CHAPTER I.  IPSWICH I.—The Great White Horse This ancient Inn is associated with some pleasant and diverting Pickwickian memories.  We think of the adventure with “the lady in the yellow curl papers” and the double-bedded room, just as we would recall some “side splitting” farce in which Buckstone or Toole once made our jaws ache.  As all the world knows, the “Great White Horse” is... more...

Preface. This tale is the last from the pen of Captain Mayne Reid, whose stories have so long been the delight of English boys. Our readers may, perhaps, like to know something of the writer who has given them so much pleasure; especially as his own life was full of adventure and of brave deeds. Mayne Reid was born in the north of Ireland in 1819; his father was a Presbyterian minister, and wished that... more...

Chapter One. The stout trading brig Amity, Samuel Mudge master and part owner, was gliding up Plymouth Sound on a summer’s evening towards her accustomed berth in Catwater, a few years before the termination of the last war between England and France. She had no pilot on board; indeed, her crew averred that the old craft could find the way in and out of the harbour by herself; at all events, her... more...

PREFACE The rise of the Dutch Republic must ever be regarded as one of the leading events of modern times. Without the birth of this great commonwealth, the various historical phenomena of: the sixteenth and following centuries must have either not existed; or have presented themselves under essential modifications.—Itself an organized protest against ecclesiastical tyranny and universal empire, the... more...

INTRODUCTION. The Phaedrus is closely connected with the Symposium, and may be regarded either as introducing or following it. The two Dialogues together contain the whole philosophy of Plato on the nature of love, which in the Republic and in the later writings of Plato is only introduced playfully or as a figure of speech. But in the Phaedrus and Symposium love and philosophy join hands, and one is... more...

CHAPTER I All my life I have had an awareness of other times and places.  I have been aware of other persons in me.—Oh, and trust me, so have you, my reader that is to be.  Read back into your childhood, and this sense of awareness I speak of will be remembered as an experience of your childhood.  You were then not fixed, not crystallized.  You were plastic, a soul in flux, a consciousness and an... more...

The Admiralty has decided that, in the place of the grand manœuvres this year, there shall be a surprise mobilisation. Last year's manœuvres were, we believe, something of a fiasco, but to ensure the success of the surprise mobilisation five months' previous notice is given. "Every man," says the Bishop of London, "must be his own Columbus and find the continent of truth."... more...

I. GENOA I The traveller who on his way to Italy passes along the Riviera di Ponente, through Marseilles, Nice, and Mentone to Ventimiglia, or crossing the Alps touches Italian soil, though scarcely Italy indeed, at Turin, on coming to Genoa finds himself really at last in the South, the true South, of which Genoa la Superba is the gate, her narrow streets, the various life of her port, her picturesque... more...

Those adventurous gentlemen who derive exhilaration from peril, and extract febrifuge for the high pressure of a too exuberant constitution from the difficulties of the Alps, cannot find such peaks as the Aiguille Verte and the Matterhorn, with their friable and precipitous cliffs, among the Rocky Mountains. The geological processes have been gentler in evolving the latter than the former, and in the... more...

Once upon a time there were four little Rabbits, and their names were— Flopsy,Mopsy,Cotton-tail,and Peter. They lived with their Mother in a sand-bank, underneath the root of a very big fir-tree. 'Now my dears,' said old Mrs. Rabbit one morning, 'you may go into the fields or down the lane, but don't go into Mr. McGregor's garden: your Father had an accident there; he was put... more...