| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Lucile by Owen Meredith: Can illumine alone?
He stared wildly around
That lone place, so lonely! That silence! no sound
Reach'd that room, through the dark evening air, save drear
Drip and roar of the cataract ceaseless and near!
It was midnight all round on the weird silent weather;
Deep midnight in him! They two,--alone and together,
Himself and that woman defenceless before him!
The triumph and bliss of his rival flash'd o'er him.
The abyss of his own black despair seem'd to ope
At his feet, with that awful exclusion of hope
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Letters from England by Elizabeth Davis Bancroft: was Lady Tankerville of the old French family of de Grammont and
niece to Prince Polignac. The next was Lady Emily de Burgh, the
daughter of the Marchioness of Clanricarde, a beautiful girl of
seventeen. She is very lovely, wears a Grecian braid round her head
like a coronet, and always sits by her mother, which would not suit
our young girls. Then came Lord and Lady Ashley, Lord Ebrington,
and so many titled personages that I cannot remember half.
The dinner is much the same as ours in all its modes of serving, but
they have soles and turbot, instead of our fishes, and their
pheasants are not our pheasants, or their partridges our partridges.
Neither have we so many footmen with liveries of all colours, or so
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Legend of Montrose by Walter Scott: the hills, not to turn again, but to accomplish my course. It is
not by looking back to our own pretensions that we shall serve
Scotland or King Charles. My voice shall be for that general
whom the King shall name, who will doubtless possess those
qualities which are necessary to command men like us. High-born
he must be, or we shall lose our rank in obeying him--wise and
skilful, or we shall endanger the safety of our people--bravest
among the brave, or we shall peril our own honour--temperate,
firm, and manly, to keep us united. Such is the man that must
command us. Are you prepared, Thane of Menteith, to say where
such a general is to be found?"
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