Non-Classifiable Books

THE GOODWIN SANDS 'Would'st thou,' so the helmsman answered,'Learn the secrets of the sea?Only those who brave its dangersComprehend its mystery.' The Goodwin Sands are a great sandbank, eight miles long and about four miles wide, rising out of deep water four miles off Deal at their nearest point to the mainland. They run lengthwise from north to south, and their breadth is... more...

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION There is much in the action of lime in the soil that is not known, but all that we really need to know is simple and easily comprehended. The purpose of this little book is to set down the things that we need to know in order that we may make and keep our land friendly to plant life so far as lime is necessarily concerned with such an undertaking. Intelligent men like to reason... more...

Heroes of the Lifeboat and Rocket. Skirmishes with the Subject Generally. It ought to be known to all English boys that there is a terrible and costly war in which the British nation is at all times engaged. No intervals of peace mark the course of this war. Cessations of hostilities there are for brief periods, but no treaties of peace. “War to the knife” is its character. Quarter is neither given... more...

CHARACTERISTICS In the years 1804, 1805, and 1806, two men commanded an expedition which explored the wilderness that stretched from the mouth of the Missouri River to where the Columbia enters the Pacific, and dedicated to civilization a new empire. Their names were Meriwether Lewis and William Clark. As a rule, one who tries to discover and to set down in order the simple signs that spell the story... more...

Up to the present time but very little has been known of the existence of the peculiarly American family Procyonidæ in any deposits older than the very latest Quaternary. Leidy has described and figured an isolated last upper tooth, from the Loup Fork deposits of Nebraska, under the name of Leptarctus primus, which has been referred to this family. The Museum Expedition of last year into this region... more...

The notes on Sculpture. Compared with the mass of manuscript treating of Painting, a very small number of passages bearing on the practice and methods of Sculpture are to be found scattered through the note books; these are here given at the beginning of this section (Nos. 706-709). There is less cause for surprise at finding that the equestrian statue of Francesco Sforza is only incidentally spoken... more...

CHAPTER I RADISSON'S FIRST VOYAGE The Boy Radisson is captured by the Iroquois and carried to the Mohawk Valley—In League with Another Captive, he slays their Guards and escapes—He is overtaken in Sight of Home—Tortured and adopted in the Tribe, he visits Orange, where the Dutch offer to ransom him—His Escape Early one morning in the spring of 1652 three young men left the little stockaded... 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...

ROMAN CAPITALS In speaking of the "Roman" letter throughout this chapter its capital form—the form in monumental use among the Romans—will always be implied. The small or "minuscule" letters, which present nomenclature includes under the general title of "Roman" letters, and which will be considered in the following chapter, were of later formation than the capitals; and... more...

His Early Years To Italy, at whose liberal well-head English Art has so often renewed itself, we turn naturally for an opening to this chronicle of a great English artist's career. Frederic Leighton was the painter of our time who strove hardest to keep alive an Italian ideal of beauty in London; therefore it is in Italy, the Italy of Raphael and Angelo and his favourite Giotteschi, that we must... more...