CHAPTER I.   "With fearless pride I say  That she is healthful, fleet, and strong  And down the rocks will leap along,  Like rivulets in May." WORDSWORTH. Along a beautiful Devonshire lane, with banks of rock overhung by tall bowery hedges, rode a lively and merry pair, now laughing and talking, now summoning by call or whistle the spaniel that ran by their side, or careered through the... more...

CHAPTER I. THE TRUST. "I brought them here as to a sanctuary."SOUTHEY. Most of us have heard of the sad times in the middle of the seventeenth century, when Englishmen were at war with one another and quiet villages became battlefields. We hear a great deal about King and Parliament, great lords and able generals, Cavaliers and Roundheads, but this story is to help us to think how it must have... more...

CHAPTER I. There was once a wonderful fortnight in little Lucy's life. One evening she went to bed very tired and cross and hot, and in the morning when she looked at her arms and legs they were all covered with red spots, rather pretty to look at, only they were dry and prickly. Nurse was frightened when she looked at them. She turned all the little sisters out of the night nursery, covered Lucy... more...

CHAPTER I. THE SERMON. Four girls were together in a pleasant cottage room with a large window, over which fluttered some dry sticks, which would in due time bear clematis and Virginia creeper leaves. Three of them were Miss Lee's apprentices, and this room had been built out at the back of the baker's shop for them. The place was the property of the Lee family themselves, and nobody in... more...

CHAPTER 1. DUNBAR ''Twas on a night, an evening brightWhen the dew began to fa',Lady Margaret was walking up and down,Looking over her castle wa'.' The battlements of a castle were, in disturbed times, the only recreation-ground of the ladies and play-place of the young people. Dunbar Castle, standing on steep rocks above the North Sea, was not only inaccessible on that side,... more...

CHAPTER I. 'For be it knownThat their saint's honour is their own.'—SCOTT. The town of Micklethwayte was rising and thriving. There were salubrious springs which an enterprising doctor had lately brought into notice. The firm of Greenleaf and Dutton manufactured umbrellas in large quantities, from the stout weather-proof family roof down to the daintiest fringed toy of a parasol. There... more...

PREFACE When the venture has been made of dealing with historical events and characters, it always seems fair towards the reader to avow what liberties have been taken, and how much of the sketch is founded on history.  In the present case, it is scarcely necessary to do more than refer to the almost unique relations that subsisted between Henry V. and his prisoner, James I. of Scotland; who lived... more...

CHAPTER I. ITALY. I am going to tell you next about the most famous nation in the world. Going westward from Greece another peninsula stretches down into the Mediterranean. The Apennine Mountains run like a limb stretching out of the Alps to the south eastward, and on them seems formed that land, shaped somewhat like a leg, which is called Italy. Round the streams that flowed down from these hills,... more...

CHAPTER IThe Model And Her Copies There is sure another Flood toward, that so many couples are coming to the Ark.—As You Like It “Ah! it is a pitiable case!” “What case, boys?” “Yours, mother, with such an influx of daughters-in-law.” “I suspect the daughters-in-law think themselves more to be pitied.” “As too many suns in one sphere.” “As daughters-in-law at all.”... more...

CHAPTER IWHAT WILL BECOME OF ME? A London dining-room was lighted with gas, which showed a table of small dimensions, with a vase of somewhat dirty and dilapidated grasses in the centre, and at one end a soup tureen, from which a gentleman had helped himself and a young girl of about thirteen, without much apparent consciousness of what he was about, being absorbed in a pile of papers, pamphlets, and... more...