Non-Classifiable Books

INTRODUCTION THE accompanying Atlas has been included in this series for the greater convenience of the reader of “Grote's Greece” and other works that ask a continual reference to maps of ancient and classical geography. The disadvantage of having to turn perpetually from the text of a volume to a map at its end, or a few pages away, is often enough to prevent the effective use of the one in... more...

We, who can recall the consulship of Plancus, and quite respectable, old-fogyfied times, remember amongst other amusements which we had as children the pictures at which we were permitted to look. There was Boydell's Shakspeare, black and ghastly gallery of murky Opies, glum Northcotes, straddling Fuselis! there were Lear, Oberon, Hamlet, with starting muscles, rolling eyeballs, and long pointing... more...

I. WAKING UP If there is anything that we all enjoy, it is waking up on a bright spring morning and seeing the sunlight pouring into the room. You all know the poem beginning,— “I remember, I remember The house where I was born; The little window where the sun Came peeping in at morn.” You are feeling fresh and rested and happy after your good night’s sleep and you are eager to be up and out... more...

THE LIFE OF GOETHE BY CALVIN THOMAS, LL.D. Professor of Germanic Languages and Literatures, Columbia University Goethe, the illustrious poet-sage whom Matthew Arnold called the "clearest, largest, and most helpful thinker of modern times," was born August 28, 1749, at Frankfurt on the Main.[2] He was christened Johann Wolfgang. In his early years his familiar name was Wolfgang, or simply Wolf,... more...

THE MARX HE KNEW I The pale, yellow light of the waning day streamed through the dusty window panes of the little cigar shop, and across the bench where old Hans Fritzsche worked and hummed the melody of Der Freiheit the while. The Young Comrade who sat in the corner upon a three-legged stool seemed not to hear the humming. His eyes were fixed upon a large photograph of a man which hung in a massive... more...

A singular fatality has ruled the destiny of nearly all the most famous of Leonardo da Vinci's works. Two of the three most important were never completed, obstacles having arisen during his life-time, which obliged him to leave them unfinished; namely the Sforza Monument and the Wall-painting of the Battle of Anghiari, while the third—the picture of the Last Supper at Milan—has suffered... more...

THE POLITICAL MEANING OF MALPLAQUET That political significance which we must seek in all military history, and without which that history cannot be accurate even upon its technical side, may be stated for the battle of Malplaquet in the following terms. Louis XIV. succeeding to a cautious and constructive period in the national life of France, this in its turn succeeding to the long impotence of the... 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. Japanning, as it is generally understood in Great Britain, is the art of covering paper, wood, or metal with a more or less thick coating of brilliant varnish, and hardening the same by baking it in an oven at a suitable heat. It originated in Japan—hence its name—where the natives use a natural varnish or lacquer which flows from a certain kind of tree, and which on its issuing from... more...

KAMTSCHATKA. The wind, which continued favourable to us as far as the Northern Tropic, was succeeded by a calm that lasted twelve days. The ocean, as far as the eye could reach, was as smooth as a mirror, and the heat almost insupportable. Sailors only can fully understand the disagreeableness of this situation. The activity usual on shipboard gave place to the most wearisome idleness. Every one was... more...