Chapter I My Boyhood. My father belonged to the widespread family of the Campbells, and possessed a small landed property in the north of Argyll. But although of long descent and high connection, he was no richer than many a farmer of a few hundred acres. For, with the exception of a narrow belt of arable land at its foot, a bare hill formed almost the whole of his possessions. The sheep ate over it,... more...

CHAPTER I. A WALK WITH MY WIFE. The autumn was creeping up on the earth, with winter holding by its skirts behind; but before I loose my hold of the garments of summer, I must write a chapter about a walk and a talk I had one night with my wife. It had rained a good deal during the day, but as the sun went down the air began to clear, and when the moon shone out, near the full, she walked the heavens,... more...

CHAPTER I. BAD WEATHER. It was a gray, windy noon in the beginning of autumn. The sky and the sea were almost of the same color, and that not a beautiful one. The edge of the horizon where they met was an edge no more, but a bar thick and blurred, across which from the unseen came troops of waves that broke into white crests, the flying manes of speed, as they rushed at, rather than ran towards the... more...

CHAPTER I. HOMILETIC. Dear Friends,—I am beginning a new book like an old sermon; but, as you know, I have been so accustomed to preach all my life, that whatever I say or write will more or less take the shape of a sermon; and if you had not by this time learned at least to bear with my oddities, you would not have wanted any more of my teaching. And, indeed, I did not think you would want any more.... more...

CHAPTER I. THE LANE. The rector sat on the box of his carriage, driving his horses toward his church, the grand old abbey-church of Glaston. His wife was inside, and an old woman—he had stopped on the road to take her up—sat with her basket on the foot-board behind. His coachman sat beside him; he never took the reins when his master was there. Mr. Bevis drove like a gentleman, in an easy,... more...

THE MAN OF SONGS. "Thou wanderest in the land of dreams,  O man of many songs!To thee what is, but looks and seems;  No realm to thee belongs!" "Seest thou those mountains, faint and far,  O spirit caged and tame?""Blue clouds like distant hills they are,  And like is not the same." "Nay, nay; I know each mountain well,  Each cliff, and peak, and dome!In that... more...

WITHIN AND WITHOUT PART I.   Go thou into thy closet; shut thy door;  And pray to Him in secret: He will hear.  But think not thou, by one wild bound, to clear  The numberless ascensions, more and more,  Of starry stairs that must be climbed, before  Thou comest to the Father's likeness near,  And bendest down to kiss the feet so dear  That, step by step, their mounting flights... more...

CHAPTER 1 Curdie was the son of Peter the miner. He lived with his father and mother in a cottage built on a mountain, and he worked with his father inside the mountain. A mountain is a strange and awful thing. In old times, without knowing so much of their strangeness and awfulness as we do, people were yet more afraid of mountains. But then somehow they had not come to see how beautiful they are as... more...

It was one of those exquisite days that come in every winter, in which it seems no longer the dead body, but the lovely ghost of summer. Such a day bears to its sister of the happier time something of the relation the marble statue bears to the living form; the sense it awakes of beauty is more abstract, more ethereal; it lifts the soul into a higher region than will summer day of lordliest splendour.... more...

1. What! No Children? Once upon a time, so long ago that I have quite forgotten the date, there lived a king and queen who had no children. And the king said to himself, "All the queens of my acquaintance have children, some three, some seven, and some as many as twelve; and my queen has not one. I feel ill-used." So he made up his mind to be cross with his wife about it. But she bore it all... more...