The History of Henry Esmond, Esq: Colonel in the Service of Her Majesty Q. Anne, Written by Himself, Volume 1

Front Cover
B. Tauchnitz, 1852 - Great Britain - 313 pages

From inside the book

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

Popular passages

Page 86 - The first sense of sorrow I ever knew was upon the death of my father, at which time I was not quite five years of age ; but was rather amazed at what all the house meant, than possessed with a real understanding why nobody was willing to play with me.
Page 333 - ... he told a falsehood as black as Styx, as easily as he paid a compliment or spoke about the weather. He took a mistress, and left her; he betrayed his benefactor, and supported him, or would have murdered him, with the same calmness always, and having no more remorse than Clotho when she weaves the thread, or Lachesis when she cuts it. In the hour of battle I have heard the Prince of Savoy's officers say, the Prince became possessed with a sort of warlike fury; his eyes lighted up; he rushed hither...
Page 304 - Hies, every soul turned and looked (she chanced to enter at the opposite side of the theatre at the same moment) at her, and not at him. She was a brown beauty: that is, her eyes, hair, and eye-brows and eye-lashes, were dark: her hair curling with rich undulations, and waving over her shoulders...
Page 196 - Parting and forgetting ! What faithful heart can do these ? Our great thoughts, our great affections, the Truths of our life, never leave us. Surely, they cannot separate from our consciousness ; shall follow it whithersoever that shall go ; and are of their nature divine and immortal.
Page 334 - ... yet those of the army, who knew him best and had suffered most from him, admired him most of all: and as he rode along the lines to battle or galloped up in the nick of time to a battalion reeling from before the enemy's charge or shot, the fainting men and officers got new courage as they saw the splendid calm of his face, and felt that his will made them irresistible.
Page 344 - We have but to change the point of view, and the greatest action looks mean ; as we turn the perspective-glass, and a giant appears a pigmy.
Page 332 - ... before victory, before danger, before defeat. Before the greatest obstacle or the most trivial ceremony; before a hundred thousand men drawn in battalia, or a peasant slaughtered at the door of his burning hovel, before a carouse of drunken German lords, or a monarch's court, or a...
Page 2 - ... laws of his Court-Marshal, persisting in enacting through life the part of Hero ; and divested of poetry, this was but a little wrinkled old man, pock-marked, and with a great periwig and red heels to make him look tall, — a hero for a book if you like, or for a brass statue or a painted-ceiling, a god in a Roman shape, but what more than a man for Madame Maintenon, or the barber who shaved him, or Monsieur Fagon his surgeon?
Page 83 - Doth not the passage run so ? ' In this accomplished lady love is the constant effect, though it is never the design ; yet though her mien carries much more invitation than command, to behold her is an immediate check to loose behaviour, and to love her is a liberal education.
Page 311 - That happiness, which hath subsequently crowned it, cannot be written in words ; 'tis of its nature sacred and secret, and not to be spoken of, though the heart be ever so full of thankfulness, save to Heaven and the One Ear alone — to one fond being, the truest, and tenderest, and purest wife ever man was blest with.

Bibliographic information