It rose from the hearth, and yawned, and stretched itself; and then it came and rubbed its glossy fur soothingly against my leg, and whispered, "All serene!
— from Lancashire Sketches Third Edition by Edwin Waugh

The actress evinced comprehension of the character in every fibre of its being, and she embodied it with the affluent vitality of splendid health and buoyant temperament—presenting a creature radiant with goodness and happiness, exquisite in natural refinement, piquant with archness, soft, innocent, and tender in confiding artlessness, and, while gleeful and triumphant in beautiful youth, gently touched with an intuitive pitying sense of the thorny aspects of this troubled world.
— from Shadows of the Stage by William Winter

The princess was at table when she heard a commotion in the antechamber; she inquired as to its cause, and was told that Baron de Ravailly, her messenger to Monsieur de La Meilleraie, had that moment arrived.
— from The War of Women, Volume 2 by Alexandre Dumas

It is a highly finished performance, and of so exalted a character that we should think that Luca, when he painted the laterals to it, was asleep, so inferior are they in composition and expression.
— from The History of Painting in Italy, Vol. 5 (of 6) From the Period of the Revival of the Fine Arts to the End of the Eighteenth Century by Luigi Lanzi