The North British review

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1868
 

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Page 118 - The imperfect offices of prayer and praise, His mind was a thanksgiving to the power That made him; it was blessedness and love!
Page 210 - Sin has educated Donatello, and elevated him. Is Sin, then — which we deem such a dreadful blackness in the universe — is it, like Sorrow, merely an element of human education, through which we struggle to a higher and purer state than we could otherwise have attained? Did Adam fall, that we might ultimately rise to a far loftier paradise than his?
Page 184 - ... whether hatred and love be not the same thing at bottom. Each, in its utmost development, supposes a high degree of intimacy and heart-knowledge; each renders one individual dependent for the food of his affections and spiritual life upon another; each leaves the passionate lover, or the no less passionate hater, forlorn and desolate by the withdrawal of his subject.
Page 187 - In the old countries, with which fiction has long been conversant, a certain conventional 'privilege seems to be awarded to the romancer ; his work is not put exactly side by side with nature ; and he is allowed a license with regard to every-day probability, in view of the improved effects which he is bound to produce thereby.
Page 358 - Wherefore I chose my portion. If at whiles My heart sinks, as monotonous I paint These endless cloisters and eternal aisles With the same series, Virgin, Babe and Saint, With the same cold calm beautiful regard...
Page 496 - The applause of listening senates to command, The threats of pain and ruin to despise, To scatter plenty o'er a smiling land, And read their...
Page 192 - When I first saw the room its walls were blackened with the smoke of unnumbered years, and made still blacker by the grim prints of Puritan ministers that hung around. These worthies looked strangely like bad angels, or at least like men who had wrestled so continually and so sternly with the devil that somewhat of his sooty fierceness had been imparted to their own visages.
Page 310 - J'ai perdu jusqu'à la fierté Qui faisait croire à mon génie. Quand j'ai connu la Vérité, J'ai cru que c'était une amie ; Quand je l'ai comprise et sentie, J'en étais déjà dégoûté . Et pourtant elle est éternelle, Et ceux qui se sont passés d'elle Ici-bas ont tout ignoré. Dieu...
Page 210 - All towns should be made capable of purification by fire, or of decay within each half-century. Otherwise, they become the hereditary haunts of vermin and noisomeness, besides standing apart from the possibility of such improvements as are constantly introduced into the rest of man's contrivances and accommodations. It is beautiful, no doubt, and exceedingly satisfactory to some...
Page 194 - They have the pale tint of flowers that blossomed in too retired a shade, — the coolness of a meditative habit, which diffuses itself through the feeling and observation of every sketch.

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