Fiction Books

PREFACE It reflects not at all on Mr Cloudesley Brereton's admirable work of translation to remark how subtly the spirit of such work as this of M. Tarde's changes in such a process. There are certain things peculiar, I suppose, to every language in the world, certain distinctive possibilities in each. To French far more than to English, belong the intellectual liveliness, the cheerful,... more...

LONG the old Roman road that crosses the rolling hills from the upper waters of the Marne to the Meuse, a soldier of France was passing in the night. In the broader pools of summer moonlight he showed as a hale and husky fellow of about thirty years, with dark hair and eyes and a handsome, downcast face. His uniform was faded and dusty; not a trace of the horizon-blue was left; only a gray shadow. He... more...

THE SULTAN'S BEAR.   The sultan being one day rather out of sorts, sent for his Jewish physician, a man very eminent for skill in his profession, and not less distinguished by his love of his own nation and his desperate enmity to the Christians. Finding that his patient had not really much the matter with him, and thinking a little gossip would not only be more agreeable, but more likely to do... more...

THE WOMAN OF THE WORLD.   We all know that there are certain conventional laws by which our social doings and seemings are regulated; but what is the power which compels the observance of these laws? There is no company police to keep people moving on, no fines or other penalties; nobody but the very outrageous need fear being turned out of the room; we have every one of us strong inclinations and... more...

FRANCE. Hotel de Louvre, January 6th, 1858.—On Tuesday morning, our dozen trunks and half-dozen carpet-bags being already packed and labelled, we began to prepare for our journey two or three hours before light. Two cabs were at the door by half past six, and at seven we set out for the London Bridge station, while it was still dark and bitterly cold. There were already many people in the streets,... more...

CHAPTER I "THE BEST BELOVED OF ENGLISH WRITERS" The Goldsmith family sprang originally from Crayford, a nestling village in Kent. This southern county, in all its loveliness, can thus add this high honour to its other though not greater glories. "To be the best beloved of English writers," said Thackeray, "what a title that is for a man!" This he gave to Goldsmith. It is a title... more...

CHAPTER I. "The Universe is a mistake!" Thus spake Herbert Brande, a passenger on the Majestic, making for Queenstown Harbour, one evening early in the past year. Foolish as the words may seem, they were partly influential in leading to my terrible association with him, and all that is described in this book. Brande was standing beside me on the starboard side of the vessel. We had been... more...

THE ideal is the essence of poetry. In the virginal innocence of the world, poetry was a term that meant discourse of the gods. A world grown grey has learned to regard the gods as diseases of language. Conceived, it may be, in fevers of fancy, perhaps, originally, they were but deified words. Yet, it is as children of beauty and of dream that they remain. "Mortal has made the immortal," the... more...

Now this is the beginning of the Hollow Tree stories which the Story Teller told the Little Lady in the queer old house which stands in the very borders of the Big Deep Woods itself. They were told in the Room of the Lowest Ceiling and the Widest Fire—a ceiling so low that when the Story Teller stands upright it brushes his hair as he walks, and a fire so deep that pieces of large trees do not need... more...

WHO SHALL RULE THE WAVES?   A contest of a very remarkable kind is now going on, one which is pregnant with important results in respect to commerce, to naval architecture, to geographical discovery, to colonisation, to the spread of intelligence, to the improvement of industrial art, and to the balance of political power among nations. The nature of this contest cannot be better made intelligible... more...