Non-Classifiable Books

BACH. I. The growth and development of German music are eminently noteworthy facts in the history of the fine arts. In little more than a century and a half it reached its present high and brilliant place, its progress being so consecutive and regular that the composers who illustrated its well-defined epochs might fairly have linked hands in one connected series. To Johann Sebastian Bach must be... more...

CHAPTER I TO THE RESCUE OF NEW FRANCE When the year 1665 began, the French colony on the shores of the St Lawrence, founded by the valour and devotion of Champlain, had been in existence for more than half a century. Yet it was still in a pitiable state of weakness and destitution. The care and maintenance of the settlement had devolved upon trading companies, and their narrow-minded mercantile... more...

The professed object of the Observations on the Corn Laws, which I published in the spring of 1814, was to state with the strictest impartiality the advantages and disadvantages which, in the actual circumstances of our present situation, were likely to attend the measures under consideration, respecting the trade in corn. A fair review of both sides of the question, without any attempt to conceal the... more...

PREFACE. The reader will find in this book sketches of experiences among gypsies of different nations by one who speaks their language and is conversant with their ways.  These embrace descriptions of the justly famed musical gypsies of St. Petersburg and Moscow, by whom the writer was received literally as a brother; of the Austrian gypsies, especially those composing the first Romany orchestra of... more...

INTRODUCTION A conundrum is a riddle in the form of a question, the answer to which involves a pun. Originally the term was applied to any quaint expression. It is thus, in its modern form, a union of the elaborated riddle and the impromptu pun. With the earliest development of intelligence came the discovery of likeness and difference in things, and the search for analogy was carried out along both... more...

INTRODUCTION. Definition of Soap—Properties—Hydrolysis—Detergent Action. It has been said that the use of soap is a gauge of the civilisation of a nation, but though this may perhaps be in a great measure correct at the present day, the use of soap has not always been co-existent with civilisation, for according to Pliny (Nat. Hist., xxviii., 12, 51) soap was first introduced into Rome from... more...

CHAPTER 1. THE BEATIFIC VISION. Reason, revelation, and the experience of six thousand years unite their voices in proclaiming that perfect happiness cannot be found in this world. It certainly cannot be found in creatures; for they were not clothed with the power to give it. It cannot be found even in the practice of virtue; for God has, in His wisdom, decreed that virtue should merit, but never enjoy... more...

EDITOR'S PREFACE. "Turner's Harbors of England," as it is generally called, is a book which, for various reasons, has never received from readers of Mr. Ruskin's writings the attention it deserves. True, it has always been sought after by connoisseurs, and collectors never fail with their eleven or twelve guineas whenever a set of Artist's Proofs of the First Edition of 1856... more...

CHAPTER I THE PRE-HASKALAH PERIOD "There is but one key to the present," says Max Müller, "and that is the past." To understand fully the growth and historical development of a people's mind, one must be familiar with the conditions that have shaped its present form. It would seem necessary, therefore, to introduce a description of the Haskalah movement with a rapid survey of the... more...

CHAPTER I. THE HOME OF ESTHER COX. Amherst, Nova Scotia, is a beautiful little village on the famous Bay of Fundy; has a population of about three thousand souls, and contains four churches, an academy, a music hall, a large iron foundry, a large shoe factory, and more stores of various kinds than any village of its size in the Province. The private residences of the more wealthy inhabitants are very... more...