There is nothing in England that exercises a more delightful spell over my imagination than the lingerings of the holiday customs and rural games of former times. They recall the pictures my fancy used to draw in the May morning of life, when as yet I only knew the world through books, and believed it to be all that poets had painted it; and they bring with them the flavour of those honest days of yore, in which, perhaps with equal fallacy, I am apt to think the world was more home-bred, social, and joyous than at present.

For what is history, but... huge libel on human nature, to which we industriously add page after page, volume after volume, as if we were holding up a monument to the honor, rather than the infamy of our species.

A father may turn his back on his child, … . but a mother's love endures through all.

The oil and wine of merry meeting.

Washington, in fact, had very little private life, but was eminently a public character.

The paternal hearth, the rallying-place of the affections.

Every antique farm-house and moss-grown cottage is a picture.