The Marble Faun, Or, The Romance of Monte Beni, Volume 2Houghton Mifflin, 1860 |
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altar answered Kenyon antique Apollo Belvedere Appian artist asked Beatrice Cenci beauty behold beneath blessing breath carnival cathedral church Cimabue confessional Corso crime dark dear friend delightful divine Donatello dreary earth earthly evil exclaimed eyes face faith fancied Faun feel felt fling flowers Fra Angelico gaze giallo girl guilt hand happy haunts heart heaven Hilda hither holy human idea imagination innocent Italian Italy kneeling knew lamp light look maiden marble Miriam mirth Monte Monte Beni Montefiascone mortal mystery NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE nature never nymph once palaces penitent Perugia piazza picture poor Praxiteles priest replied Kenyon Roman Roman Senator Rome saint Scarlet Letter scene sculptor seemed sepulchral shrine signor smile sorrow soul spirit splendor stood strange street sunny sunshine sweet sympathy tell tender things thought threw throng Tomaso tower transept truth Twice-Told Tales Virgin voice wandered wild wine woman words
Popular passages
Page 110 - ... left her, worn out with shivering at the cheerless and smoky fireside by day, and feasting with our own substance the ravenous little populace of a Roman bed at night, - left her, sick at heart of Italian trickery, which has uprooted whatever faith in man's integrity had endured till now, and sick at stomach of sour bread, sour wine, rancid butter, and bad cookery, needlessly bestowed on evil meats, - left her, disgusted with the pretence of holiness and the reality of nastiness, each equally...
Page 78 - But there is reason to suspect that a people are waning to decay and ruin the moment that their life becomes fascinating either in the poet's imagination or the painter's eye.
Page 253 - Hilda was coming down from her old tower, to be herself enshrined and worshipped as a household saint, in the light of her husband's fireside. And, now that life had so much human promise in it, they resolved to go back to their own land; because 'the years, after all, have a kind of emptiness, when we spend too many of them on a foreign shore. We defer the reality of life, in such cases, until a future moment, when we shall again breathe our native air; but, by and by, there are no future moments;...
Page 165 - Nobody, I think, ought to read poetry, or look at pictures or statues, who cannot find a great deal more in them than the poet or artist has actually expressed. Their highest merit is suggestiveness.
Page 247 - ... threads have been knit together ; for the sagacity by which he is distinguished will long ago have taught him that any narrative of human action and adventure — whether we call it history or romance — is certain to be a fragile handiwork, more easily rent than mended. The actual experience of even the most ordinary life is full of events that never explain themselves, either as regards their origin or their tendency.
Page 114 - It was a shadow in the sunshine of festal days ; a mist between her eyes and the pictures at which she strove to look ; a chill dungeon, which kept her in its gray twilight and fed her with its unwholesome air, fit only for a criminal to breathe and pine in ! She could not escape from it. In the effort to do so, straying farther into the intricate passages of our nature, she stumbled, ever and again, over this deadly idea of mortal guilt.
Page 47 - But, for my own part, if I had an insupportable burden, — if, for any cause, I were bent upon sacrificing every earthly hope as a peace-offering towards Heaven, — I would make the wide world my cell, and good deeds to mankind my prayer. Many penitent men have done this, and found peace in it.
Page 110 - Rome in such a mood as this, we are astonished by the discovery, by and by, that our heart-strings have mysteriously attached themselves to the Eternal City, and are drawing us thitherward again, as if it were more familiar, more intimately our home, than even the spot where we were born.
Page 225 - Was that very sin, - into which Adam precipitated himself and all his race, was it the destined means by which, over a long pathway of toil and sorrow, we are to attain a higher, brighter, and profounder happiness, than our lost birthright gave? Will not this idea account for the permitted existence of sin, as no other theory can?
Page 220 - And she revealed a name, at which her auditor started, and grew pale ; for it was one that, only a few years before, had been familiar to the world, in connection with a mysterious and terrible event. The reader — if he think it worth while to recall some of the strange incidents which have been talked of, and forgotten, within no long time past — will remember Miriam's name. " You shudder at me, I perceive," said Miriam, suddenly interrupting her narrative. " No ; you were innocent,