Classics Books

A fashion plate is a costume portrait indicating a suitable style of clothing that can be made or secured. Fashion illustration began in the late 15th and early 16th centuries with portrait pictures that made a person’s identity known not by his individual features but rather by his dress. This paper, based on a lecture given in the fall of 1963 at the Metropolitan Museum, New York, traces the... more...

CHAPTER I y chieftain ancestors had lived at Glandore for many centuries and were very well known. Hardly a ship could pass the Old Head of Kinsale without some boats putting off to exchange the time of day with her, and our family name was on men's tongues in half the seaports of Europe, I dare say. My ancestors lived in castles which were like churches stuck on end, and they drank the best of... more...

ACT THE FIRST. SCENE I. A GARDEN.Enter Castalio, Polydore, and Page.Cas.Polydore, our sportHas been to-day much better for the danger:When on the brink the foaming boar I met,And in his side thought to have lodg'd my spear,The desperate savage rush'd within my force,And bore me headlong with him down the rock.Pol.But then——Cas.Ay, then, my brother, my friend, Polydore,Like Perseus mounted... more...

REPORTING OUR UNCLE ABE'S LATEST LITTLE TALE; OUR CORRESPONDENT'S HISTORICAL CHAUNT; THE BOSTON NOVEL OF "MR. SMITH;" AND A FUNERAL DISCOURSE BY THE DEVOUT CHAPLAIN OF THE MACKEREL BRIGADE. Washington, D.C., Jan. 4th, 1863. The more I see of our Honest Abe, my boy,—the more closely I analyze the occasional acts by which he individualizes himself as a unit distinct from the decimals... more...

MY VISIT TO NIAGARA. Never did a pilgrim approach Niagara with deeper enthusiasm than mine. I had lingered away from it, and wandered to other scenes, because my treasury of anticipated enjoyments, comprising all the wonders of the world, had nothing else so magnificent, and I was loath to exchange the pleasures of hope for those of memory so soon. At length the day came. The stage-coach, with a... more...

OSCAR WILDE ears ago, in a Paris club, one man said to another: "Well, what's up?" The other shook a paper: "There is only one genius in England and they have put him in jail." One may wonder though whether it were their doing, or even Wilde's, that put him there. One may wonder whether it were not the high fates who so gratified him in order that, from his purgatory, he might... more...

CHAPTER I "Quod felix faustumque sit!" There is a happiness which no poet has yet properly sung, which no lady-reader, let her be ever so amiable, has experienced or ever will experience in this world. This is a condition of happiness which alone belongs to the male sex, and even then alone to the elect. It is a moment of life which seizes upon our feelings, our minds, our whole being. Tears... more...

AN OBJECT OF VALUE AND VIRTUE This happened a very little time after we left our humble home in Lewisham, and went to live at the Blackheath house of our Indian uncle, which was replete with every modern convenience, and had a big garden and a great many greenhouses. We had had a lot of jolly Christmas presents, and one of them was Dicky's from father, and it was a printing-press. Not one of the... more...

ART AND MORALITY "Why do you always write poetry? Why do you not write prose? Prose is so much more difficult." These were the words of Walter Pater to Oscar Wilde on the occasion of their first meeting during the latter's undergraduate days at Oxford. Those were "days of lyrical ardours and of studious sonnet-writing," wrote Wilde, in reviewing one of Pater's books some years... more...

CHAPTER I CONCERNING THE MAJOR'S CHERRIES "The Major, mam, the Major has a truly wonderful 'ead!" said Sergeant Zebedee Tring as he stood, hammer in hand, very neat and precise from broad shoe-buckles to smart curled wig that offset his square, bronzed face. "Head, Sergeant, head!" retorted pretty, dimpled Mrs. Agatha, nodding at the Sergeant's broad back. "'Ead... more...