New Elegant Extracts: A Unique Selection ... from the Most Eminent Prose and Epistolary Writers ...

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Page 204 - He had a dark brown adonis, and a cloak of black cloth, with a train of five yards. Attending the funeral of a father could not be pleasant: his leg extremely bad, yet forced to stand upon it near two hours ; his face bloated and distorted with his late paralytic stroke, which has affected too one of his eyes, and placed over the mouth of the vault, into which, in all probability, he must himself so soon descend; think how unpleasant a situation ! He bore it all with a firm and unaffected countenance.
Page 283 - The spirit it is impossible not to admire ; but the old Parisian ferocity has broken out in a shocking manner. It is true that this may be no more than a sudden explosion ; if so, no indication can be taken from it ; but if it should be character, rather than accident, then that people are not fit for liberty, and must have a strong hand, like that of their former masters, to coerce them.
Page 227 - Chloe's nose till it is red and blue ; and then they cry, this is a bad summer ! as if we ever had any other. The best sun we have is made of Newcastle coal, and I am determined never to reckon upon any other. We ruin Ourselves with inviting over foreign trees, and make our houses clamber up hills to look at prospects.
Page 268 - Until very lately, I had never heard any thing of your proceedings from others ; and when I did, it was much less than I had known from yourself, that you had been upon ill terms with the artists and virtuosi in Rome, without much mention of cause or consequence. • If you have improved these unfortunate quarrels to your advancement in your art, you have turned a very disagreeable circumstance to a very capital advantage. However you may have succeeded in this uncommon attempt, permit me to suggest...
Page 180 - ... through his fingers, and were passed away like a shadow. What wonder then that I, who live in a day of so much greater refinement, when there is so much more to be wanted, and wished, and to be enjoyed, should feel myself now and then pinched in point of opportunity, and at some loss for leisure to fill four sides of a sheet like this ? Thus, however, it is, and if the ancient gentlemen to whom I have referred, and their complaints of the disproportion of time to the occasions they had for it,...
Page 344 - This mischief had not then befall'n, And more that shall befall, innumerable Disturbances on earth through female snares, And strait conjunction with this sex: for either He never shall find out fit mate, but such As some misfortune brings him, or mistake; Or whom he wishes most shall seldom gain Through her perverseness, but shall see her...
Page 209 - Yet to do the folks justice, they are sensible, and reasonable, and civilized ; their very language is polished since I lived among them. I attribute this to their more frequent intercourse with the world and the capital, by the help of good roads and postchaises, which, if they have abridged the king's dominions, have at least tamed his subjects.
Page 205 - HERE I am at Houghton, and alone ! in this spot, where (except two hours last month) I have not been in sixteen years ! Think what a crowd of reflections...
Page 206 - Robert lay, write it down, admire a lobster or a cabbage in a marketpiece, dispute whether the last room was green or purple, and then hurry to the inn for fear the fish should be over-dressed.
Page 219 - In a dispute, into which she easily falls, she is very warm, and yet scarcely ever in the wrong : her judgment on every subject is as just as possible, on every point of conduct as wrong as possible ; for she is all love and hatred ; passionate for her friends to enthusiasm, still anxious to be loved (I don't mean by lovers), and a vehement enemy, but openly.

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