Letitia Elizabeth Landon

A woman's love is essentially lonely and spiritual in its nature—feeding on fancy, rather than hope—or like that fairy flower of the East, which floats in, and lives upon, the air. Her attachment is the heathenism of the heart: she has herself created the glory and beauty with which the idol of her altar stands invested.

In good truth, I hardly know—a Miss Arundel—a wood-nymph, the daughter of either a country squire or a clergyman—equipped, I suppose, by a mortgage on either the squire's corn-fields, or the parson's glebe land—[..]

Above all, let her eschew the impertinence of invention; let her leave genius to her milliner.

"The ancients referred melancholy to the mind, the moderns make it matter of digestion—to either case my plan applies," said Lady Mandeville.

I never knew any debatable point not maintained on both sides by unanswerable arguments; and yet you are angry that he has not thrown every advantage aside to enact your beau-idéal of patriotic excellence.

Motives are like harlequins—there is always a second dress beneath their first.

"But, sir," said Mr. Brande—who, being a traveller himself, considered that their injuries were personal ones—"look at the long years of obloquy and wrong, of taunts and doubts, which embittered Bruce's return home."

No one can deny Lady Charlotte Bury's assertion, that no well-regulated young female will ever indulge in a species of amusement so improper as flirtation; but it must be admitted, that having a pleasant partner is preferable to not dancing, and that a little persiflage, a little raillery, a little flattery, go far to make a partner pleasant.

Portraits are but the mirrors of lovely countenances.

And married she was, thanks to the affinities of landed property!

Charles's was just an exciting consciousness; and he paced the streets, sometimes roused into disdain of the busy and thoughtless crowd around, but oftener lost in gloomy dreams of that futurity whose depths he was so soon to explore.

The dwarf motioned to the surprised auctioneer to leave the room, reconducted him through the costly but melancholy apartments, and left him to remount his horse in the yew-tree avenue, without offering either rest or refreshment, though the night was considerably advanced.

"How strong is the love of the country in all indwellers of towns!" exclaimed Charles.

Strange that this idea carried with it something of exultation! so much does the pride of man rejoice in aught that marks him from his fellows, and little does it seem to matter whether that mark be for good or for evil.

"The two banks of the river embody the English nation," thought Charles; "there is its magnificence and its poetry, its terraces, its pillars, and its carved emblazonings; and on the other is its trade, its industry, its warehouses, and their many signs of skill and toil.

"Good and evil! good and evil!" thought he; "ye are mingled inextricably in the web of our being; and who may unthread the darker yarn?"

"One penny, sir!" He was roused at once from his abstraction; for it was a question to himself whether he had even that in his pocket. Sixpence was, however, discovered; he paid the toll, and passed on.

The following day the treasures of the mysterious tower came pouring in: pictures, statues, gems, shells, china, stuffed beasts and birds, tables, vases, petrifactions, arms, mandarins, &c. &c.; and among them the shagreen skin, with the injunction, "Sell it for any thing—nothing—give it away; only, get rid of it."

He saw the amber silk curtains wave to and fro: the middle window was open; in it stood a pillar of lapis lazuli, which supported an alabaster figure, Canova's Dansatrice.

Marks of violence were visible in every part; a cupboard had been forced open, and the contents of a chest of drawers were scattered about the room. The shop bore even more evident signs of spoliation—that reckless wastefulness which seems the constant companion of cruelty; but little of the grocery appeared to have been touched, excepting the sweet things.

The prodigal heir can only waste his own substance, and the punishment falls, as it should, upon himself; but the prince has an awful responsibility,—the welfare of others is required at his hands; his faults and his follies take a wide range, and not with him does their suffering end.

The Duchesse's boudoir was fitted up in a style of luxury utterly different from anything before familiar to the Carraras.

One day he came not: I was told, and truly, that business the most imperative required his personal attendance; yet I could not force the ghastly terror of his illness from my mind. I dared not tempt my fate by content—the agony which I suffered seemed a sort of expiation.

Francesca was soon disencumbered of her riding-hood and cloak; and the three young people, left together, became rapidly acquainted.

"Do not name it!" answered he, passionately. "God forgive me! I cannot yet bear its name. But for its ill-starred birth, Henriette might now be living. What is there in that unconscious infant to replace its mother?"

It was as if the countenance were for a brief while allowed to wear the likeness of the peaceful and spiritual world whither the soul had departed.

The mule knows the hidden pitfalls of the morass; the swallow feels the storm ere it comes upon the air, and wings to the quiet shelter of its nest—they foresee their dangers, and avoid them; while we blindly rush forward into the depths of the pit and the fury of the tempest; for we know not what evils await us. No kind foreknowledge gives us even the choice of avoidance.

Moreover, you must remember, even as children, Marie was ever more resolute than myself; and now, how little would she heed remonstrance of mine!

While from their lovely climate, the poets native to their sweet south, the old ruins hallowed with the memories of other days, the lovely paintings, the still diviner statues, which had been their constant companions—the character had imperceptibly caught a tone of romance, calculated long to resist the inroads of worldliness and deceit.

There was a tone, too, of pastoral poetry shed over the new scenes to which they were just introduced, that had a greater effect from the contrast to those, artificial and crowded, which they had just left.

Peace to the souls of the graveless dead! / 'Twas an awful doom to dree; / But fearful and wondrous are thy works, / O God! in the boundless sea!

However, the poor old lady is in great distress; she and her grandaughter are coming up to London, and I wish to give them all possible countenance and assistance.

"Yes," interrupted his uncle, with something between a smile and a sneer, "to decide on the merits of rival actresses; to bear away a few bon-mots from the coffee-houses; to see that the fashion of your hair is not too much behind hand; and to choose the newest embroidery for your waistcoat."

"Well, I promise you to circumscribe her conquests as much as possible by extending my own," returned Henrietta. "It will be an easy task; for Miss Churchill does not do 'the honours of her eyes.' I often tell her her beauty is quite wasted upon her."

"As you cannot make a speech, you must," said Henrietta, "put it into a treatise."

Ethel was silent from surprise: she had prepared herself for anger—even sorrow; but ridicule left her without an answer. What could she say to a hearer, who only smiled, and to whom emotion was only a scene in a pastoral?

Slowly her thoughts reverted to herself; the blood rushed to her brow. What would she be to-morrow? the mark for obloquy and ridicule! disgraced, and for what? to minister to the wretched vanity of one whom she loathed even more than she scorned.

"You must not come to me," answered her listener, "for a defence of society; I have long since loathed its bitterness as much as I despise its baseness. You cannot know the miserably mean motives that actuate the generality; but the trifles so sought give their own narrowness to the mind."

In each of the windows was a beaupot, and the roses were fresh, as if still on their native bough:...

As Hortense says of the gilded knicknackery of her saloon,— "Est-ce utile? C'est plus, c'est nécessaire."

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. / Their paths are paths of plenteousness, / They sleep on silk and down; / And never think how heavily / The weary head lies down.

Alas! she little conceived that, though without any apparent levity or disregard to the world's censure, yet from an obsequiousness and acquiescence to the will and pleasure of others, into what thoughtless indiscretion and want of due punctilio she might be led; rendering her, in the case of Philimore and Oriana, by favouring them in their secret union, a most dangerous intimate!

It was upon riches he founded his claim to importance; riches could alone supply the enjoyments of luxury; those voluptuous pleasures upon which the sensualist refines, and without which life appears but a mere vegetative existence, unproductive of enjoyment.

Yet however within my reach, however tempting they may appear, when I think upon the contrarieties, the restraints, the uncertainties that in this sublunary temporary sojourn would interpose their bane, the scene appears joyless, and I fly, rejoicing fly, to rest my hopes, faith, confidence on that base which is immutable, never-changing, never-ending; in a word, I fly to repose myself on the bosom of my God.

An Indian cabinet, consisting of a small but choice collection of petrefactions and fossils, was placed in a recess at the bottom of the room; a few paintings and portraits from the pencil of the most eminent artists adorned the walls.

Dissolute and vitiated alike, they confided in, and ever acted in mutual concert with each other's plans, according to the deep subtleties of their reasonings, which linked them together by some secret spell.

Even among the most experienced and discriminating of men, she rarely allowed the élite of the high-born or distinguished to escape her temporary allurements, so that she was the absolute horror, alike of the designing, whose baits she rendered nugatory, and the innocent attached ones, whose expectations she blighted, and whose young hearts were lacerated by the perfidy of those whom she misled.

Lady Anne could not repress one involuntary exclamation of "what an inconvenient time Mr. Granard had chosen for his death!" but otherwise she behaved with exemplary propriety. She retired to her dressing-room, which was duly darkened, and there she sat, a white cambric handkerchief in one hand, and a bottle of salts in the other.

Mary heard with sorrow, and fear also, of the projected journey; but the altered expression of Isabella's countenance was a great palliative—dreadful as it was that her husband should love another (and of that distressing fact it was impossible to doubt), his confidence was consoling; and her power to prove the firmness of her character, her right to his esteem, and the immolation of her happiness to further his desires, had, in itself, the sustainment which belongs to great sacrifice.

Had she known that prurient anecdotes, breaches of confidence, scandalous facts, and cruel observations, were intended to constitute the matter and to enhance the price, her very heart would have broken under the affliction such a disgraceful proceeding exhibited,...

Whether Lady Anne knew or suspected who it was that drew his steps from the purlieus of fashion he knew not, nor held himself bound to explain.

Much as it is the fashion to deride the nobility, by decrying their morality and denying their ability, even by those who have the entrée, and therefore may be supposed to know them the best, in point of fact, at the present day, there are amongst them an immense proportion of good and sensible people.

I impute my improvement more to the kind attentions of Lord Allerton, who is my companion still, and will not, I think, leave me, than to the sea air.

[N]o wonder that, although junior partner, and as modest as he was high-spirited, he trod his counting-house floor with a step vigorous and springy as the young captain of a man-of-war, for he felt that he was an emancipated slave; nay, more, a British merchant.

It was impossible to imagine anything more cold or comfortless, while it was a task of no small dexterity to thread your way through the labyrinth of trunks, bandboxes, &c.; for it had of late years become a maxim with Lady Anne that nothing ought to be thrown or given away:...

He was regular in his habits, parsimonious, and industrious; but he lacked all talent needed at the bar—he had neither address, nor eloquence, nor ingenuity.