LAURENCE STERNE. 1713-1768. Tristram Shandy. Vol. ii. Chapter xii. Go, poor devil, get thee gone; why should I hurt thee? This world surely is wide enough to hold both thee and me. Vol. iii. Chapter ix. Great wits jump.' Vol. iii. Chapter xi. Our armies swore terribly in Flanders, cried my uncle Toby, — but nothing to this. Vol. vi. Chapter viii. The accusing spirit, which flew up to heaven's chancery with the oath, blushed as he gave it in; and the recording angel, as he wrote it down, dropped a tear upon the word and blotted it out for ever. SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY. Page 1. "They order," said I, " this matter better in France." * "Good witts will jumpe." Dr. Covyham, Camden Soc. Pub., p. 20. In the Street. Calais. I pity the man who can travel from Dan to Beersheba, and cry, 'T is all barren. The Passport. The Hotel at Paris. Disguise thyself as thou wilt, still, Slavery, said I. still thou art a bitter draught. Maria. EDMUND BURKE. On the French Revolution. It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the Queen of France, then the Dauphiness, at Versailles ; and surely never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she just began to move in; glittering like the morning star, full of life, and splendor, and joy Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fallen upon her in a nation of * "Dieu mesure 1c vent a la brebis tondue."— Henri Estienne Pre'mices, etc., p. 47, a collection of Proverbs, published in 1594. To a close shorn sheep God gives wind by measure. Jacida Prudentum. George Herbert gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers. I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards to avenge even a look that threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone. Speech at Bristol on declining the Poll. 1780. The worthy gentleman who has been snatched from us at the moment of the election, and in the middle of the contest, whilst his desires were as warm, and his hopes as eager as ours, has feelingly told us what shadows we are, what shadows we pursue. SIR JAMES-MACKINTOSH. 1765-1832. Vindiciae Gallicae. (April, 1791.) The commons, faithful to their system, remained in a wise and masterly inactivity.* THOMAS PAINE. 1737-1809. Letter to the Addressers. And the final event to himself (Mr. Burke) has been that, as he rose like a rocket, he fell like the stick. * This expression is generally attributed to John Randolph. It is found in his speeches. 1828. The Crisis. No. 1. Age of Reason. Part ii. ad fin. (note). The sublime and the ridiculous are so often so nearly related, that it is difficult to class them separately. One step above the sublime makes the ridiculous, and one step above the ridiculous makes the sublime again." DON JOSEPH PALAFOX. 1780-1843. War to the knife. THOMAS B. MACAULAY. Edinburgh Review, Oct., 1840, on Ranke's History of the Popes. She (the Roman Catholic Church) may still exist in undiminished vigor, when some traveller from New Zealand shall, in the midst of a vast solitude, take his stand on a broken arch of London Bridge to sketch the ruins of St. Paul's.t * Probably the original of Napoleon's celebrated mot, "Du sublime au ridicule il n'y a qu'un pas." t For this figure, Mr. Macaulay is indebted to Kirke White, and more particularly to Shelley, in the Dedication to Peter Bull the Third. MISCELLANEOUS. From Apophthegms, etc., first gathered and compiled in From the Musarum Delicioe, compiled by Sir John Richard Grafton. Abridgement of the Chronicles of England. 1570. 8vo. "A rule to knowe how many dayes euery moneth in the yeare hath." Thirty dayes hath Nouember, Aprill, June, and September, February hath xxviii alone, And all the rest have xxxi. The Return from Parnassus. 4to. London. 1606. * See Butler's Hudibras, ante, p. 135. |