desolate, so comfortless, with the cold stones, and damp gravel scattered all carelessly round. After a little while the long grass and the sweet wild flowers sanctify the place — even as, in the human heart, gentle memories and subduing time throw a kindly soothing over the first bitter and rigid suffering."

"[From Francisco di Carrara]: … gold is the earthly deity, to whom is intrusted the destinies of humanity. It is power, it is pleasure, it is love ; for even affection may be bought by gratitude. What can a king give to his bravest but wealth ? How can the lover surround the loved with the lovely but with wealth ? Nay, will it not,[“ added he, with a scarce perceptible sneer, “]buy even salvation from our holy church ? There is only one thing on earth more glorious, and that is science ; …"

"[From Francesca]: … and life is more easily parted with than happiness."

"There is something in the shadowless sky and the unbroken moonshine which mocks us with repose. We have no part in it ; our own unrest has no sympathy with the blue and spiritual horizon, whose hope is not with this life. The calm and quiet light is not of our busy and careful world; it belongs to sleep, to silence, and to dreams ; and, alas we gaze on it with the beating heart and the fevered pulse, while the thousand vain delusions of past and future cast their various shadows before our eyes. Who stands watching in the sleepless midnight, but one from whose pillow repose is banished by one all-present thought? Ambition, hate, love, alike have their vigils; and what have they in common with the cloudless sky, where the moon wanders, placid as the spirit of the good when resigned to die, and confident and filled with another and holier sphere ?"

"Winter softens into spring, spring blushes into summer, and summer ripens into autumn, — all going on into increased good. But autumn darkens into winter, and is the only quarter that ends as the destroyed and the desolate. There is in autumn no hope, that prophetic beautifier of the foregone year."

"[Of Sir Robert Evelyn]: [He might have said, that] if there be one habit more than another the dry-rot of all that is high and generous in youth, it is the habit of ridicule."

"The customary scaffold has its own awe — justice and obedience and usage surround the place ; but to die a violent death, and by the hand of man, amid life's daily scenes, all associations so domestic and so ordinary, aggravates the ghastly spectacle, and makes the doom seem at once cruel and undeserved."

"That transient but most lovely hour which follows the sunset was now melting away in the far recesses of the forest. A few gleams of richer hues still lingered in some of the crimson clouds which yet treasured up a sunbeam ; but the great expanse was filled with that pure and pale purple, so soon to merge in deeper gloom, or to tremble into silvery light beneath the radiant and rising moon. The glorious dyes of autumn— autumn, that comes in like a conqueror, but departs like a mourner — were upon the boughs, but lost in that undistinguishing light which subdued all things with its own gentle tinting."

"[From Sir Robert Evelyn]: Opinion should guide in public affairs, not feeling. Opinion is grounded on circumstance, on observation, and on reflection. Feeling acts from impulse, which sees but half. Excitement leads to enthusiasm, that moral intoxication, whose effects seem incredible to the sober, while the influence which produces the extravagance appears more extraordinary than the act itself."

"Conspiracies, like all other exercises of human ingenuity, are of very different kinds."

"Perhaps there is no moment when beloved objects are so much beloved, as on the return from a long absence. … Assuredly meeting after absence is one of — ah, no ! — it is life's most delicious feeling."

"Distrust is an acquired feeling — we never doubt till we have been deceived ;"

"… there are many follies in this world, but none so foolish as regret."

"No one can feel gay by moonlight ; the influence is as overpowering as it is solemn. There are a thousand mysterious sympathies, which act upon our nature, and for which we can render up no account ; and the power of this mournful and subduing beauty may be more easily acknowledged than analysed. But the young, the buoyant, and the glad, feel it. They wander alone, and the thoughts unconsciously take a tone of tender melancholy. Alas ! it is some dim prophecy of the future, with all its cares and its sorrows, that floats upon the atmosphere; and we are penetrated by the effect, though the cause be unrevealed."

"No woman can see with indifference the man whom she once loved devoted to another."

"And, truly, strong nerves are required to steal at midnight through a lonely suite of rooms, haunted by vague imaginings, and all the terrible superstitions and records accumulated on the past."

"— and disdain is sorrow's most certain consolation."

"It is wonderful how some words ever were invented, for they express what does not exist—confidence is among the number; confidence is what no human being ever really had in another."

"I have often been told that my writings are too melancholy. How can that be a reproach if they are true ? and that they are true, I attest the sympathy of others and my own experience."

"Good Heaven! even to myself how strange appears the faculty, or rather the passion, of composition ! how the inmost soul developes its inmost nature on the written page! I, who lack sufficient confidence in my most intimate friends to lay bare even an ordinary emotion — who never dream of speaking of what occupies the larger portion of my time to even my most familiar companions — yet rely on the sympathy of the stranger, the comprehension of those to whom I am utterly unknown. But I neither ordered my own mind, nor made my own fate. My world is in the afar-off and the hereafter, — to them I leave it."

"There are some moods which are singularly profitless; and such is that of allowing the thoughts to wander into combinations of past events with creations never likely to occur."

"We need to suffer ere we understand the language of suffering ; but, Heaven above knows ! it is very generally understood. And hence the charm of the sad, sweet page, which idealises our anguish, and makes sorrow musical : if it does not come home to all, it does to the mass."

"We talk of the influence of education — in what does it consist ? Here were two with the same blood flowing in their veins, born under the same roof, nursed by the same mother, playmates in the same nursery, surrounded by the same scenes, pursuing the same studies, subject to the same rules, rewarded by the same indulgences — never till the age of eighteen having been parted for a day; and yet were these two as opposite as if they had never known one circumstance in common."

"But, alas ! those who are heirs of the future, destined to fill the earth with the immortal and the beautiful, what is their share in the present? the sad and the weary path — the bowed down and broken heart ! … But the young look to the goal, not to the road ; and well it is for them so to do ; they would never reach it but for such onward gaze."

"The first struggle between light and darkness is a dreary hour, — the air is so raw, so cold; the want of rest is then most severely felt ; sleep avenges itself for its dismissal by sending stupor in its place ; and the relaxed nerves and worn-out spirits presage the misfortunes which they yet lack strength to meet."

"Some few have fallen in pleasant places ; it is folly to say that we share and share alike."

"Ah ! the weight of actual existence forces us to dream an unreal one."

"Besides, there is a strong current of romance in every feminine nature, that delights in the hazardous and the mysterious, especially in love affairs."

"It is wonderful how, for the day or two after death, all that was lovely in life comes back to the face ; the pure marble whiteness of the skin, the closed eyes, the features in such deep stillness, like those of a statue wrought in the highest ideal of art, but with that impressed upon them which was never yet the work of mortal hand."

"Many have a horror of looking upon the dead — they are wrong ; futurity and peace are written on the composed and beautiful countenance; it suggests the idea of an intellectual slumber."

"Good God ! how dreadful a penalty exacted of mortality, to think that we must turn with unconquerable disgust from all that was once so dear, and with that affection strong in our hearts as ever! And yet the revolting triumphs over the spiritual and the tender feeling."

"The vanity of weeping, which in time works out its own consolation, is at first but the aggravation of sorrow."

"The future is written in the past ; and if we prophesy, it is with eyes that look behind."

"Who knows how many links we may have to ascend in the vast cycle of worlds around, ere we arrive at the one which is knowledge — where we may look before, and after, and judge of the whole ? How many stages of probation may we yet have to pass !"

"It is a strange refinement in our modern times, that we should leave it to the hired mourner to pay that last tender office, the last sign of care for their remains that can be given on earth, to those whom we have loved dearer than ourselves. Few but have known the wretchedness of such a morning — but have listened to the noise of strangers in a chamber so long silent as the grave. The moving of the coffin, the carrying it downstairs, the heavy steps, the creaking stairs, the opening doors, are a terrible contrast to the deep stillness that had before reigned throughout the house."

"We ask of that which answers not. But when we recall how feverish, how wretched, how incomplete has been the life of mortality, we feel that the present owes us a future."

"We talk of the happiness of childhood ! — in what does it consist ? — in the denied delight, and in the enforced task ! Think how the child must turn from the wearisome page, whose future value it is impossible then to appreciate. Think, too, with what unkindness and what injustice they are often treated ! How often must the infant heart swell with the quick sense of oppression, when the caprice of an angry moment punishes the fault which has been often passed over, till impunity had appeared a right! And yet restraint is a necessity. Every indulgence from the first exacts some bitter penalty ; and we dread and curb the present, for the sake of the retribution which ever lies amid the shadows of the future."

"Or, to pass on to youth, with its warm feelings, so sensitive to the return which they will not meet, so sure in a few passing years to be crushed and withered ; but at what expense of misery, let each ask of the records from his own remembrance! True, its hopes are sweet, and its spirits buoyant ; but how soon are those hopes disappointed, and those spirits broken down for ever ! How often during that period of fervour and of heart burning, must we be forced to shrink within ourselves with all the mortifying consciousness of unreturned affection, of ill-placed confidence, of too kind, and hence erroneous, judgment. The time while such ordeals are being passed, and such lessons being learned, cannot be one of much happiness."

"Look at the arduous exertion required of middle life; the thronging anxieties that spring up for others more than for ourselves ; the constant downfall of our best-laid projects; the disappointment attending on the result of those which had mocked us with success; the weariness which gradually steals over the mind; the daily increasing sense of the worthlessness of ever}'thing ; the mournful looking back on the many friends who have parted from our side, some gone down to the grave, but more parted from us by the estrangement of cooled attachments and jarring interest. We have lost, too, all those fresh and beautiful emotions which, if they could not make a world of their own, at least flung their glory over the actual one. These are departed, to return no more; and in their places have come discontent, suspicion, in difference, and, worst of all, worldliness."

"The lasting works of philosophy and poetry, the long-enduring efforts that have been wrought in marble, the pyramids whose age we know not, the statue still a vision of beauty, the influence that individual minds have exercised over their kind, — all these are types of that immortality which gives life to our present, and will give eternity to our future."

"All who have long been shut up in-doors know the almost intoxication of their first walk in the free wind and glad sunshine — the common expression of "you do not feel your feet," or "you seem to tread on air," so completely express the sensation."

"This is a pleasant hour in human existence — the hour after some unusually agreeable fête — agreeable from its homage to yourself; just enough fatigued for languor, but not for weariness — enough to make you enjoy the loosened hair, the careless robe, and the indolent armchair ; while the spirits are still in a state of excitement, the tones of the music, or yet more musical words, still floating in your ear ; your own light replies yet living on the memory, and the fancy animated by their vivid recollection."

"[From Marie, now Comtesse de Soissons]: Praise should be given unguardedly and eagerly — rather as it were a relief to express one's feeling —"