Non-Classifiable Books

INTRODUCTION. Though it may not have been possible in the following pages to reproduce the elegant and incisive style of a master of French prose, not even the inadequacies of a translation can obscure the force of his argument. The only introduction, therefore, that seems possible must take the form of a request to the reader to study M. Faguet's criticism of modern democracy with the daily paper... more...

PREFACE I have wished to give a trustworthy account of Schiller and his works on a scale large enough to permit the doing of something like justice to his great name, but not so large as in itself to kill all hope and chance of readableness. By a trustworthy account I mean one that is accurate in the matters of fact and sane in the matters of judgment. That there is room for an English book thus... more...

CHAPTER I.Departure. — On Board Ship. — Arrival at Nassau. — Capital of the Bahamas. — Climate. — Soil. — Fruits and Flowers. — Magic Fertility. — Colored Population. — The Blockade Runners. — Population. — Products. — A Picturesque Local Scene. — Superstition. — Fish Story. — The Silk-Cotton Tree. — Remarkable Vegetation. — The Sea Gardens. — Marine Animal Life. —... more...

INTRODUCTION This discussion of the characters of Pinus is an attempt to determine their taxonomic significance and their utility for determining the limits of the species. A systematic arrangement follows, based on the evolution of the cone and seed from the comparatively primitive conditions that appear in Pinus cembra to the specialized cone and peculiar dissemination of Pinus radiata and its... more...

SPRING I. For more than a week my pen has lain untouched.  I have written nothing for seven whole days, not even a letter.  Except during one or two bouts of illness, such a thing never happened in my life before.  In my life; the life, that is, which had to be supported by anxious toil; the life which was not lived for living’s sake, as all life should be, but under the goad of fear.  The... more...

INTRODUCTION. George, Lord Lyttelton, was born in 1709, at Hagley, in Worcestershire.  He was educated at Eton and at Christchurch, Oxford, entered Parliament, became a Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer.  In 1757 he withdrew from politics, was raised to the peerage, and spent the last eighteen years of his life in lettered ease.  In 1760 Lord Lyttelton first published these... more...

I do not propose to enter upon the system of landholding in Scotland or Ireland, which appears to me to bear the stamp of the Celtic origin of the people, and which was preserved in Ireland long after it had disappeared in other European countries formerly inhabited by the Celts. That ancient race may be regarded as the original settlers of a large portion of the European continent, and its land system... more...

CHAPTER I IN A CASTING NET A long illness, a longer convalescence, a positive injunction from my doctor to leave friends and business associates and to seek some spot where a comfortable bed and good food could be had in convenient proximity to varied but mild forms of amusement—and I found myself in the autumn of the year 1910 free and alone in the delightful city of Hamburg. All my plans had gone... more...

FROM LONDON TO LAND’S END Sir, I find so much left to speak of, and so many things to say in every part of England, that my journey cannot be barren of intelligence which way soever I turn; no, though I were to oblige myself to say nothing of anything that had been spoken of before. I intended once to have gone due west this journey; but then I should have been obliged to crowd my observations so... more...

The cast of a Skull does not show the temperament of the individual, but the portraits of Burns indicate the bilious and nervous temperaments—the sources of strength, activity, and susceptibility; and the descriptions given by his contemporaries of his beaming and energetic eye, and the rapidity and impetuosity of his manifestations, establish the inference that his brain was active and susceptible.... more...