The aspect of the venerable mansion has always affected me like a human countenance, bearing the traces not… — Nathaniel Hawthorne
The aspect of the venerable mansion has always affected me like a human countenance, bearing the traces not merely of outward storm and sunshine, but expressive also, of the long lapse of mortal life, and accompanying vicissitudes that have passed within. Were these to be worthily recounted, they would form a narrative of no small interest and instruction, and possessing, moreover, a certain remarkable unity, which might almost seem the result of artistic arrangement.
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Of all the events which constitute a person's biography, there is scarcely one — none, certainly, of anything like a similar importance — to which the world so easily reconciles itself as to his death.
The world owes all its onward impulses to men ill at ease. The happy man inevitably confines himself within ancient limits.
What other dungeon is so dark as one's own heart! What jailer so inexorable as one's self!
