Date: April 26 1870

"Like a rose shut in a book / In which pure women may not look, / For its base pages claim control / To crush the flower within the soul."

— Rossetti, Dante Gabriel (1828-1882)

Date: 1871-2, 1874

"A man's mind---what there is of it---has always the advantage of being masculine,---as the smallest birch-tree is of a higher kind than the most soaring palm,---and even his ignorance is of a sounder quality."

— Eliot, George (1819-1880)

Date: 1871-2, 1874

"If it had really occurred to Mr Casaubon to think of Miss Brooke as a suitable wife for him, the reasons that might induce her to accept him were already planted in her mind, and by the evening of the next day the reasons had budded and bloomed."

— Eliot, George (1819-1880)

Date: August-November, 1871

"[B]ut the mind of Mr. Rossetti is like a glassy mere, broken only by the dive of some water-bird or the hum of winged insects, and brooded over by an atmosphere of insufferable closeness, with a light blue sky above it, sultry depths mirrored within it, and a surface so thickly sown with water-l...

— Buchanan, Robert (1841–1901)