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"I have said that the conversational power of Tennyson struck me quite as much as his poetry had done for forty years. To explain this I must compare it with that of some of his contemporaries. It was not like the meteoric flashes and fireworks of Carlyle's talk, which sometimes dazzled as much as it instructed, and it had not that torrent-rush in which Carlyle so often indulged.
But for cloud effects, for wonderful shadows, for fantastic and unbelievable sunsets, when the mountains are violet, the lakes silver with red flashes, the islets gold and crimson and purple, and the whole cloudy west in a flame, it is unsurpassed; only your standard of beauty must not be a velvet lawn studded with copper beeches, or a primary-hued landscape bathed in American sunshine.
The keen discriminating intelligence which was always sifting and sorting these pictures and stowing them away for use in after years, the flashes of enthusiasm, the intuitive discernment of intellectual subtleties that brought him into rapport with the author and gave him the perception of being on an equality with the great ones of the earth, here were forces already in operation which were destined to influence the world for generations to come.
The valet of a hero by that very fact is something more than a valet. Amber is only earth, and Bologna stone only a piece of rock; but the first gives out the perfume of the rose, and the other flashes the rays of the sun. The character of a witness is dignified by the solemnity of the scene and the greatness of the actor.
Slowly a mist rose up over it from the South, a mist that was thin but as black as night. Beyond, to the southward, there was a bank of cloud like a mountain wall, steep, and polished, and black, tipped along the ragged crest with fire, and opening ever and again with flashes of intolerable splendour, while the bases were scrawled over with lightning like a written scroll.
It was hard work, but her fingers were willing, and Zara's frightened pleading, as the thunder began to roar, and flashes of lightning came to her through the cracks in the woodshed, urged her on. And then, just as she was on the verge of success, she heard Jake's coarse laugh in her ear. "Look out!" he shouted.
Or if she were, then her anger was unlike all the other angers that had scourged and torn the surface of her life; they had been storms, all clamor and confusion and blinding flashes, with more or less indifference to resulting ruin.
The gleam of the first match lights up for one instant a bit of the avenue on the right, a white tombstone with an angel, and a dark cross; the light of the second match, flaring up brightly and extinguished by the wind, flashes like lightning on the left side, and from the darkness nothing stands out but the angle of some sort of trellis; the third match throws light to right and to left, revealing the white tombstone, the dark cross, and the trellis round a child's grave.
Flashes from turrets indistinguishable at a distance from the neutral-toned bodies of the vessels and the shells struck, making great splashes just beyond the target, which was where they ought to go. A familiar scene, but with a new meaning when the time is one of war. So far as my observation is worth anything, it was very good shooting, indeed.
Here and there flames flicker up, with a sharp crackling noise, which continues. The one is not flashes from the guns, nor the other a snapping of percussion-caps. Wilder, with eyes turning to all points, is the first to perceive this. "We're on fire, boys!" he vociferates; "on fire everywhar!" "Great God! yes! What are we to do?" several ask, despairingly.
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