Essays Books

PREFACE THE note of prophecy! It sounds sharp and clear in many a vibrant line, in many a sonorous sentence of the essays herein collected for the first time. Written for various Californian journals and periodicals and extending over a period of more than a quarter of a century, these opinions and reflections express the refined judgment of one who has seen, not as through a glass darkly, the trend of... more...

This December evening, the imagination, by a law of contrast, recalls another December night two hundred and seventy years ago. The circle of darkness is drawn about a little group of Pilgrims who have come ashore on a sandy and inhospitable coast. On one side is a vexed and wintry sea, three thousand miles of tossing waves and tempest, beyond which lie the home, the hedgerows and cottages, the church... more...

THE INN OF TRANQUILLITY Under a burning blue sky, among the pine-trees and junipers, the cypresses and olives of that Odyssean coast, we came one afternoon on a pink house bearing the legend: "Osteria di Tranquillita,"; and, partly because of the name, and partly because we did not expect to find a house at all in those goat-haunted groves above the waves, we tarried for contemplation. To the... more...

CLOCKS. There are two kinds of clocks. There is the clock that is always wrong, and that knows it is wrong, and glories in it; and there is the clock that is always right—except when you rely upon it, and then it is more wrong than you would think a clock could be in a civilized country. I remember a clock of this latter type, that we had in the house when I was a boy, routing us all up at three... more...

INTRODUCTION No character in our literature, not even Mr. Pickwick, has more endeared himself to successive generations of readers than Addison’s Sir Roger de Coverley: there are many figures in drama and fiction of whom we feel that they are in a way personal friends of our own, that once introduced to us they remain a permanent part of our little world. It is the abiding glory of Dickens, it is one... more...

CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY. The ancient and famous metropolis of the North sits overlooking a windy estuary from the slope and summit of three hills.  No situation could be more commanding for the head city of a kingdom; none better chosen for noble prospects.  From her tall precipice and terraced gardens she looks far and wide on the sea and broad champaigns.  To the east you may catch at sunset the... more...

MY DEAR MADAME BLANC, The first copy of this little book was, of course, to have been for Gabrielle Delzant. I am fulfilling her wish, I think, in giving it, instead, to you, who were her oldest friend; as I, alas! had time to be only her latest. She had read nearly all these essays; and, during those weeks of her illness which I spent last autumn in Gascony, she had made me rewrite several among them.... more...

FRANCIS ATTERBURY. (December 1853.) Francis Atterbury, a man who holds a conspicuous place in the political, ecclesiastical, and literary history of England, was born in the year 1662, at Middleton in Buckinghamshire, a parish of which his father was rector. Francis was educated at Westminster School, and carried thence to Christchurch a stock of learning which, though really scanty, he through life... more...

The Declaration of Independence opens with the statement of a great and fruitful political truth. But if it had said:—"We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created unequal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," it would also have stated the truth; and if it had added,... more...

THE MYSTERY OF JUSTICE 1 I speak, for those who do not believe in the existence of a unique, all-powerful, infallible Judge, for ever intent on our thoughts, our feelings and actions, maintaining justice in this world and completing it in the next. And if there be no Judge, what justice is there? None other than that which men have made for themselves by their laws and tribunals, as also in the social... more...