Grabbing a few novels off my shelf. First lines:
"Except for the Marabar Caves--and they were twenty miles off--the city of Chandrapore presents nothing extraordinary."
A Passage to India, E. M. Forster
"During a portion of the first half of the present century, and more particularly during the latter part of it, there flourished and practised in the city of New York a physician who enjoyed perhaps an exceptional share of the considerations which, in the United States, has always been bestowed upon distinguished members of the medical profession."
Washington Square, Henry James
"In these times of ours, though concerning the exact year there is no need to be precise, a boat of dirty and disreputable appearance, with two figures in it, floated on the Thames, between Southwark Bridge which is of iron, and London Bridge which is of stone, as an autumn evening was closing in."
Our Mutual Friend, Charles Dickens
"In the days when the spinning-wheels hummed busily in the farmhouses--even great ladies, clothed in silk and threadlace, had their toy spinning-wheels of polished oak--there might be seen, in districts far away among the lanes, or deep in the bosom of the hills, certain pallid undersized men, who, by the side of brawny country-folk, looked like the remnants of a disinherited race."
Silas Marner, George Eliot
So, not bad at all.
(Those Victorians and their lovely long sentence!)