English Traits |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
American aristocracy Bacon beauty better bishop Britain British Celt Chartist church civil Duke England English English nature Englishman Europe eyes force foreign French genius gentleman give Gothic art Greek heart Heimskringla honor horses hundred Inigo Jones island John Herschel king labor land Landor learned lishman live London look Lord Lord Collingwood Lord Eldon manners means miles mills mind nation nature never noble opinion Oxford Parliament persons Plato poetry poets politics praise race religion rich Saxon scholars Scotland sense Shakspeare ship society speak steam stone Stonehenge strength Tacitus talent taste temperament thing thought thousand tion told tone trade traits truth walk wealth whilst William of Wykeham Wilton House Wordsworth write York minster
Popular passages
Page 289 - There, I thought, in America, lies nature sleeping, overgrowing, almost conscious, too much by half for man in the picture, and so giving a certain tristesse, like the rank vegetation of swamps and forests seen at night, steeped in dews and rains, which it loves ; and on it man seems not able to make much impression. There, in that great sloven continent, in high Alleghany pastures, in the sea-wide skyskirted prairie, still sleeps and murmurs and hides the great mother, long since driven away from...
Page 156 - World should have no better luck, — that broad America must wear the name of a thief. Amerigo Vespucci, the pickledealer at Seville, who went out, in 1499, a subaltern with Hojeda, and whose highest naval rank was boatswain's mate in an expedition that never sailed, managed in this lying world to supplant Columbus, and baptize half the earth with his own dishonest name.
Page 149 - A much older traveller, the Venetian who wrote the "Relation of England," in 1500, says: "The English are great lovers of themselves and of every thing belonging to them. They think that there are no other men than themselves and no other world but England; and whenever they see a handsome foreigner, they say that he looks like an Englishman...
Page 241 - That it be a receptacle for all such profitable observations and axioms as fall not within the compass of any of the special parts of philosophy or sciences, but are more common and of a higher stage.
Page 114 - The sentiment of Imogen in Cymbeline is copied from English nature ; and not less the Portia of Brutus, the Kate Percy, and the Desdemona. The romance does not exceed the height of noble passion in Mrs. Lucy Hutchinson, or in Lady Russell, or even as one discerns through the plain prose of Pepys's Diary, the sacred habit of an English wife. Sir Samuel Romilly could not bear the death of his wife. Every class has its noble and tender examples. Domesticity is the taproot which enables the nation to...
Page 37 - The confinement, cold, motion, noise, and odor, are not to be dispensed with. The floor of your room is sloped at an angle of twenty or thirty degrees, and I waked every morning with the belief that some one was tipping up my berth. Nobody likes to be treated ignominiously, upset, shoved against the side of the house, rolled over, suffocated with bilge, mephitis, and stewing oil.
Page 149 - Scotch are much handsomer; and that the English are great lovers of themselves, and of everything belonging to them; they think that there are no other men than themselves, and no other world but England; and whenever they see a handsome foreigner, they say that 'he looks like an Englishman...
Page 105 - It is the maxim of their economists, " that the greater part in value of the wealth now existing in England has been produced by human hands within the last twelve months.
Page 29 - He proceeded to abuse Goethe's Wilhelm Meister heartily.. It was full of all manner of fornication. It was like the crossing of flies in the air. He had never gone further than the first part; so disgusted was he that he threw the book across the room.
Page 232 - The church at this moment is much to be pitied. She has nothing left but possession. If a bishop meets an intelligent gentleman and reads fatal interrogations in his eyes, he has no resource but to take wine with him.