The Complete Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Volume 7Houghton Mifflin, 1898 |
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American ancient antique appeared arch aspect beautiful beneath better Blenheim built castle Cathedral centuries character chief mate church churchyard Consulate cottage Coventry delightful dinner Doctor of Divinity door edifice England English Englishman eyes face fancy feel feet garden gentleman girls grave gray Greenwich Park Hall hand Hawthorne heart honor hospital hundred impression inscription kind lady Leigh Hunt lived Liverpool London looked Lord marble Mauchline Mayor ment Michael Johnson NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE never old English passed perhaps person pleasant poet poor Queen Rhyl river Rock Ferry roof round scene seemed seen Shakespeare's side standing steamer stone stood strange Stratford-on-Avon street sunshine suppose talk things Thomas Birch tion tomb tombstones took tower town trees Uttoxeter venerable village walk wall Westminster Abbey Whitnash whole woman wonder young
Popular passages
Page 69 - You can meet this figure in the street, and live, and even smile at the recollection. But conceive of her in a ball-room, with the bare, brawny arms that she invariably displays there, and all the other corresponding development, such as is beautiful in the maiden blossom, but a spectacle to howl at in such an over-blown cabbage-rose as this.
Page 13 - I find that it would be a piece of poltroonery in me to withdraw either the dedication or the dedicatory letter. My long and intimate personal relations with Pierce render the dedication altogether proper, especially as regards this book, which would have had no existence without his kindness ; and if he is so exceedingly unpopular that his name is enough to sink the volume, there is so much the more need that an old friend should...
Page 12 - English critics seem to think me very bitter against their countrymen, and it is, perhaps, natural that they should, because their selfconceit can accept nothing short of indiscriminate adulation ; but I really think that Americans have more cause than they to complain of me. Looking over the volume, I am rather surprised to find that whenever I draw a comparison between the two people, I almost invariably cast the balance against ourselves.
Page 70 - American girls often fail to adorn themselves during an appreciable moment. It is a pity that the English violet should grow into such an outrageously developed peony as I have attempted to describe. I wonder whether a middle-aged husband ought to be considered as legally married to all the accretions that have overgrown the slenderness of his bride...
Page 35 - When our forefathers left the old home, they pulled up many of their roots, but trailed along with them others, which were never snapt asunder by the tug of such a lengthening distance, nor have been torn out of the original soil by the violence of subsequent struggles, nor severed fry the edge of the sword.
Page 137 - A doubt stole into her mind whether she might not have mistaken the depository and mode of concealment of those historic treasures ; and after once admitting the doubt, she was afraid to hazard the shock of uplifting the stone and finding nothing. She examined the surface of the gravestone, and endeavored, without stirring it, to estimate whether it were of such thickness as to be capable of containing the archives of the Elizabethan club.
Page 149 - I was but little interested in the legends of the remote antiquity of Lichfield, being drawn thither partly to see its beautiful cathedral, and still more, I believe, because it was the birthplace of Dr. Johnson, with whose sturdy English character I became acquainted, at a very early period of my life, through the good offices of Mr. Boswell.
Page 332 - Ah, what a mystery ! Slowly, slowly, as after groping at the bottom of a deep, noisome, stagnant pool, my hope struggles upward to the surface, bearing the half-drowned body of a child along with it, and heaving it aloft for its life, and my own life, and all our lives. Unless these slime-clogged nostrils can be made capable of inhaling celestial air, I know not how the purest and most intellectual of us can reasonably expect ever to taste a breath of it. The whole question of eternity is staked...
Page 383 - grumbled that gruff personage, shoving a decanter of Port towards me, " it is your turn next ; " and seeing in my face, I suppose, the consternation of a wholly unpracticed orator, he kindly added, " It is nothing. A mere acknowledgment will answer the purpose. The less you say, the better they will like it.
Page 48 - For a man, with a natural tendency to meddle with other people's business, there could not possibly be a more congenial sphere than the Liverpool Consulate. For myself, I had never been in the habit of feeling that I could sufficiently comprehend any particular conjunction of circumstances with human character, to justify me in thrusting in my awkward agency among the intricate and unintelligible machinery of Providence. I have always hated to give advice, especially when there is a prospect of its...