Historical Novels

"Faint and more faint amid the world of dreams, That which once my all, thy image seems, Pale as a star that in the morning gleams."

"Love is a thing of frail and delicate growth ; Soon checked, soon fostered ; feeble, and yet strong : It will endure much, suffer long, and bear What would weigh down an angel's wing to earth, And yet mount heavenward ; but not the less It dieth of a word, a look, a thought ; And when it dies, it dies without a sign To tell how fair it was in happier hours ; It leaves behind reproaches and regrets. And bitterness within affection's well, For which there is no healing."

"... the green solitude of the Temple garden is the very place ... We leave the crowded street behind : we linger for a moment beside the little fountain, … It is, I believe, our only fountain, and all the associations of a fountain are poetical. It carries us to the East, and the stately halls of the caliphs rise on the mind's eye ; and we think over the thousand and one stories which made our childhood so happy, and stored up a world of unconscious poetry for our future years: or else it conjures up the graceful old Italian histories of moonlight festivals, when the red wine was cooled, and the lute echoed by the soft sound of falling waters. We leave the world of reality behind us for that of romance. That little fountain keeps, with its music, the entrance, as if to lull all more busy cares before we enter that quiet garden. Once entered in, how much lies around to subdue the troubled present with the mighty past! The river is below, with its banks haunted by memory."

"I confess I have a great disdain for the west end of the town. It belongs to the small, the petty, and the present. From Hyde Park Corner to Charing Cross, all is utterly uninteresting : then history begins."

"These are the things that fret away the heart Cold, careless trifles ; but not felt the less For mingling with the hourly acts of life."

"How often, in this cold and bitter world, Is the warm heart thrown back upon itself! Cold, careless, are we of another's grief; We wrap ourselves in sullen selfishness."

"There is not a more bitter pang than that which accompanies the desire to befriend, and the inability of so doing."

"This is one of the most unpleasant lessons that experience gives; and one, moreover, that it is perpetually giving; namely, that what we fancied was liking for ourselves, was in reality, the result of , calculation, or of amusement. We fancied we were liked, when we were only useful or entertaining."

"[From Lady Mary Wortley Montague]: It is very odd that quarrels, which are so pleasant in love, should be so odious in marriage. I believe it is that, in the first instance, they may have consequences ; in the last, they have none : your lover may fear to lose you ; your husband can only hope, and hope in vain : the lover dreads that every quarrel may be the last; the husband knows he may go on quarrelling to eternity !"

"[From Lady Mary Wortley Montague ]: Lawgivers were never more mistaken than when they ordained that the conjugal tie should last through life for better and worse ; the last injunction being strictly complied with. There should be septennial marriages, as well as septennial parliaments! … In life it is the irrevocable that is terrible : while there is change, there is hope. We should keep each other in much better order if, at the end of seven years, there were to be a reckoning of grievances. It would be a good moral lesson to many a husband, to come down on the seventh anniversary and find his tea not made, and his muffin not buttered. These are the things that come home to a man's feelings !"

"Both had a great deal to say, and yet the conversation languished ; but we have all felt this after a long absence : confidence is a habit, and requires to be renewed. We have lost the custom of telling every thing; and we begin to fear that what we have to tell is scarcely worth being told. We have formed new acquaintances ; we have entered into other amusements; we feel that our tastes are altered; and we require a little while to see if the change be mutual."

"It merely shews, after all, that affection is a habit."

"The serious things of life are its keenest mockeries. The things set apart for laughter are not half so absurd as those marked out for tears."

"Why, life must mock itself to mark how small Are the distinctions of its various pride. ‘Tis strange how we delight in the unreal; The fanciful and the fantastic make One half our triumphs. Not in mighty things — The glorious offerings of our mind to fate — Do we ask homage to our vanities, One half so much as from the false and vain : The petty trifles that the social world Has fancied into grandeur."

"Real feeling is shy of expression;"

"[From Lady Marchmont]: Universal conquest should be the motto of our sex. Every woman should try to make every man she sees in love with her."

"The presence of perpetual change Is ever on the earth; To-day is only as the soil That gives to-morrow birth."

"England may be deficient in public gardens, but where are there so many private ones, each the delight of their master, and the household that have planted their shrubs, and watered their flowers? What little worlds of affection and comfort are bounded by the neat quickset-hedge, quiet and still as the nest of some singing-bird !"

"A woman's first look is at the dress of her friend, and her second word is of jt."

"There is something peculiarly lovely in the almond-blossom ; it brings the warmth of the rose on the last cold airs of winter, a rich and glowing wreath, when all beside is desolate : so frail, too, and so delicate, like a fairy emblem of those sweet and gentle virtues whose existence is first known in an hour of adversity."

"[From Lady Marchmont]: A swan always gives the idea of a court-lady, — stately in her grace, ruffling in her bravery, and conscious of the floating plumes that mark her pretensions. The peacock is a coquette ; it turns in the sunshine, it looks round as if to ask the conscious air of its purple and gold ; but the swan sails on in majestic tranquillity, it sees the fair image of its perfect grace on the waters below, and is content …"

"Disbelief in excellence is the worst soil in which the mind can work ; we must believe, before we can hope."

"Only by looking up, can we see heaven."

"The tears started, but pride repressed them ; or, rather, pride is no name for the sensitive and shrinking feeling which trembles even at compassion for its misery."

"Much may be said in favour of a long walk on a summer twilight ; the heart opens to the soft influences of the lovely hour; but those very influences distract us from ourselves. The eye is caught by the presence of the beautiful : the violets, half hidden in the long grass ; a branch of hawthorn, heavy with its fragrant load ; a cloud, on which the crimson shadow lingers to the last: — these are too fair to be passed by unnoticed ; they take us from our discourse with a half unconscious delight. Moreover, before the calm and subduing aspect of nature, human cares feel their own vanity. The lulling music of leaves, stirred only by the gentle wind, enters into the soul ; and the sweet, deep drawn, breath brings its own tranquillity."

"A friend is never alarmed for us in the right place."

"[From Constance’s letter]: Nothing but love can answer to love ; no affection, no kindness, no care, can supply its place : it is its own sweet want."

"Age is a dreary thing when left alone : It needs the sunshine brought by fresher years; It lives its youth again while seeing youth, And childhood brings its childhood back again."

"It is well that the body sometimes sinks beneath the mind ; …"

"How awful is the presence of the dead ! The hours rebuked, stand silent at their side Passions are hushed before that stern repose ; Two, and two only, sad exceptions share— Sorrow and love,—and these are paramount."

"And yet it is a wasted heart : It is a wasted mind That seeks not in the inner world Its happiness to find ; For happiness is like the bird That broods above its nest, And finds beneath its folded wings, Life's dearest, and its best."

"Youth has one delightful time, when hope walks, like an angel, at its side, and all things have their freshness and their charm. There appears so much to enjoy, that the only question is, what to enjoy first ?"

"Now, nothing is more provoking to a woman than a lover's infidelity ; it is a wrong which leaves her without even the satisfaction of revenge. His very infidelity shows that she has lost her power ; and without power, where is revenge ?"

"... no woman likes anybody but herself to depreciate a lover; it is personally an ill compliment."

"[From Lady Marchmont]: We contradict each other; still more do we contradict ourselves. It seems to me as if there were a perpetual warfare going on between the outward and the inner world. Nothing is really what it appears to be ; and this is what discourages me more than I can express—the not knowing to what I may trust, and my utter inability to discern between that which is; and that which only seems."

"[From Lord Norbourne in reply]: Half the misery in this life originates in its falsehood. We conceal our thoughts and our feelings, till, even to ourselves, they become confused ; and half our time is spent in fretting and feverish attempts to disentangle the webs we have woven : and the strange thing is, that all this dissimulation is unnecessary ; we should have done far better without it."

"Few, save the poor, feel for the poor; The rich know not, how hard It is to be of needful food And needful rest debarred."

"There is no denying that there are "royal roads" through existence for the upper classes; for them, at least, the highways are macadamized, swept, and watered. They are surrounded not only by luxuries, but by pleasures, which, at all events to the young, must have the zest of novelty. It seems to me the veriest fallacy to say that the lots in life are weighed out in equal balances : the difference is very great—to the examiner, sad ; and to the sufferer, bitter ! Before we talk of equality of pain, which is, in nine cases out often, only a selfish and indolent excuse for neglect, let us contrast a high and a low position together. On one side is protection, instruction, and pleasure ; on the other is neglect, ignorance and hardship. Here, wants are invented to become luxuries ; there, “hunger swallows all in one low want." Among the rich, body and mind are cultivated with equal watchfulness ; among the poor, the body is left to disease and to decrepitude, and the mind to void and destruction. I grant that I speak of the two extremes ; but it is the worst ill of social existence that there should be such extremes."

"Villas are, I believe, a delightful invention of the Romans, who set very seriously about enjoying the world they had conquered. … The climate and the scenery of England are admirably adapted to the perfection of a villa. The great charm of our landscapes is their colouring—so quiet, yet so refreshing. The fine old trees, and the fine old tree standing by itself, are peculiar to our fields ; the rich sweep of grass so vividly green, the prodigality of garden flowers, and a sky whose intense blue owes the depth of its purple to the white clouds which float above in broken masses,—all these belong to a style of natural beauty which is entirely English."

"Nothing more strongly marks the insufficiency of luxuries than the ease with which people grow accustomed to them; they are rather known by their want than by their presence. The word "blasé" has been coined expressly for the use of the upper classes."

"It matters not its history—Love has wings, Like lightning, swift and fatal : and it springs, Like a wild flower, where it is least expected; Existing whether cherished or rejected."

"[From Sir George Kingston]: Poets lay it down as a rule, that deities are not to extricate a hero from his embarrassment unless there remain no human method of extricating him."

"… of all duties, forgetfulness is the hardest to fulfil. The very effort to forget teaches us to remember."

"Of all habits, that of writing down your thoughts and feelings, is one of the most difficult to abandon."

"[From Lady Marchmont’s journal]: There are some people who ought never to dream of commonplacing the ideal with themselves. The world of the heart is essentially ideal : it collects all poetry,—innate and acquired ; it is fastidious, dreaming, and delicate; and is a question of taste as well as of feeling ; and it is to this world that love belongs. It should be kept as far apart from lower life as that mysterious world of stars and clouds on which I am now gazing."

"[From Lady Marchmont’s journal]: … I hate the word "ought"—it always implies something dull, cold, and commonplace. The "ought nots" of life are its pleasantest things."

"—one woman—always knows how to plague another;"

"It is said that ridicule is the test of truth : it is never applied, but when we wish to deceive ourselves ; when, if we cannot exclude the light, we are fain to draw a curtain before it. The sneer springs out of the wish to deny ; and wretched must be the state of that mind which desires to take refuge in doubt! But the instinct of right and wrong is immutable ; all other voices may be silenced, but not that in ourselves."

"I have been writing all my life, and even now I do not understand the faculty of composition ; but this I do know, that the history of the circumstances under which most books are written would be a frightful picture of human suffering. How often is the pen taken up when the hand is unsteady with recent sickness, and bodily pain is struggled against, and sometimes in vain ! How often is the page written hurriedly and anxiously,—the mind fevered the while by the consciousness that it is not doing justice to its powers!"

"The imaginative temperament is full of vivid creations, of fanciful imagery, and sudden thoughts, all of which are impelled by their nature to communication ; and to find that this communication interests or amuses, is a powerful stimulus. The vanity is at once encouraged and gratified ; while the present small triumph is too readily taken as earnest for a greater one. The vanity I speak of, is vanity of the highest and best kind ; it belongs to the class of our most ethereal emotions ; it asks "golden opinions from all ranks of men," because it is keenly susceptible, and has an even feminine craving for sympathy ; it asks not so much praise as appreciation; it is generous and self-devoted : still it is vanity. There is also in mental exertion an absolute necessity for re-action : how often do the thoughts, long confined to one subject, crave, as it were, to spring out of themselves, or to run off in any opposite direction !"