Classics Books

FORCED BENEFITS.   The maxim, that men may safely be left to seek their own interest, and are sure to find it, appears to require some slight qualification, for nothing can be more certain, than that men are often the better of things which have been forced upon them. Those who advocate the idea in its rigour, forget that there are such things as ignorance and prejudice in the world, and that most men... more...

Heretofore our knowledge of the osteology of Heliscomys Cope has been extremely limited; this genus previously was known by its teeth, fragmental maxillaries, incomplete palatine bone and mandible, and part of one forelimb. In the summer of 1946 the writer, as a member of the University of Kansas Museum of Natural History field party, discovered the anterior part of a skull of Heliscomys in the middle... more...

SPINNING TOPS. At a Leeds Board School last week, the master said to his class, "There is to be a meeting of the British Association in Leeds. What is it all about? Who are the members of the British Association? What do they do?" There was a long pause. At length it was broken by an intelligent shy boy: "Please, sir, I know—they spin tops!" Now I am sorry to say that this answer was... more...

TERESA FRANCES THOMPSON, who also bore my name by marriage, died on January 26, 1919. This verse is published to her memory, because I wish to keep together the poetry she occasioned and enable those who loved her—and they were a great many-to know definitely what she was to me. I think that is the truth. This is the only means I have at present of acknowledging publicly the vast debt I owe to her.... more...

INTRODUCTION There is the proper mood and the just environment for the reading as well as for the writing of works of fiction, and there can be no better place for the enjoying of a novel by Anthony Trollope than under a tree in Kensington Gardens of a summer day. Under a tree in the avenue that reaches down from the Round Pond to the Long Water. There, perhaps more than anywhere else, lingers the... more...

"I have always and everywhere lived such a life that each passing day was spent as though that light would never return; (that is, in tranquillity! Put aside those thoughts which worry you, if you wish to follow my lead. Ascyltos persecutes you here; get out of his way. I am about to start for foreign parts, you may come with me. I have taken a berth on a vessel which will probably weigh anchor... more...

The Letter to the Hebrews 1:1 God, having in the past spoken to the fathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, 1:2 has at the end of these days spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom also he made the worlds. 1:3 His Son is the radiance of his glory, the very image of his substance, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had... more...

1 That sketch up there with the boy's cap? Yes; that's the same woman. I wonder whether you could guess who she was. A singular being, is she not? The most marvellous creature, quite, that I have ever met: a wonderful elegance, exotic, far-fetched, poignant; an artificial perverse sort of grace and research in every outline and movement and arrangement of head and neck, and hands and fingers.... more...

LIFE OF JOSEPH ADDISON. Joseph Addison, the Spectator, the true founder of our periodical literature, the finest, if not the greatest writer in the English language, was born at Milston, Wiltshire, on the 1st of May 1672. A fanciful mind might trace a correspondence between the particular months when celebrated men have been born and the peculiar complexion of their genius. Milton, the austere and... more...

Misgivings. (1860.)  When ocean-clouds over inland hills    Sweep storming in late autumn brown,  And horror the sodden valley fills,    And the spire falls crashing in the town,  I muse upon my country's ills—  The tempest bursting from the waste of TimeOn the world's fairest hope linked with man's foulest crime.  Nature's dark side is heeded now—    (Ah!... more...