Non-Classifiable Books

BYRON. It is one of the singular facts in the history of literature, that the most rootedly conservative country in Europe should have produced the poet of the Revolution. Nowhere is the antipathy to principles and ideas so profound, nor the addiction to moderate compromise so inveterate, nor the reluctance to advance away from the past so unconquerable, as in England; and nowhere in England is there... more...

CHAPTER I. THE BEGINNINGS OF ARIANISM. Arianism is extinct only in the sense that it has long ceased to furnish party names. It sprang from permanent tendencies of human nature, and raised questions whose interest can never perish. As long as the Agnostic and the Evolutionist are with us, the old battlefields of Athanasius will not be left to silence. Moreover, no writer more directly joins the new... more...

Locomotion in the Twentieth Century It is proposed in this book to present in as orderly an arrangement as the necessarily diffused nature of the subject admits, certain speculations about the trend of present forces, speculations which, taken all together, will build up an imperfect and very hypothetical, but sincerely intended forecast of the way things will probably go in this new century.... more...

ir, When I venture to inscribe to you the following pages, I am fearless of having applied to me Johnson’s definition of a dedicator, “one who inscribes his work to a patron with compliment and servility.” Adulation, Sir, from any quarter, you would resent as an indignity, and the tenor of my own life and writings will secure me from the imputation of servile deference to others, with whatever... more...

INTRODUCTION The Code of Hammurabi is one of the most important monuments in the history of the human race.  Containing as it does the laws which were enacted by a king of Babylonia in the third millennium B.C., whose rule extended over the whole of Mesopotamia from the mouths of the rivers Tigris and Euphrates to the Mediterranean coast, we must regard it with interest.  But when we reflect that the... more...

CHAPTER I. DEFINITION—HISTORY—ILLUSTRATIVE CASES. SHAKING PALSY. (Paralysis Agitans.) Involuntary tremulous motion, with lessened muscular power, in parts not in action and even when supported; with a propensity to bend the trunk forwards, and to pass from a walking to a running pace: the senses and intellects being uninjured. The term Shaking Palsy has been vaguely employed by medical writers in... more...

The soft wind of an Italian spring stirred among the leaves outside. The windows of the studio, left open to the morning air, were carefully shaded. The scent of mulberry blossoms drifted in. The chair on the model-stand, adjusted to catch the light, was screened from the glare; and the light falling on the rich drapery flung across its back brought out a dull carmine in the slender, bell-shaped... more...

IN A COAL MINE Did you ever wonder how beds of coal happened to be in the earth? This is their story. Centuries ago, so many thousand centuries that even the most learned men can only guess at their number, strange things were coming to pass. The air was so moist and cloudy that the sun's rays had hard work to get through. It was warm, nevertheless, for the crust of the earth was not nearly so... more...

Part I Query 1. Whether there ever was, is, or will be, an industrious nation poor, or an idle rich? 2. Qu. Whether a people can be called poor, where the common sort are well fed, clothed, and lodged? 3. Qu. Whether the drift and aim of every wise State should not be, to encourage industry in its members? And whether those who employ neither heads nor hands for the common benefit deserve not to be... more...

PREFACE The following stories are intended for children of various ages. The introductory chapter, 'A Talk about Saints,' and the stories marked with an asterisk in the Table of Contents, were written first for an eager listener of nine years old. But as the book has grown longer the age of its readers has grown older for two reasons: First: because it was necessary to take for granted some... more...