Sir Ralph Esher, Or, Adventures of a Gentleman of the Court of Charles II: In Three Volumes ...

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Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley, New Burlington street, 1832 - Great Britain - 356 pages
 

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Page 254 - Hunt's, worked into a novel in which he drew a character from Shelley. On looking more steadily upon the man whom he had not seen for four years, he observed that these years and their cares had made their physical alterations. 'Why the devil should they be able to spoil a face like his, and for no good to anybody? He did not look older at first sight. I had always noted that there was something of an invincible juvenility about his face, except in the eyes; and the air and the southern sun had embrowned...
Page 340 - ... the more secret way of poison, I shall not be at a loss to know the first author of it, I shall consider you as the assassin, I shall treat you as such, and wherever I meet you I shall pistol you, though you stood behind the king's chair ; and I tell it you in his majesty's presence, that you may be sure I shall keep my word...
Page 171 - King accordingly not only dispatched myself and many others to assist, but went in person with his brother, and did a world of good. I never saw him look so grim, or say so many kind things. Wherever he went, he gave the people a new life, for they seemed dead with fright. Those who had not fled, (which they did by thousands into the fields where they slept all night,) seemed only to have been prevented from doing so, by not knowing what steps to take The Lord Mayor, a very different one from his...
Page 221 - is our inexperience — is time past or future, or what we don't know ? ' ' No,' returned he, ' if all the paper in the world were put together, the white would not be enough for the inexperience, and yet the dot would be the true representation of the other. All space is the white ; and the dot is all history.
Page 169 - God's judgments, and asserting that this was the pouring out of that other vial of wrath, which had been typified by the Fiery Sword, — a spectacle supposed to have been seen in the sky at the close of the year sixtyfour. The plague was thought to have been announced by a comet. Very different from this quieter scene, was the one that presented itself, on my getting through the last street, and reaching the water-side.
Page 168 - The fire having continued all this night (if I may call that night which was light as day for ten miles round about after a dreadful manner), when conspiring with a fierce eastern wind in a very dry season, I went on foot to the same place; and saw the whole south part of the City burning from Cheapside to the Thames...
Page 56 - Yet the people had their coats buttoned up, and their necks muffled, as if they feared every breath of the atmosphere. I had heard of a man who went about crying, " Yet forty days, and London will be destroyed ;" and of another, who, half naked, and never stopping to answer questions, hurried unceasingly through the streets, looking frightfully before him, and exclaiming, " O the Great and the Dreadful God...
Page 173 - The opinion of its cause that secretly obtained the most ground was, that it was a punishment for the sin of gluttony; the greatest argument, next to the looks and consciences of the aldermen, being the appalling fact, that the fire began at Pudding Lane, and ended at Pye Corner. The fire raged four days and nights ; and on the...
Page 169 - ... though it was ten o'clock. There was a talk of the French, as if they had caused it. By degrees, I began to meet carts laden with goods; and on entering the borders of Southwark, the expectation of the scene was rendered truly awful, there was such a number of people abroad, yet such a gazing silence. Now and then one person called to another ; but the sound seemed as if in bravado, or brutish. An old man, in a meeting of crossroads, was haranguing the people in the style of former years, telling...
Page 171 - God to forgive him for having an appetite at such a crisis, and interrupting his laughter at the supper they gave him, with tears of pity and terror, had brought word to his Majesty that the whole city would be destroyed, if some of the houses were not blown up. The King accordingly not only...

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