VILLAS IN THE REGENT'S PARK. MARQUESS OF HERTFORD'S VILLA. DORIC VILLA. The definition of the word villa is a country seat; but the reader will ask, how can a country seat be in the midst of a metropolis, or in its brick and mortar confines? The term, however, admits of various modifications. The villas of the Romans resembled large city palaces removed into the country, and some of them were... more...

THE DOUBLE ASPECT OF GOODNESS In undertaking the following discussion I foresee two grave difficulties. My reader may well feel that goodness is already the most familiar of all the thoughts we employ, and yet he may at the same time suspect that there is something about it perplexingly abstruse and remote. Familiar it certainly is. It attends all our wishes, acts, and projects as nothing else does, so... more...

LETTER I My dear Sir, The influence which the science of chemistry exercises upon human industry, agriculture, and commerce; upon physiology, medicine, and other sciences, is now so interesting a topic of conversation everywhere, that it may be no unacceptable present to you if I trace in a few familiar letters some of the relations it bears to these various sciences, and exhibit for you its actual... more...

CHAPTER I THE FRENCH REVOLUTION IN ENGLAND The history of the French Revolution in England begins with a sermon and ends with a poem. Between that famous discourse by Dr. Richard Price on the love of our country, delivered in the first excitement that followed the fall of the Bastille, and the publication of Shelley's Hellas there stretched a period of thirty-two years. It covered the dawn, the... more...

BY PROXY I had met Mr. Scraggs, shaken him by the hand, and, in the shallow sense of the word, knew him. But a man is more than clothes and a bald head. It is also something of a trick to find out more about him—particularly in the cow country. One needs an interpreter. Red furnished the translation. After that, I nurtured Mr. Scraggs's friendship, for the benefit of humanity and philosophy.... more...

THAT WE SHOULD NOT JUDGE OF OUR HAPPINESSE UNTILL AFTER OUR DEATH      scilicet ultima semper     Expectanda dies homini est, dicique beatus     Ante obitum nemo, supremaque funera debat.     [Footnote: Ovid. Met. 1, iii. 135.]      We must expect of man the latest day,     Nor ere he die, he's happie, can we say. The very children are acquainted with the storie of... more...

CAMBRIDGE 1828-1831. After having spent two sessions in Edinburgh, my father perceived, or he heard from my sisters, that I did not like the thought of being a physician, so he proposed that I should become a clergyman. He was very properly vehement against my turning into an idle sporting man, which then seemed my probable destination. I asked for some time to consider, as from what little I had heard... more...

My mother was a lovely, delicate woman from the coast of Brittany, who was miserable sleeping on less than three mattresses, and who, it is said, was once injured by a falling leaf in her garden. My grandfather, a descendant of the French nobility whose family had ridden the tumbrils of the Revolution, tended her fragile body and spirit with the same loving care given rare, brief-blooming flowers. You... more...

CHAPTER I THE POWER OF PRAYERTHE following account of some of the experiences which eventually led to the formation of theChina Inland Mission, and to its taking the form in which it has been developed, first appeared in the pages ofChina's Millions. Many of those who read it there asked that it might appear in separate form. Miss Guinness incorporated it in theStory of the China Inland Mission, a... more...

CHAPTER I. AN ODDITY, 1822. It is nasty, dirty weather outside there on the puszta; the sky is cloudy, the earth muddy, the rain has been falling for two weeks incessantly, as if by special command. There are inundations and submersions everywhere; rushes are growing instead of wheat, the stork is ploughing, the duck is fishing all over the precious sea-like expanse. "This judgment weather began on... more...