The King's Highway

For the right understanding of all that is to follow--strange as it may appear to the reader, we are only just at the beginning of the story--it may be necessary to go back to t...

A spirit--though rather of a better kind than that which drags too many of our unfortunate countrymen into the abodes of wickedness and corruption, now called Gin Pal--es, so li...

If we were poets or fabulists, and could invest inanimate objects with all the qualities and feelings of animate ones; if, with all the magic of old AEsop, we could make pots an...

A PAUSE of expectation, even if it be but for a minute, is sometimes the most painful thing in the world; and the heart of poor Laura at that moment, while the door was being sl...

During the greater part of the next day Wilton did not set eyes upon Lord Sherbrooke. The Earl of Byerdale, however, was peculiarly courteous and polite to his young secretary....

Far more punctual than was usual with him. Lord Sherbrooke was at the door of Wilton Brown exactly at the hour he had appointed; and, getting into his carriage, they speedily ro...

It was night, and the large assembly of persons who had thronged the palace at Kensington during the day had taken their departure. Silence had returned after the noise and bust...

When Wilton Brown reached the house of the Earl of Byerdale, he found that nobleman, the Duke of Gaveston, and Lord Sherbrooke, sitting together in the most amicable manner that...

"Onward! onward!" cries the voice of youth; whether it may be that the days are bright, passing in joy and tranquillity, and we can say with the greatest French poet of the pres...

The first person that entered the room after the lady quitted it was Monsieur Plessis himself, who, with a light in his hand, came quickly on before the rest, and gave a rapid g...

"You were always a kind and an affectionate boy, Wilton," he said; "and you have kept your good feelings unchanged, I am happy to find. Depend upon it, when one can do so, among...

It was the ninth hour of the evening on the following day when a carriage stopped at the gates of Newgate, and a lady got out and entered the prison. It was by this time dark, f...

It may be made a question of very great doubt, whether the faculty--and it is indisputably a faculty of the mind in its first freshness--the faculty of wondering at anything ext...

It was evident to Wilton, that whatever was the enterprise in which Lord Sherbrooke and Green were engaged, it was one which, without absolutely wanting confidence in him, they...

Those were days of pack-saddles and pillions--days certainly not without their state and display; but yet days in which persons were not valued according to the precise mode of...

That there are epochs in the life of every man, when all the concurrent circumstances of fortune seem to form, as it were, a dam against the current of his fate, and turn it com...

There came a pause after the conspirators were gone, and the Duke of Berwick gazed down upon the floor for a moment or two, as if thinking of what was next to be done.

The light was fading away as Wilton took his path through the thick trees of the park up towards the lodge at the gates; but at the first opening where the last rays of the even...

We have said that Wilton Brown paused and gazed through the mist at the figure of a man advancing towards him, and to the reader it need not be told who the person was that thus...

Had Wilton Brown wanted an immediate illustration of the fragile nature of man's purposes, of how completely and thoroughly our firmest resolutions are the sport of fate and acc...

The whole of the Earl's dark scheme was cleared up to Wilton's eyes in a moment; and the secret of his own fate was only given to him in conjunction with an insight into that bl...

How often is it that a new acquaintance, begun under accidental circumstances, forms an epoch in life? How often does it change in every respect the current of our days on earth...

It was about the hour of noon, and the day was dull and oppressive. Though the apartments assigned to the Duke were high up, and in themselves anything but gloomy, yet no cheeri...

The events that happen to us in life gather themselves together in particular groups, each group separated in some degree from that which follows and that which goes before, but...

Wilton was sincerely pained and grieved for the Duke; and the moment that he had seen Laura safely on her way towards Beaufort House, he hastened to seek the Earl of Byerdale, s...

The Duke's dinner in the Tower was over. He had been much agitated all day, and Laura had been agitated also, but she had concealed her emotions, in order not to increase those...

you so overwhelmed with business, I did not like to be absent for any length of time. I should have gone down, indeed, as I had promised, on Saturday last, to have come up on Mo...

The world was in all its summer beauty, nature smiling with her brightest smiles, the glorious sunshine just departing from the sky, and glowing with double brightness in its dy...

William III. was seated in a small cabinet, with a table to his right hand on which his elbow rested; an inkstand and paper were beside him; and on the other hand, a step behind...

The horseman of whom we have spoken in the last chapter rode slowly on about two hundred yards farther, and there the servant advanced and opened a gate, by means of which the p...

As soon as the Earl of Byerdale was gone, the Duke called Laura from her room, and told her what had been proposed. "Laura," he said, as he concluded, "you do not answer me: but...

A scene curious but yet painful presented itself to the eyes of Lady Laura and her father on entering the dining-room of Lord Sunbury's house. On the side of the room opposite t...

"Oh, my dear boy," she cried, "this has been a terrible night, but she is better: there is every hope of her doing well. The ball has been extracted in a moment, the bleeding ha...

For nearly ten days after the events which we have recorded in the thirtieth chapter of this volume, and while the principal part of the events were taking place of which we hav...

IT is wonderful how scenes of danger and difficulty--it is wonderful how scenes of great excitement of any kind, indeed--draw heart to heart, and bind together, in bonds indisso...

is nothing which keeps man or woman virtuous but want of opportunity. It is a terrible satire; it is more than a satire; it is a foul libel, aimed by the vicious against those w...

For once--perhaps the only time that ever such a thing happened in this world--hope and expectation were not disappointed. Wilton seated himself by the side of Laura, the postil...

A few weeks made a considerable change in the progress of the life of Wilton Brown. He found the young Lord Sherbrooke all that he had been represented to be in every good point...

There is a strange and terrible difference in this world between the look forward and the look back. Like the cloud that went before the hosts of the children of Israel, when th...

In the royal closet, at the palace of Hampton Court, stood King William III. leaning against a gilt railing, placed round some ornamental objects, near one of the windows. The f...

Having now run on for some time, following almost entirely the course and history of one individual, painting none but the characters with whom he was brought into immediate con...

The day which we have just seen terminate at Kensington we must now conduct to a close in another quarter, where events very nearly as much affecting the peace and safety of thi...

Though the weather was hot and sultry, and the summer was at its height, yet the evening was gloomy, and low, angry clouds hung over the distant line of the sea, when, under the...

It was about two days after the period of which we have spoken, when the Earl of Sunbury, caring very little for the loss he had met with on the road, and thinking of it merely...

Journeys were in those days at least treble the length they are at present. It may be said that the distance from London to York, or from Carlisle to Berwick, could never be abo...

Now whatever might be the effect of all that passed, as recorded in the last chapter, upon the mind of Harry Sherbrooke, it is not in the slightest degree our intention to induc...

Wilton Brown, on quitting the King, did not find Lord Sherbrooke where he expected; but little doubting that he should have to encounter a full torrent of wrath from the Earl of...

Amongst all the curious changes that have taken place in the world--by which expression I mean, upon the world, for the great round ball on which we roll through space is the on...