Special qualities are required of the essayist. A poem or a novel may…

Other days, other ways; and, although they have now been greatly improved upon, the old country midwives did at least succeed in bringing into the world many generations of our forefathers, or where should we be now? — (ch. 8, 'The Box' )

'Thank God for my good dinner. Thank Father and Mother. Amen' was the grace used in one family, and it certainly had the merit of giving credit where credit was due. — (ch. 1, Poor People's Houses)

A grasshopper shrilled in a tuft at her feet and was answered by other shrillings among the gorse bushes; a solitary rook flapped heavily overhead, and a pair of goldfinches twittered among the thistle-down; there was no other sound except …

'Poverty's no disgrace, but 'tis a great inconvenience' was a common saying among the Lark Rise people. — (ch. 1, Poor People's Houses)

And so with us, she thought. We come, we go, and, as individuals, we are forgotten. But the stream of human life goes on, ever changing, but ever the same, and as the stream is fed by well-springs hoarded by Nature so the stream of …

There was no Victoria in the school ... That great name was sacred to the Queen and was not copied by her subjects to the extent imagined by period novelists of today. — (ch. 11, School)