'TWAS the night before Christmas, and all through the house, Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse. The stockings were hung by the chimney with care, In the hope that St. Nicholas soon would be there. The children were nestled all snug in their beds, While visions of sugar-plums danced in their heads.     And mamma in her kerchief, and I in my cap, Had just settled our brains for a long... more...

"Look you, Duncan," Elsie exclaimed, when they had walked on some way in silence, "I've made up my mind to go, and what's the use o' waitin'? The sooner the better, for it may turn cold any day now. We shouldn't be long if it was fine, but if 'twas wet we might have to wait up in places. I must sit down an' see if I can find out the way to go from the... more...

(Beauchief Abbey.) Mr. Rhodes, the elegant topographer of the Peak, observes, "there are but few individuals in this country, possessing the means and the opportunities of travel, who have not, either from curiosity or some other motive, visited the Peak of Derbyshire." This remark is correct; and to it we may add, that the "few" who have not personally visited the Peak, have become... more...

The nature and design of the present work have been so fully stated in the Prospectus, and are indeed so far explained by its very Title, that it is unnecessary to occupy any great portion of its first number with details on the subject. We are under no temptation to fill its columns with an account of what we hope future numbers will be. Indeed, we would rather give a specimen than a description; and... more...

THE ISLE OF WIGHT.(Wilkes's Cottage.)NOTES FROM A PEDESTRIAN EXCURSION IN THE ISLAND. By a Correspondent. Although the roads of the island have within the last twenty years been rendered passable for vehicles of all kinds, even to stage coaches, yet by far the best mode of inspecting this English Arcadia is to travel through it on foot, commencing at Ryde. From this town a footpath leads across... more...

It was all glory and glitter one bright day in Babylon. It was that eventful morning, ages and ages ago, when the armies of the East and the armies of the West, with the epigonoi, or brilliant young "sons of the King," twenty thousand in line, with horse-archers and foot-archers, and slingers and spearmen, and war-elephants and war-chariots, and all the galleys and barges of the King's... more...

THE BRIGHTER SIDE OF PEACE. I'm not out of the Army yet, but lately I was home on leave. At a time like that you don't really care about being demobilised just yet. After all, to earn—or let us say to be paid—several pounds for a fortnight's luxurious idleness is a far, far better thing than to receive about the same number of shillings for a like period of unremitting toil. There... more...

OUR BOOKING-OFFICE. PARALLEL.Joe, the Fat Boy in Pickwick, startles the Old Lady; Oscar, the Fad Boy in Lippincott's, startles Mrs. Grundy. Oscar, the Fad Boy. "I want to make your flesh creep!"The Baron has read OSCAR WILDE'S Wildest and Oscarest work, called Dorian Gray, a weird sensational romance, complete in one number of Lippincott's Magazine. The Baron, recommends anybody... more...

TOMB OF GOWER, THE POET.Tomb of Gower, the Poet.Dr. Johnson has dignified Gower with the character of "THE FATHER OF ENGLISH POETRY"; so that no apology is required for the introduction of the above memorial in our pages. It stands in the north aisle of the church of St. Mary Ovrie, or St. Saviour, Southwark; and is one of the richest monuments within those hallowed walls. The tomb consists of... more...

TOMBS OF THE FIRST EGYPTIAN DYNASTY. By LUDWIG BORCHARDT, Ph.D., Director of the German School in Cairo. For many years various European collections of Egyptian antiquities have contained a certain series of objects which gave archæologists great difficulty. There were vases of a peculiar form and color, greenish plates of slate, many of them in curious animal forms, and other similar things. It was... more...