Venetia

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Longmans, Green, 1871 - English fiction - 482 pages
The beauty of the young Venetia was not the hereditary gift of her beautiful mother. It was not from Lady Annabel that Venetia Herbert had derived those seraphic locks that fell over her shoulders and down her neck in golden streams, nor that clear grey eye even, whose childish glance might perplex the gaze of manhood, nor that little aquiline nose, that gave a haughty expression to a countenance that had never yet dreamed of pride, nor that radiant complexion, that dazzled with its brilliancy, like some winged minister of Raffael or Correggio. The peasants that passed the lady and her daughter in their walks, and who blessed her as they passed, for all her grace and goodness, often marveled why so fair a mother and so fair a child should be so dissimilar, that one indeed might be compared to a starry night, and the other to a sunny day.
 

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Page 320 - We know no spectacle so ridiculous as the British public in one of its periodical fits of morality.
Page 429 - It soon becomes a very small part of that profound and complicated sentiment, which we call Love, which is rather the universal thirst for a communion not merely of the senses, but of our whole nature, intellectual, imaginative and sensitive...
Page 87 - Miles Hendon sank into a chair and covered his face with his hands. After a pause, his brother said to the servants: "You have observed him. Do you know him?" They shook their heads; then the master said: "The servants know you not, sir. I fear there is some mistake. You have seen that my wife knew you not.
Page 394 - ... my character, yet since you, without knowing anything of this obligation, have so generously entertained me, I ought to pay you my utmost acknowledgment, and accordingly return you my most hearty thanks.
Page 25 - Have not I always told you, when you pay a visit, that you should open your mouth now and then. I don't like chattering children,' added Mrs. Cadurcis, ' but I like them to answer when they are spoken to.
Page 321 - He had been guilty of the offence which, of all offences, is punished most severely ; he had been over-praised ; he had excited too warm an interest ; and the public, with its usual justice, chastised him for its own folly.
Page 438 - But what I admire in you, Cadurcis, is that, with all the faults of youth, of which you will free yourself, your creative power is vigorous, prolific, and complete: your creations rise fast and fair, like perfect worlds." "Well, we will not compliment each other," said Cadurcis; "for, after all, it is a miserable craft. What is poetry but a lie, and what are poets but liars?" "You are wrong, Cadurcis," said Herbert; "poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.

About the author (1871)

Benjamin Disraeli was born in London, England on December 21, 1804. His first novel, Vivien Grey, was published in 1826. His other works include The Voyage of Captain Popanilla, Contarini Fleming, A Year at Hartlebury, Coningsby, Sybil, Tancred, and Lothair. He became England's first and only Jewish prime minister, serving from 1867 to 1868 and again from 1874 to 1880. He is best remembered for bringing India and the Suez Canal under control of the crown. During his second term of office, when he was knighted, he took a name from his first novel and became the first Earl of Beaconsfield. He died on April 19, 1881 at the age of 76.