PRELIMINARY OBSERVATIONS. Of all the frauds practised by mercenary dealers, there is none more reprehensible, and at the same time more prevalent, than the sophistication of the various articles of food. This unprincipled and nefarious practice, increasing in degree as it has been found difficult of detection, is now applied to almost every commodity which can be classed among either the necessaries or... more...

If we knew how the words in our language were made and what they have meant to successive generations of the men and women who have used them, we should have a new and very interesting kind of history to read. For words, like all other creations of man, were not deliberately manufactured to meet a need, as are the various parts of a bicycle or of an automobile; but grew gradually and slowly out of... more...

BIBLIOGRAPHY HISTORY The history of Mexico at the time of the Conquest rests upon an accurate basis; the five letters of Cortes to the Spanish Emperor, Carlos V. These have been recently retranslated into, and published in, English in two excellent volumes:The Letters of Cortes to Charles V. F. C. MacNutt. G. P. Putnam's Sons. London. 1908.The most famous book on the Conquest is that of Prescott,... more...

In this translation, made with the author's consent, my chief object being to convey his entire meaning, I have unhesitatingly rendered the French very freely sometimes, and again very literally. Style has thus suffered for the sake of clearness and brevity, necessary to secure and retain the attention of readers of this class of books. This same conciseness has also been imposed on our author by... more...

The Duke's Theatre, Dorset Gardens. The above theatre was erected in the year 1671, about a century after the regular establishment of theatres in England. It rose in what may be called the brazen age of the Drama, when the prosecutions of the Puritans had just ceased, and legitimacy and licentiousness danced into the theatre hand in hand. At the Restoration, the few players who had not fallen in... more...

CHAPTER I. It must, to admirers of Browning's writings, appear singularly appropriate that so cosmopolitan a poet was born in London. It would seem as though something of that mighty complex life, so confusedly petty to the narrow vision, so grandiose and even majestic to the larger ken, had blent with his being from the first. What fitter birthplace for the poet whom a comrade has called the... more...

HOW WE GOT TO JOHN O' GROAT'S Thursday, September 7th. It was one o'clock in the morning when we started on the three-mile walk to Warrington, where we were to join the 2.18 a.m. train for Glasgow, and it was nearly ten o'clock when we reached that town, the train being one hour and twenty minutes late. This delay caused us to be too late for the steamboat by which we intended to... more...

PREFACE. Those who have long known the poetry of Wordsworth will be no strangers to the existence of this Journal of his sister, which is now for the first time published entire.  They will have by heart those few wonderful sentences from it which here and there stand at the head of the Poet’s ‘Memorials of a Tour in Scotland in 1803.’  Especially they will remember that ‘Extract from the... more...

CHAPTER I.The Historical Relations of Sextus Empiricus.Interest has revived in the works of Sextus Empiricus in recent times, especially, one may say, since the date of Herbart. There is much in the writings of Sextus that finds a parallel in the methods of modern philosophy. There is a common starting-point in the study of the power and limitations of human thought. There is a common desire to... more...

Bishop Hay strongly impressed upon Mackenzie the propriety of getting his marriage with Agnes of Lovat legitimized, and to send for a commission to the Pope for that purpose. Donald Dubh MacChreggir, priest of Kirkhill, was despatched to Rome with that object, and, according to several of the family manuscripts, procured the legitimation of the marriage. "This priest was a native of Kintail,... more...