If, any sunny forenoon, she had spread a little pair of wings and flown away before my eyes, I don't think I should have regarded it as much more than I had had reason to expect.

I was resolute in repulsing him; for I had determined when I went there, that no one should pity me or condescend to me. But he wrote me a letter. It led to our being engaged to be married.

Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show. To

He comes here at the peril of his life, for the realization of his fixed idea. In the moment of realization, after all his toil and waiting, you cut the ground from under his feet, destroy his idea, and make his gains worthless to him. Do you see nothing that he might do, under the disappointment?

attained her five-and-twentieth blessed birthday, of whom a prophetic private in the Life Guards had heralded the sublime appearance by announcing that

The relief of being at last engaged in the execution of the purpose, was so great to me that I felt it difficult to realise the condition in which I had been a few hours before.

was the year of Our Lord one thousand seven hundred and seventy-five. Spiritual revelations were conceded to England at that favoured period,

There are not many places that I find it more agreeable to revisit, when I am in an idle mood, than some places to which I have never been.

It was appointed that the book should shut with a spring, for ever and for ever, when I had read but a page.

It is when our budding hopes are nipped beyond recovery by some rough wind, that we are the most disposed to picture ourselves what flowers they might have borne, if they had flourished.

And the strongest emotion was that life was as precious as it was puzzling. It was an ecstacy because it was an adventure; it was an adventure because it was an opportunity.

Life: A compromise between Fate and Freewill.