Chapter I. The Fall of the House of Frode Full stocked foldsI saw at the sons of Fitjung,Now they carry beggars' staffs;Wealth isLike the twinkling of an eye,The most unstable of friends.Ha'vama'l. As the blackness of the midsummer night paled, the broken towers and wrecked walls of the monastery loomed up dim and stark in the gray light. The long-drawn sigh of a waking world crept... more...

ANALYSIS OF THE FIRST PART. THE Poem begins with the description of an obscure village, and of the pleasing melancholy which it excites on being revisited after a long absence. This mixed sensation is an effect of the Memory. From an effect we naturally ascend to the cause; and the subject proposed is then unfolded with an investigation of the nature and leading principles of this faculty. It is... more...

A THAMES TRAGEDY. Manifold are the historic interests of the river Thames. There is scarcely a foot of its mud from London Bridge to Gravesend Reach that is not as "consecrated" as that famous bit of soil which Dr. Samuel Johnson and Mr. Richard Savage knelt and kissed on stepping ashore at Greenwich. One of the historic interests, however, threatens to perish out of the annals. It does not... more...

PREFACE. Jokai is one of the most popular of the Hungarian prose writers of fiction that sprang up a few years before the late war. His wit, flowing style, and vivid descriptions of Hungarian life as it is, joined to a rich fancy and great intensity of feeling, soon made him a favourite with Hungarian readers. Among the earlier of his productions, those best known are a novel entitled, "The Common... more...

The Source of Perplexity The first and greatest of religious perplexities, the source of all the rest, arises in the mysterious fact of our existence as individual souls. Our perplexities spring from the very root of life. Why are we here at all? Did we but know the purpose for which we are present in the world, should we not have in our hands the key to all the questions we raise about God, freedom,... more...

I INTRODUCTION IN DEFENCE OF EVERYTHING ELSE THE only possible excuse for this book is that it is an answer to a challenge. Even a bad shot is dignified when he accepts a duel. When some time ago I published a series of hasty but sincere papers, under the name of "Heretics," several critics for whose intellect I have a warm respect (I may mention specially Mr. G.S.Street) said that it was all... more...

WARE WOLF! I had afterwards such good reason to look back upon and remember the events of that afternoon, that Catherine's voice seems to ring in my brain even now. I can shut my eyes and see again, after all these years, what I saw then—just the blue summer sky, and one grey angle of the keep, from which a fleecy cloud was trailing like the smoke from a chimney. I could see no more because I... more...

LIVY'S ROMAN HISTORY BOOK I[1] THE PERIOD OF THE KINGS To begin with, it is generally admitted that, after the taking of Troy, while all the other Trojans were treated with severity, in the case of two, Æneas and Antenor, the Greeks forbore to exercise the full rights of war, both on account of an ancient tie of hospitality, and because they had persistently recommended peace and the restoration... more...

District Clerk's Office. (L. S.)Be it remembered, that on the sixth day of March, A. D. 1816, and in the fortieth year of the Independence of the United States of America, Rowe & Hooper, of the said District have deposited in this Office, the title of a book, the right whereof they claim as Proprietors, in the words following, to wit: "A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, late a... more...

CHAPTER I. IN WHICH HE VOWS A VOW "There comes the Green Imp." "How can you tell?" "Don't you hear? Red's coming in on five cylinders for all he can get out of 'em. Anybody else would stop and fix up. He's in too much of a hurry—as usual." The Green Imp tore past the porch where Burns's neighbours waved arms of greeting which he failed to see, for he... more...