The Essays of Elia: 1st Series

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Appleton, 1890 - 238 pages

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Page 162 - L , because he was so handsome and spirited a youth, and a king to the rest of us; and, instead of moping about in solitary corners, like some of us, he would mount the most mettlesome horse he could get, when but an imp no bigger than themselves, and make it carry him half over the county in a morning, and join the hunters when there were any out...
Page 161 - ... with the gilding almost rubbed out, — sometimes in the spacious old-fashioned gardens, which I had almost to myself, unless when now and then a solitary gardening man would cross me ; and how the nectarines and peaches hung upon the walls, without my ever offering to pluck them, because they were forbidden fruit, unless now and then...
Page 163 - I explained to them what coyness and difficulty and denial meant in maidens — when suddenly, turning to Alice, the soul of the first Alice looked out at her eyes with such a reality of representment, that I became in doubt which of them stood there before me, or whose that bright hair was...
Page 161 - ... those innocents would do her no harm"; and how frightened I used to be though in those days I had my maid to sleep with me, because I was never half so good or religious as she— and yet I never saw the infants.
Page 192 - While he was thinking what he should say to his father, and wringing his hands over the smoking remnants of one of those untimely sufferers, an odor assailed his nostrils, unlike any scent which he had before experienced. What could it proceed from ? — not from the burnt cottage — he had smelt that smell before— indeed this was by no means the first accident of the kind which had occurred through the negligence of this unlucky young firebrand.
Page 162 - ... old great house and gardens too, but had too much spirit to be always pent up within their boundaries ; and how their uncle grew up to man's estate as brave as he was handsome...
Page 40 - What a careless, even deportment hath your borrower! what rosy gills! what a beautiful reliance on Providence doth he manifest, — taking no more thought than lilies! What contempt for money, — accounting it (yours and mine especially) no better than dross!
Page 161 - I in particular used to spend many hours by myself, in gazing upon the old busts of the twelve Caesars, that had been Emperors of Rome, till the old marble heads would seem to live again, or I to be turned into marble with them...
Page 97 - The brain of a true Caledonian (if I am not mistaken) is constituted upon quite a different plan. His Minerva is born in panoply. You are never admitted to see his ideas in their growth — if indeed they do grow, and are not rather put together upon principles of clock-work. You never catch his mind in an undress. He never hints or suggests anything, but unlades his stock of ideas in perfect order and completeness.
Page 199 - I was to part with her pretty present ! — and the odour of that spicy cake came back upon my recollection, and the pleasure and the curiosity I had taken in seeing her make it, and her joy when she sent it to the oven, and how disappointed she would feel that I had never had a bit of it in my mouth at last. And I blamed my impertinent spirit of alms-giving, and out-of-place hypocrisy of goodness ; and above all, I wished never to see the face again of that insidious, good-fornothing, old grey impostor.

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