The book here included among The World's Classics made its first appearance as an octavo volume of xxiv + 352 pages, with the title- page: Characters of Shakespeare's Plays, By William Hazlitt. London:Printed by C. H. Reynell, 21 Piccadilly, 1817. William Hazlitt (1778-1830) came of an Irish Protestant stock, and of a branch of it transplanted in the reign of George I from the county of... more...

Dinner was over, and Mme. Constantin and her guests were seated under the lighted candles in her cosey salon. With the serving of the coffee and cigarettes, pillows had been adjusted to bare shoulders, stools moved under slippered feet, and easy lounges pushed nearer the fire. Greenough, his long body aslant, his head on the edge of a chair, his feet on the hearth rug, was blowing rings to the ceiling.... more...

In which the Hero makes his First Flash and Explosion. Somewhere about the middle of this nineteenth century, a baby boy was born on the raging sea in the midst of a howling tempest. That boy was the hero of this tale. He was cradled in squalls, and nourished in squalor—a week of dirty weather having converted the fore-cabin of the emigrant ship into something like a pig-sty. Appreciating the... more...

No description available

THE NECESSITY OF THE STUDY OF PERSPECTIVE TO PAINTERS, SCULPTORS, AND ARCHITECTS Leonardo da Vinci tells us in his celebrated Treatise on Painting that the young artist should first of all learn perspective, that is to say, he should first of all learn that he has to depict on a flat surface objects which are in relief or distant one from the other; for this is the simple art of painting. Objects... more...

CHAPTER I WATCHING THE LINE There was no shade anywhere. The terrible glare of the summer sun beat down upon the whole length of the wooden platform at Amberley. Hot as was the dry, bracing air, it was incomparable with the blistering intensity of heat reflected from the planking, which burned through to the soles of the feet of the uniformed man who paced its length, slowly, patiently. This sunburnt,... more...

CHAP. I. Containing a brief account of divers dispensations of God in the world, to the time he was pleased to raise this despised people, called Quakers. Divers have been the dispensations of God since the creation of the world, unto the sons of men; but the great end of all of them, has been the renown of his own excellent name in the creation and restoration of man: man, the emblem of himself, as a... more...

CHAPTER I—THE BOOK ‘—the book of the wars of the Lord.’—Moses. John Bunyan’s Holy War was first published in 1682, six years before its illustrious author’s death.  Bunyan wrote this great book when he was still in all the fulness of his intellectual power and in all the ripeness of his spiritual experience.  The Holy War is not the Pilgrim’s Progress—there is only one Pilgrim’s... more...

HOW FOWLS LOOK. 1. Here we find the hen and chickens, a new company of our farm-yard friends. We see that they are very unlike the other friends we have been studying, and, though we know them well, we may find out something new about them. 2. Instead of a coat of hair or fur, the hen is covered with feathers, all pointing backward and lying over each other, so that the rain falls off as from the... more...

THE STATE PRISON IN THE TOWER. A paragraph has lately gone the round of the newspapers, in which, after mentioning the alterations recently made in the Beauchamp Tower and the opening of its "written walls" to public inspection, it is stated that this Tower was formerly the place of confinement for state prisoners, and that "Sir William Wallace and Queen Anne Boleyn" were amongst its... more...