It is fully fifteen, if not twenty, years since my father commenced the composition of an historical romance on the subject of Pausanias, the Spartan Regent. Circumstances, which need not here be recorded, compelled him to lay aside the work thus begun. But the subject continued to haunt his imagination and occupy his thoughts. He detected in it singular opportunities for effective exercise of the... more...

SCENE: A large room with a door at the back and another at the side opening to an inner room. A desk and a chair in the middle. An hour-glass on a bracket near the door. A creepy stool near it. Some benches. The WISE MAN sitting at his desk. WISE MAN [turning over the pages of a book]. Where is that passage I am to explain to my pupils to-day? Here it is, and the book says that it was written by a... more...

ADVERTISEMENT. It having been frequently stated in print that the book called “Lavengro” was got up expressly against the popish agitation, in the years 1850-51, the author takes this opportunity of saying that the principal part of that book was written in the year ’43, that the whole of it was completed before the termination of the year ’46, and that it was in the hands of the publisher in... more...

THE PRINCESS OF THE GOLDEN CASTLE EDDY was all alone, for his mother had been up with him so much the night before that at about four o'clock in the afternoon she said that she was going to lie down for a little while. The little boy had always enjoyed being ill, for then he was read aloud to and had lemonade, but this had been a real illness, and though he was better now, the doctor still would... more...

An Empty Room The house where the long trail started was one of gray walls, gray rooms and gray corridors, with carpets that muffled the feet which at intervals passed along them. It was a house of silence, brooding within the high fence that shut it and the grounds from a landscape torpid under the hot sun of summer, and across which occasionally drifted the lonely, mournful whistle of a train on a... more...

I. “ENGLAND.”IN THE CAMP. This is a leader’s tent.  “Who gathers here?”   Enter and see and listen.  On the groundMen sit or stand, enter or disappear,   Dark faces and deep voices all around. One answers you.  “You ask who gathers here?   Companions!  Generals we have none, nor chief.What need is there?  The plan is all so clear—  The future’s hope, the present’s grim... more...

CHAPTER I. THE POOR MAN'S CHILD. Two worn travellers, a young man and a fair girl about four years old, sat on the towing-path by the side of the Trent. The young man had his coat off, by which you might infer it was very hot; but no, it was a keen October day, and an east wind sweeping down the river. The coat was wrapped tightly round the little girl, so that only her fair face with blue eyes... more...

On the twenty-fourth of January we left Nohcacab. It was a great relief to bid farewell to this place, and the only regret attending our departure was the reflection that we should be obliged to return. The kindness and attentions of the padrecito and his brother, and, indeed, of all the villagers, had been unremitted, but the fatigue of riding twelve miles every day over the same ground, and the... more...

ARTEMIS TO ACTAEON   THOU couldst not look on me and live: so runs  The mortal legend—thou that couldst not live  Nor look on me (so the divine decree)!  That saw'st me in the cloud, the wave, the bough,  The clod commoved with April, and the shapes  Lurking 'twixt lid and eye-ball in the dark.  Mocked I thee not in every guise of life,  Hid in girls' eyes, a naiad in... more...

Kind Patrons:—-We newspaper carriers are Time's errand-boys; and all the year round, the old gentleman sends us from one of your doors to another, to let you know what he is talking about and what he is doing. We are a strange set of urchins; for, punctually on New Year's morning, one and all of us are seized with a fit of rhyme, and break forth in such hideous strains, that it would be... more...