CHAPTER I. THE DEATH-BED OF JOHN VERNON.—HIS DYING WORDS.—DESCRIPTION OF HIS DAUGHTER, THE HEROINE.—THE OATH. "Is the night calm, Constance?" "Beautiful! the moon is up." "Open the shutters wider, there. It is a beautiful night. How beautiful! Come hither, my child." The rich moonlight that now shone through the windows streamed on little that it could invest with poetical... more...

CHAPTER XVIII. IN his room, solitary and brooding, sat the defeated hero of a hundred fights. It was now twilight; but the shutters had been partially closed all day, in order to exclude the sun, which had never before been unwelcome to Tom Bowles, and they still remained so, making the twilight doubly twilight, till the harvest moon, rising early, shot its ray through the crevice, and forced a silvery... more...

CHAPTER I. In the year 18— I settled as a physician at one of the wealthiest of our great English towns, which I will designate by the initial L——. I was yet young, but I had acquired some reputation by a professional work, which is, I believe, still amongst the received authorities on the subject of which it treats. I had studied at Edinburgh and at Paris, and had borne away from both those... more...

CHAPTER I.   Who art thou, fair one, who usurp'st the place  Of Blanch, the lady of the matchless grace?—LAMB. IT was towards the evening of a day in early April that two ladies were seated by the open windows of a cottage in Devonshire. The lawn before them was gay with evergreens, relieved by the first few flowers and fresh turf of the reviving spring; and at a distance, through an opening... more...

                    "The lopped tree in time may grow again,                   Most naked plants renew both fruit and flower;                   The sorriest wight may find release from pain,                   The driest soil suck in some moistening shower:                   Time goes by turns, and... more...

Much has been written by critics, especially by those in Germany (the native land of criticism), upon the important question, whether to please or to instruct should be the end of Fiction—whether a moral purpose is or is not in harmony with the undidactic spirit perceptible in the higher works of the imagination. And the general result of the discussion has been in favour of those who have contended... more...

It is fully fifteen, if not twenty, years since my father commenced the composition of an historical romance on the subject of Pausanias, the Spartan Regent. Circumstances, which need not here be recorded, compelled him to lay aside the work thus begun. But the subject continued to haunt his imagination and occupy his thoughts. He detected in it singular opportunities for effective exercise of the... more...

CHAPTER I. "My meaning in't, I protest, was very honest in the behalf of themaid * * * * yet, who would have suspected an ambush where I wastaken?" All's Well that Ends Well, Act iv. Sc. 3. SOME four miles distant from one of our northern manufacturing towns, in the year 18—, was a wide and desolate common; a more dreary spot it is impossible to conceive—the herbage grew up in... more...

Set a thief to catch a thief.—-Proverb. I. Whenever you are about to utter something astonishingly false, always begin with, "It is an acknowledged fact," etc. Sir Robert Filmer was a master of this method of writing. Thus, with what a solemn face that great man attempted to cheat! "It is a truth undeniable that there cannot be any multitude of men whatsoever, either great or small, etc.,... more...

CHAPTER I. In which the history opens with a description of the social manners,habits, and amusements of the English People, as exhibited in animmemorial National Festivity.—Characters to be commemorated in thehistory, introduced and graphically portrayed, with a nasologicalillustration.—Original suggestions as to the idiosyncrasiesengendered by trades and callings, with other matters worthy... more...