Non-Classifiable Books

PALESTRINA.I.The Netherlands share other glories than that of having nursed the most indomitable spirit of liberty known to mediteval Europe. The fine as well as the industrial arts found among this remarkable people, distinguished by Erasmus as possessed of the patientia laboris, an eager and passionate culture. The early contributions of the Low Countries to the growth of the pictorial art are well... more...

THE FISHERMAN PRESENTING THE RINGTO THE DOGE GRADENIGO (BORDONE) THÉOPHILE GAUTIER This picture, which represents a gondolier returning the ring of Saint Mark to the Doge, treats of a legend, an episode of which Giorgione, as we shall see in the next hall, has also painted in a somewhat singular manner. Here is the story in a few words: One night while the gondolier was sleeping in his gondola,... more...

FOREWORD Piracy embodies the romance of the sea at its highest expression. It is a sad but inevitable commentary on our civilization, that, so far as the sea is concerned, it has developed from its infancy down to a century or so ago, under one phase or another of piracy. If men were savages on land they were doubly so at sea, and all the years of maritime adventure—years that added to the map of the... more...

PREFACE If the support of great and good men, famous throughout Christendom, will avail to justify a cause, then indeed we who would utterly abolish the torture of animals by vivisection can never be put out of countenance. Difficult would it be indeed to bring together the authority of so many resounding reputations against any other act of man, since slavery was abolished. The poets, philosophers,... more...

I THE POWER OF THE DEAD TO RETURN TO EARTH Though there is no period at which the ancients do not seem to have believed in a future life, continual confusion prevails when they come to picture the existence led by man in the other world, as we see from the sixth book of the Æneid. Combined with the elaborate mythology of Greece, we are confronted with the primitive belief of Italy, and doubtless of... more...

CHAPTER I The Chequered History of a City Square ... I know not whether it is owing to the tenderness of early association, but this portion of New York appears to many persons the most delectable. It has a kind of established repose which is not of frequent occurrence in other quarters of the long, shrill city; it has a riper, richer, more honourable look than any of the upper ramifications of the... more...

INTRODUCTION The rapidly increasing use of guano, in the United States, and the growing conviction upon the public mind, that it is the cheapest and best purchasable manure in the world, together with the fact of a great want of information among American farmers, as to the best mode of applying it to the soil, has induced the agents of the Peruvian Government for the sale of guano in the United... more...

PHILOSOPHY AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS. Among the Greeks and Romans of the classical age philosophy occupied the place taken by religion among ourselves. Their appeal was to reason not to revelation. To what, asks Cicero in his Offices, are we to look for training in virtue, if not to philosophy? Now, if truth is believed to rest upon authority it is natural that it should be impressed upon the mind... more...

HAMPSTEAD The name of this borough is clearly derived from "ham," or "hame," a home; and "steede," a place, and has consequently the same meaning as homestead. Park, in a note in his book on Hampstead, says that the "p" is a modern interpolation, scarcely found before the seventeenth century, and not in general use until the eighteenth. HISTORY Lysons says that the Manor... more...

For combined beauty and interest—varied beauty and historical interest—there is no place “within easy reach of London”, certainly no place within the suburban radius, that can compare with the stately Tudor palace which stands on the left bank of the Thames, little more than a dozen miles from the metropolis and, though hidden in trees, within eye-reach of Richmond. It is not only one of the... more...