The Remarkable History of Sir Thomas Upmore, bart., M.P., formerly known as "Tommy Upmore"

Many people seem to find the world grow worse, the more they have of it; that they may be ready to go perhaps to a higher and better region. But never has this been the case wit...

My dear mother always says, and allows no contradiction about it, that this whale, being all bones and blubber, had no right whatever to come ashore there, and to set me against...

All Europe had concluded long ago, that the Government of England had left itself no other blunder to commit, and no further disgrace to fall into. But all Europe was wrong in t...

When one has been wronged by the outer world, the sooner he gets back to the bosom of his family, the likelier will he be to bear it well; and as soon as the Champagne was finis...

Perhaps it was lucky for me, that my mother had failed to amaze Lady Twentifold, with the elegance of her apparel. But after having taken all that trouble, and lost all her comf...

Although I had seen the Tower of London,--when our van went to a wharf close by,--and even the new City prison, and several magnificent houses built by brewers, all these were n...

My mother, who was very sharp about some things, could not have failed to discover from me, or else from Uncle Bill, who was as simple as a child, that he had spent a long time...

What is a fame, that overleaps distinctions? And how may a poor fellow get hold of it? I knew a man once, who could crackle all his knuckles, like a pair of four-chambered revol...

Such a weight came off the heart of good Uncle William, and such a relief was afforded to his ribs--where the parcel had made a great hole, as he showed me like the postmaster's...

Being older now, by several years, than when I had expected to be cut up all alive, and having been taught by Professor Megalow, that science is not of necessity cruel, I manage...

"Now let us go back, as fast as we can," she said, when she had wrapped up my wrist very softly, with her muslin handkerchief--which I took care never to restore to her; "the ti...

For some years now, I had a quiet time, increasing in knowledge very gradually, but as fast as my teachers thought needful. For the only true way to get on in learning, is not t...

It appeared to me now, that my education might fairly be entrusted to myself, at least until after Christmas-time; but whether it was, that my dear parents were eager to push me...

I have often been taunted, by people who know nothing (multiplied into a million fibs) about me, that my mind is as volatile as my body, and goes about, in an unsettled manner,...

"But," said my father to Mr. John Windsor, who was urging him to leave home for a while, that Joe Cowl's anger might blow over; "people pretend not to understand it, John; but y...

My mother was so frightened, at the fright I had been through, that she took it for an urgent sign from Heaven, that my education should be stopped at once. Having had as much o...

Few and far apart the days are, such as came out of the heaven just then, when the stoutest Briton, and his wife, can find no hole ready-made, or to be well picked, in the weath...

Anything of that kind makes me sad; because I am in such a struggle to believe, what everybody now has settled long ago--and the younger he is, the more he feels it--that all ou...

On the very day before I went to Corpus College, Oxford, my mother did a thing she had never done, nor allowed to be done before. She took me to the Standard-man, who was ready...

When I came to know what I had done, through shameful levity, and heedlessness, and selfish triumph and greedy ways--for that crab had much to do with it--also through laziness,...

My father, Bucephalus Upmore, had been, at the time of my birth, a Radical, and owed his conversion from loose ideas to no amount of argument, or even of wider observation, but...

How easy it is, for a good-natured man to be taken for the opposite; and yet how hard for ill-natured people, to put on the guise of kindness! Not that the world is distinctly d...

While a fact is under fifty years of age, surely it is early days to despise it, as if in its dotage, and to traduce it as a mere tradition. Yet this was already, at the time I...

It was five years now, since I had first gone up, (without any intention of doing so) from the surface of the earth into the regions of the air, through the sudden expansion of...

To me, who am accustomed to myself, it has always seemed much more wonderful, that my father should deny my peculiar powers, than that I should possess them. "Go up, Tommy," he...

That very evening, it was thought wise that the members of the Starey family, who had come so kindly to our aid, should return to the bosom of their own affairs, at that pleasan...

By going from home, after so many years, we had not only done ourselves no good--in the opinion of our friends, who could not go--but we had opened the door to a swarm of change...

Everything seemed to go well with me now, except for one sad visitation--the loss of my dear Uncle William. He, by his brave resignation, and patience, childlike simplicity, and...

So much was I vexed at this idea, that Sir Roland Towers-Twentifold valued me, only as a flying puppet, a machine to be started from a spiral spring, or a little boy's coloured...

It is not in my power, to describe to you all the mixture, or the magnitude, of my feelings, when I entered what our noble journalists--who choose words, like oysters, by their...

Everybody said, without one exception, unless it were that of some low-minded fellow, that I had performed a most gallant, valiant, and you might fairly term it, heroic deed. Bu...

If I know anything of mankind, one of them needs but speak the truth to secure the attention of the rest, amazed as they are at a feat so far beyond their own power and experien...

A great double blow fell upon me now, far worse than the fall of the rocks upon my back--for then I had the sweetest of comfort in my arms--to wit the departure of Professor Meg...

Most people, and more especially our writers of fiction, history, philosophy, and so forth, indulge in reflection, at those moments, when they are soaring above our heads; but I...

What man has not described, or made believe to be describing, the race which the journals delight to call the "Inter-University Contest"? What marvel, that we have sold our birt...

"Of all truths, the surest is the truth well established by the behaviour of Britons for many years now,--one man may steal a horse and canter away, with every hat (even the own...

It was indeed high time for me to be stirring, if I meant to be returned for Larkmount; about which I cared supremely little, except as a stepping-stone, towards my true love, a...

Sunday was a very lovely day, and people came from nearly two miles off, to church. The church was just outside the eastern lodge, at the end of the finest avenue; and it was ve...

The Government of England never guides us long, without guiding itself into a fearful mess. The Tories, and the Radicals, are much alike in this; but they differ very widely in...

In all the wide world, there are lovelier bays than any to be found upon our eastern coast. But people, whose happiness is only comparative, may hie them away to superlative pla...

The Government had intended wisely to deal the first of their seven great blows at the weal of their hostile Country, with the Bill (which they were sure to pass) for swamping t...

The grandest result of education is the revival of the human system, which ensues when it is over. If it be of all pangs the keenest to remember joy in woe, and of all pleasures...

The alternate system, as Lady Twentifold called it, happily prevails in the national England, as well as in the domestic. When one batch of Statesmen has done a world of harm, a...

People, who care for nothing, are capable of saying almost anything; but even of these, there are not many, who would call the British House of Commons, a sentimental body. But...

"Well, dear," she replied, after some consideration; "Roly has given his full consent now; and my dear mother loves you, like her own son. And I--well, never mind about me; I am...