When the venture has been made of dealing with historical events and characters, it always seems fair towards the reader to avow what liberties have been taken, and how much of the sketch is founded on history.

I thought one only had to speak Latin through one's nose and bite off the end.

Elder sisters never can do younger ones justice!

Refinement is just as much a Christian grace in a man as in a woman; but he is not such a hateful, unsexed creature without it as a woman is.

The mistake we make, is when we seek to be beloved, instead of loving.

A woman without a degree of decency and delicacy is unsexed.

James's expedition to Scotland is wholly imaginary, though there appears to have been space for it during Henry's progress to the North to pay his devotions at Beverley Minster.