Dariel: A Romance of Surrey

If any man came to me, and said, "You are going to tell your tale, good sir, without knowing how to handle it," I should look at him first with some surprise, and anger at his i...

It is said, and seems worthy of belief--though denied quite lately by a great Frenchman--that there are in the world no fairer damsels than those of our own dear island. Gracefu...

Mr. Jackson Stoneman was--so far as I could make him out, without having had six words with him--a very clever City-man, yet keeping two sides to his life, as he could well affo...

No man who has to contend with the world, and support those he loves against it, cares twopence about being taken for a fool by the people he has to contend with. Their opinion...

Some men there are whom it is a pleasure to observe at their daily work. How they swing their shoulders, and sway their arms, and strain the strong cordage of the bulky thigh, c...

Whenever my brother Harold deigned to visit us from London, we had not much time to do anything more than try to understand his last idea. If he had only been fond of society, o...

That evening we stuck to our work, like Britons, and got all the ricks combed down so well, and topped up ready for thatching, that the weather was welcome to do what it pleased...

According to Farmer Bandilow (who was now our last old tenant, striving to escape from the wreck of plough, by paddling with spade and trowel), the London season begins with tur...

"Yours very faithfully." Oh, if that were only written in earnest, instead of cold convention! To have, faithfully mine, the most lovely, and perfect, entrancing, enslaving, poe...

Alas! to come down from those pleasant heights, if ever I did attain to them, to the turbulent dissatisfaction with oneself, and contempt of every creature in the world, save on...

Although it may seem very wonderful to those who have never been in that state, nevertheless it is quite true, that in this condition of my feelings, the magnitude of no man was...

Surely as the world of night goes round, with clusters of stars thronging after one another, and loose wafts of vapour ever ready to flout them, and the spirit of dreams flittin...

If any one has followed my little adventures only half as carefully as I have tried to tell them, he will see that the time had now come and gone, for my second visit to St. Win...

In all matters of love there is a vast amount of luck. That there is of course in all human affairs, as far as we can interpret them; but what I mean is a larger element of luck...

There had not been, so far as I could recollect, anything that could be called even a tiff--if such a wretched syllable can find its way into the heaven seventy-seventh--between...

But, alas, this was easier said than done, like most things in this world of words. When I had put myself into choice apparel, with hat and tie exhibiting my College colours--wh...

Before I went away, which I was obliged to do without even a glimpse of Dariel, her father very kindly put this question to me, "Do you really wish to know more, my friend, of t...

Thus again, without any effort of his own, was the clever stockbroker quit of rivalry; for although the Earl did not leave the village for some weeks, he was not in a condition...

The manners and customs of that little colony, or settlement, or camp, or whatever it should be called--for I never found out the right name for it--differed from ours very wide...

But when I had fed my good horse that evening, and bedded him comfortably as he deserved, returning with a hock of cold bacon to my den, and a jug of ale which I needed sorely,...

In the calm air of the Sunday morning with the brook going gently by, I came to the entrance of the hoary ruins wherein I had first seen Dariel. A chapel with lines of grey flin...

"That which I have always admired in your nation, and that which has made you what you are, under the guidance of the Lord, is your natural gift of self-command. The race to whi...

"Perhaps you have gathered from my words already some idea of the character of Shamyl. An idea, and not a perception, was all that his dearest friends could have of him, because...

"Happiness appears to me to resemble the black eagle of the mountains more than the fair dove of the proverb. Restless and swift of wing, it flutters, scarcely long enough for a...

"It was late of an October afternoon, when my heart, which had been low with hunger, hardship, and long weariness, began to glow with hope and love, as I stood at the bottom of...

"In the morning I arose with all my strength renewed, and the sense of wrong as cold as stone, and keen as steel throughout me. My brother Stepan was at my side, for he had come...

"You understand from what I said, that my only son was gone as well, the eldest born of our fervent love, to whom with a pleasant conceit I had given the name of 'Origen,'--born...

When the Prince Imar's tale was told, and I thought of all he had been through, I could not find it in my heart, or even in good manners, to crave explanation of certain points...

Sûr Imar had spoken of happiness as resembling a mountain-eagle in the brevity of its visits, and the speed of its flight away from us, rather than the gentle dove whose nest is...

"Gone to the City, sir," said the man, who opened the door which I knew so well, and it had a few reasons for remembering my childhood, impressed or indented upon its lower pane...

"She didn't say that she could never care about me," replied the stockbroker, when I asked him what he thought. "If she had, you wouldn't see me here now. I should have been off...

It is all very fine for those fine people who can carry on like that. My sister Grace gave ten thoughts to every pound of her own butter, for one she could spare to every thousa...

However, these great reflections did not save me from being in a rather nervous state when Stepan, who was most obsequious now,--if such a word may be used of such a steadfast h...

When I was going home that night, a very strange thing befell me, which but for the mercy of Providence would have left me nothing more to say. Although there had been very litt...

Of the 26,250 days (which, after due allowance made for the little jangles of the sun and moon, are the up-cast of our living-time according to the wise man) that sage complains...

A small and well-measured breakfast-party, with the tea and the bacon and eggs provided, to expectation and experience, should not be disturbed by the sudden irruption of a roug...

Now when I had read Sûr Imar's letter, which I hastened to do by the light from the west at the very spot where he had told his tale, there was nothing (at least to a clay-heade...

In whatever condition a man may be placed, under the will of Heaven, there is generally something to alleviate it, if he seek perseveringly; and always something to aggravate it...

"Jack is getting on like a house on fire," Signor Nicolo wrote in an envelope enclosing a rather grimy letter, which I received on the following morning; "he has not had a class...

In spite of all anxiety, it was impossible to be anxious for the moment, in the company of this extraordinary fellow. Doubt is the most hostile and hateful element to all human...

Once I saw the solid keeper of a well-known elephant (a grand mass of sagacious substance, gentle, good, and amiable) try his hand among the monkeys, creatures in their way as w...

In proof of the critical, exacting, and thankless nature of the noble Briton, my father used to tell a little story savouring perhaps of the fable. Three excellent gardeners and...

In the days of yore, whenever any new pestilence or distemper fell from heaven upon the sons of men, the first thing to agitate the human mind was a strong and bitter controvers...

There are thousands of people (Englishmen especially, and Germans universally) who would find terrible fault with me--if they ever heard of it--for the absence of calmness and s...

The Cossacks had discharged their duty now, after seeing us into friendly hands, and in the morning they rode off to rejoin the detachment at Tiflis. We sent a letter of thanks...

Discovering nothing of any kind, concerning Sûr Imar and his daughter, after they had quitted Athens, we made up our minds that the proper course was to pay a visit to the Princ...

Thus far Cator, the attorney's clerk, had proved himself the most sagacious and quick-witted of our party; though Captain Strogue would have been amazed and indignant to hear me...

"I am Usi, of Ushkul, in the country of the Svâns; Usi the Bear-slayer was my name, as long as I lived among them. The custom of the country is that as often as a female child i...

"Seven days agone I was seeking in the woods, together with my wife and little ones, with the worst of the winter past behind us, and kind roots shining above the snow (which ha...

The Svâns are a strange and peculiar race, declared indeed by the few outsiders who have ever seen them and come back, to be the most original of mankind. And Usi proved at leas...

The amazement of those dogs at sight of me was beyond anything I ever did behold. They had seen so much of the world by this time, including a good deal of England, that they ha...

At midnight we stood by the door of the hut, and watched the broad bulk of Stepan, and the slender slip of Allai, sliding away into white breath among the black jaws of the moun...

While these men were arguing thus (failing with all their ingenuity, perhaps, to hit upon the true state of the case) a scene which they would have been glad to behold was takin...

Usi, the Svân, came up to me, in the first gleam of the morning, when the valleys were spiral snakes of white and the peaks were horns bedight with rose, as in a Roman sacrifice...

How long those ragged elders carried on with their pretence of trial, is beyond my power to say. I only know that my joints began to stiffen with cramp, and to ache with crush,...

What right had I to be out of breath, after standing stock-still no one knows how long, like a cardboard dummy to be shot at? But there seemed to be a hollow where my heart in i...

In recounting my little adventures--as I am begged sometimes to do--upon coming to this particular part my general practice is to stop, as if I had no more to say. Whereas it is...