JOHN PIERPONT. Most men of "fourscore and upwards," like Lear, and who, like Lear, have been "mightily abused" in their day, are found, upon diligent inquiry, to have long outlived themselves, like the Archbishop of Granada; but here is a man, or was but the other day, in his eighty-second year, with the temper and edge and "bright blue rippling glitter" of a Damascus blade up... more...

CHARIVARIA. Sir Robert Lorimer has been appointed architect for the restoration of Whitekirk church, East Lothian, which was burnt down by Suffragettes last February. There is a feeling among the militants that, since it is owing to the exertions of women that the work has to be done, it ought to have been given to a woman architect. Two Suffragettes who were charged, last week, at Bow Street with... more...

We all held our breath as the coach rushed through the semi-darkness of Galloper’s Ridge. The vehicle itself was only a huge lumbering shadow; its side-lights were carefully extinguished, and Yuba Bill had just politely removed from the lips of an outside passenger even the cigar with which he had been ostentatiously exhibiting his coolness. For it had been rumoured that the Ramon Martinez gang of... more...

THE GREAT CANAL ENTERPRISE. [FROM OUR SPECIAL BOSTON CORRESPONDENT.] BOSTON, May 8th, 1870. We Bostonians are greatly surprised that your valuable journal has as yet taken no notice of the great undertaking of the century—the Cape Cod Canal. However, you New-Yorkers are quite out of the world, and unless you read the Boston Transcript regularly, can not be expected to know much about the enterprises... more...

CHESUNCOOK. At 5 P.M., September 13th, 185-, I left Boston in the steamer for Bangor by the outside course. It was a warm and still night,—warmer, probably, on the water than on the land,—and the sea was as smooth as a small lake in summer, merely rippled. The passengers went singing on the deck, as in a parlor, till ten o'clock. We passed a vessel on her beam-ends on a rock just outside the... more...

THE DIVINITY OF OUR RELIGION AS CONCEDED BY ITS ENEMIES. Voltaire says, "I am ever apprehensive of being mistaken; but all monuments give me sufficient evidence that the polished nations of antiquity acknowledged a supreme God. There is not a book, not a medal, not a bas-relief, not an inscription, in which Juno, Minerva, Neptune, Mars, or any of the other deities, is spoken of as a creating being,... more...

Grand Entrance to Hyde Park.Frieze. The great Lord Burleigh says, "A realm gaineth more by one year's peace than by ten years' war;" and the architectural triumphs which are rising in every quarter of the metropolis are strong confirmation of this maxim. One of these triumphs is represented in the annexed engraving, viz. the grand entrance to Hyde Park, erected from the designs of... more...

CHAPTER I. I was asleep and dreaming—dreaming dreadful, horrible, soul-shattering dreams—dreams that flung me head-first out of bed, and then flung me back into bed off the uncarpeted floor of my chamber. But I did not wake—why should I?—it was unnecessary—I wanted to dream—I had to dream and therefore I dreamt. I was walking home from a cheap restaurant in one of the poorer quarters of... more...

THE STORY OF THE SPARROWS. E are little English sparrows. We have been two years in America. We were brought over by Mr. Wakefield's gardener. He let us loose in the grove; and there we have been ever since.Mr. Wakefield has built little houses for us, and put them on the boughs of the trees. We go into these houses when it rains hard or blows. Once the doors of our houses were all blocked up with... more...

Fall of the Staubbath. In the poet and the philosopher, the lover of the sublime, and the student of the beautiful in art—the contemplation of such a scene as this must awaken ecstatic feelings of admiration and awe. Its effect upon the mere man of the world, whose mind is clogged up with common-places of life, must be overwhelming as the torrent itself; perchance he soon recovers from the... more...