He hung over the objects and ornaments, blissfully few and adorably good, perfect pieces all, and never one, for a change, French.

The scene was as rare as some fine old print with the best bits down in the corners.

Old books and old pictures, allusions remembered and aspects conjectured, reappeared to him; he knew not what anxious islanders had been trying for in their backward hunt for the homely.

But the homely at Flickerbridge was all style, even as style at the same time was mere honesty.

The larger, the smaller past--he scarce knew which to call it--was at all events so hushed to sleep round him as he wrote that he had almost a bad conscience about having come.