Quotes4study

Mrs. Fairfax surprised me by looking out of the window with a sad countenance, and saying gravely--"Miss Eyre, will you come to breakfast?" During the meal she was quiet and cool: but I could not undeceive her then. I must wait for my master to give explanations; and so must she. I ate what I could, and then I hastened upstairs. I met Adele leaving the schoolroom.

Charlotte Bronte     Jane Eyre

"We went upstairs together, the colonel first with the lamp, the fat manager and I behind him. It was a labyrinth of an old house, with corridors, passages, narrow winding staircases, and little low doors, the thresholds of which were hollowed out by the generations who had crossed them. There were no carpets and no signs of any furniture above the ground floor, while the plaster was peeling off the walls, and the damp was breaking through in green, unhealthy blotches. I tried to put on as unconcerned an air as possible, but I had not forgotten the warnings of the lady, even though I disregarded them, and I kept a keen eye upon my two companions. Ferguson appeared to be a morose and silent man, but I could see from the little that he said that he was at least a fellow-countryman.

Arthur Conan Doyle     The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

The evidence of the porter went further than anything else towards the success of Lebedeff in gaining the assistance of the police. He declared that he had seen Rogojin return to the house last night, accompanied by a friend, and that both had gone upstairs very secretly and cautiously. After this there was no hesitation about breaking open the door, since it could not be got open in any other way.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky     The Idiot

"Can you? I'm sorry for it then, for I should have had a good laugh at you otherwise. Do break _something_ at least, in the drawing-room! Upset the Chinese vase, won't you? It's a valuable one; _do_ break it. Mamma values it, and she'll go out of her mind--it was a present. She'll cry before everyone, you'll see! Wave your hand about, you know, as you always do, and just smash it. Sit down near it on purpose."

Fyodor Dostoyevsky     The Idiot

From this window were visible the porter's lodge and the carriage-road, and just as I had dissolved so much of the silver-white foliage veiling the panes as left room to look out, I saw the gates thrown open and a carriage roll through. I watched it ascending the drive with indifference; carriages often came to Gateshead, but none ever brought visitors in whom I was interested; it stopped in front of the house, the door-bell rang loudly, the new-comer was admitted. All this being nothing to me, my vacant attention soon found livelier attraction in the spectacle of a little hungry robin, which came and chirruped on the twigs of the leafless cherry-tree nailed against the wall near the casement. The remains of my breakfast of bread and milk stood on the table, and having crumbled a morsel of roll, I was tugging at the sash to put out the crumbs on the window-sill, when Bessie came running upstairs into the nursery.

Charlotte Bronte     Jane Eyre

"And fasten the door securely on the inside. Wake Sophie when you go upstairs, under pretence of requesting her to rouse you in good time to- morrow; for you must be dressed and have finished breakfast before eight. And now, no more sombre thoughts: chase dull care away, Janet. Don't you hear to what soft whispers the wind has fallen? and there is no more beating of rain against the window-panes: look here" (he lifted up the curtain)--"it is a lovely night!"

Charlotte Bronte     Jane Eyre

From the twenty-eighth till the thirty-first all Moscow was in a bustle and commotion. Every day thousands of men wounded at Borodino were brought in by the Dorogomilov gate and taken to various parts of Moscow, and thousands of carts conveyed the inhabitants and their possessions out by the other gates. In spite of Rostopchin's broadsheets, or because of them or independently of them, the strangest and most contradictory rumors were current in the town. Some said that no one was to be allowed to leave the city, others on the contrary said that all the icons had been taken out of the churches and everybody was to be ordered to leave. Some said there had been another battle after Borodino at which the French had been routed, while others on the contrary reported that the Russian army had been destroyed. Some talked about the Moscow militia which, preceded by the clergy, would go to the Three Hills; others whispered that Augustin had been forbidden to leave, that traitors had been seized, that the peasants were rioting and robbing people on their way from Moscow, and so on. But all this was only talk; in reality (though the Council of Fili, at which it was decided to abandon Moscow, had not yet been held) both those who went away and those who remained behind felt, though they did not show it, that Moscow would certainly be abandoned, and that they ought to get away as quickly as possible and save their belongings. It was felt that everything would suddenly break<b> up and change, but up to the first of September nothing had done so. As a criminal who is being led to execution knows that he must die immediately, but yet looks about him and straightens the cap that is awry on his head, so Moscow involuntarily continued its wonted life, though it knew that the time of its destruction was near when the conditions of life to which its people were accustomed to submit would be completely upset.

Leo Tolstoy     War and Peace

Meanwhile, within the empire, ambitious valis were one by one attempting to carve out dominions for themselves at the expense of the central power. The ambitions of Mehemet Ali of Egypt were not yet fully revealed; but Ali (q.v.) of Jannina, who had marched to the aid of the sultan against the rebellious pasha Pasvan Oglu of Widdin, soon began to show his hand, and it needed the concentration of all the forces of the Turkish empire to effect his overthrow and death (1822). The preoccupation of the sultan with Ali gave their opportunity to the Greeks whose disaffection had long been organized in the great secret society of the _Hetaeria Philike_, against which Metternich had in vain warned the Ottoman government. In 1821 occurred the abortive raid of Alexander Ypsilanti into the Danubian principalities, and in May of the same year the revolt of the Greeks of the Morea began the war of Greek Independence (see GREECE: _History_). The rising in the north was easily crushed; but in the south the Ottoman power was hampered by the defection of the sea-faring Greeks, by whom the Turkish navy had hitherto been manned. After three abortive campaigns Mahmud was compelled, infinitely against his will, to summon to his assistance the already too powerful pasha of Egypt, Mehemet Ali, whom he had already employed to suppress the rebellious Wahhabis in Arabia. The disciplined Egyptian army, supported by a well organized fleet, rapidly accomplished what the Turks had failed to do; and by 1826 the Greeks were practically subdued on land, and Ibrahim was preparing to turn his attention to the islands. But for the intervention of the powers and the battle of Navarino Mahmud's authority would have been restored in Greece. The news of Navarino betrayed Mahmud into one of those paroxysms of rage to which he was liable, and which on critical occasions were apt fatally to cloud his usual good sense. After in vain attempting to obtain an apology for "the unparalleled outrage against a friendly power" he issued on the 20th of December a solemn _hatti sheriff_ summoning the faithful to a holy war. This, together with certain outstanding grievances and the pretext of enforcing the settlement of the Greek Question approved by the powers, gave Russia the excuse for declaring war against Turkey. After two hardly fought campaigns (1828, 1829) Mahmud was at length, on the 14th of September 1829, compelled to sign the peace of Adrianople. From this moment until his death Mahmud was, to all intents and purposes, the "vassal of Russia," though not without occasional desperate efforts to break his chains. (For the political events of the period between the first revolt of Mehemet Ali (Sept. 1832) and the death of Mahmud see MEHEMET ALI.) The personal attitude of the sultan, which alone concerns us here, was determined throughout by his overmastering hatred of the upstart pasha, of whom he had stooped to ask aid, and who now defied his will; and the importance of this attitude lies in the fact that, as the result of the success of his centralizing policy, and notably of the destruction of the janissaries (q.v.), the supreme authority, hitherto limited by the practical power of the ministers of the Porte and by the turbulence of the privileged military caste, had become concentrated in his own person. It was no longer the Porte that decided, but the Seraglio, and the sultan's private secretary had more influence on the policy of the Ottoman empire than the grand vizier. Entry: MAHMUD

Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 17, Slice 4 "Magnetite" to "Malt"     1910-1911

Far too much has been made of the extent to which the knightly code, and the reverence paid to the Virgin Mary, raised the position of women (e.g. Gautier, p. 360). As Gautier himself admits, the feudal system made it difficult to separate the woman's person from her fief: instead of the freedom of Christian marriage on which the Church in theory insisted, lands and women were handed over together, as a business bargain, by parents or guardians. In theory, the knight was the defender of widows and orphans; but in practice wardships and marriages were bought and sold as a matter of everyday routine like stocks and shares in the modern market. Lord Thomas de Berkeley (1245-1321) counted on this as a regular and considerable source of income (Smyth, _Lives_, i. 157). Late in the 15th century, in spite of the somewhat greater liberty of that age, we find Stephen Scrope writing nakedly to a familiar correspondent "for very need [of poverty], I was fain to sell a little daughter I have for much less than I should have done by possibility," i.e. than the fair market price (Gairdner, _Paston Letters_, Introduction, p. clxxvi; cf. ccclxxi). Startling as such words are, it is perhaps still more startling to find how frequently and naturally, in the highest society, ladies were degraded by personal violence. The proofs of this which Schultz and Gautier adduce from the _Chansons de Geste_ might be multiplied indefinitely. The Knight of La Tour-Landry (1372) relates, by way of warning to his daughters, a tale of a lady who so irritated her husband by scolding him in company, that he struck her to the earth with his fist and kicked her in the face, breaking her nose. Upon this the good knight moralizes: "And this she had for her euelle and gret langage, that she was wont to saie to her husbonde. And therfor the wiff aught to suffre and lete her husbonde haue the wordes, and to be maister, for that is her worshippe; for it is shame to here striff betwene hem, and in especial before folke. But y saie not but whanne thei be allone, but she may tolle hym with goodly wordes, and counsaile hym to amende yef he do amys" (La Tour, chap. xviii.; cf. xvii. and xix.). The right of wife-beating was formally recognized by more than one code of laws, and it was already a forward step when, in the 13th century, the _Coutumes du Beauvoisis_ provided "que le mari ne doit battre sa femme que _raisonnablement_" (Gautier, p. 349). This was a natural consequence not only of the want of self-control which we see everywhere in the middle ages, but also of the custom of contracting child-marriages for unsentimental considerations. Between 1288 and 1500 five marriages are recorded in the direct line of the Berkeley family in which the ten contracting parties averaged less than eleven years of age: the marriage contract of another Lord Berkeley was drawn up before he was six years old. Moreover, the same business considerations which dictated those early marriages clashed equally with the strict theory of knighthood. In the same Berkeley family, the lord Maurice IV. was knighted in 1338 at the age of seven to avoid the possible evils of wardship, and Thomas V. for the same reason in 1476 at the age of five. Smyth's record of this great family shows that, from the middle of the 13th century onwards, the lords were not only statesmen and warriors, but still more distinguished as gentlemen-farmers on a great scale, even selling fruit from the castle gardens, while their ladies would go round on tours of inspection from dairy to dairy. The lord Thomas III. (1326-1361), who was noted as a special lover of tournaments, spent in two years only £90, or an average of about £15 per tournament; yet he was then laying money by at the rate of £450 a year, and, a few years later, at the rate of £1150, or nearly half his income! Indeed, economic causes contributed much to the decay of romantic chivalry. The old families had lost heavily from generation to generation, partly by personal extravagances, but also by gradual alienations of land to the Church and by the enormous expenses of the crusades. Already, in the 13th century, they were hard pressed by the growing wealth of the burghers, and even the greatest nobles could scarcely keep up their state without careful business management. It is not surprising therefore, to find that at least as early as the middle of the 13th century the commercial side of knighthood became very prominent. Although by the code of chivalry no candidate could be knighted before the age of twenty-one, we have seen how great nobles like the Berkeleys obtained that honour for their infant heirs in order to avoid possible pecuniary loss; and French writers of the 14th century complained of this knighting of infants as a common and serious abuse.[59] Moreover, after the knight's liability to personal service in war had been modified in the 12th century by the scutage system, it became necessary in the first quarter of the 13th to compel landowners to take up the knighthood which in theory they should have coveted as an honour--a compulsion which was soon systematically enforced (_Distraint of Knighthood_, 1278), and became a recognized source of royal income. An indirect effect of this system[60] was to break down another rule of the chivalrous code--that none could be dubbed who was not of gentle birth.[61] This rule, however, had often been broken before; even the romances of chivalry speak not infrequently of the knighting of serfs or _jongleurs_;[62] and other causes besides distraint of knighthood tended to level the old distinctions. While knighthood was avoided by poor nobles, it was coveted by rich citizens. It is recorded in 1298 as "an immemorial custom" in Provence that rich burghers enjoyed the honour of knighthood; and less than a century later we find Sacchetti complaining that the dignity is open to any rich upstart, however disreputable his antecedents.[63] Similar causes contributed to the decay of knightly ideas in warfare. Even in the 12th century, when war was still rather the pastime of kings and knights than a national effort, the strict code of chivalry was more honoured in the breach than in the observance.[64] But when the Hundred Years' War brought a real national conflict between England and France, when archery became of supreme importance, and a large proportion even of the cavalry were mercenary soldiers, then the exigencies of serious warfare swept away much of that outward display and those class-conventions on which chivalry had always rested. Siméon Luce (chap. vi.) has shown how much the English successes in this war were due to strict business methods. Several of the best commanders (e.g. Sir Robert Knolles and Sir Thomas Dagworth) were of obscure birth, while on the French side even Du Guesclin had to wait long for his knighthood because he belonged only to the lesser nobility. The tournament again, which for two centuries had been under the ban of the Church, was often almost as definitely discouraged by Edward III. as it was encouraged by John of France; and while John's father opened the Crécy campaign by sending Edward a challenge in due form of chivalry, Edward took advantage of this formal delay to amuse the French king with negotiations while he withdrew his army by a rapid march from an almost hopeless position. A couple of quotations from Froissart will illustrate the extent to which war had now become a mere business. Much as he admired the French chivalry, he recognized their impotence at Crécy. "The sharp arrows ran into the men of arms and into their horses, and many fell, horse and men.... And also among the Englishmen there were certain rascals that went afoot with great knives, and they went in among the men of arms, and slew and murdered many as they lay on the ground, both earls, barons, knights and squires, whereof the king of England was after displeased, for he had rather they had been taken prisoners." How far Edward's solicitude was disinterested may be gauged from Froissart's parallel remark about the battle of Aljubarrota, where, as at Agincourt, the handful of victors were obliged by a sudden panic to slay their prisoners. "Lo, behold the great evil adventure that fell that Saturday. For they slew as many good prisoners as would well have been worth, one with another, four hundred thousand franks." In 1402 Lord Thomas de Berkeley bought, as a speculation, 24 Scottish prisoners. Similar practical considerations forced the nobles of other European countries either to conform to less sentimental methods of warfare and to growing conceptions of nationality, or to become mere Ishmaels of the type which outlived the middle ages in Götz von Berlichingen and his compeers. Entry: THE

Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 15, Slice 8 "Kite-Flying" to "Kyshtym"     1910-1911