PREFACE My aim, in writing this book, is to show that the externalism of the West, the prevalent tendency to pay undue regard to outward and visible "results" and to neglect what is inward and vital, is the source of most of the defects that vitiate Education in this country, and therefore that the only remedy for those defects is the drastic one of changing our standard of reality and our... more...

Before the remembrance of the good old times, so fast passing, should have entirely passed away, the present artist, R. Caldecott, and engraver, James D. Cooper, planned to illustrate Washington Irving's "Old Christmas" in this manner. Their primary idea was to carry out the principle of the Sketch Book, by incorporating the designs with the text. Throughout they have worked together and... more...

Contents with First Lines: PreludeI have gathered these stories afar, The Man from Snowy RiverThere was movement at the station, for the word had passed around Old Pardon, the Son of ReprieveYou never heard tell of the story? Clancy of the OverflowI had written him a letter which I had, for want of better Conroy's GapThis was the way of it, don't you know — Our New HorseThe boys had come... more...

INTRODUCTION. Though it may not have been possible in the following pages to reproduce the elegant and incisive style of a master of French prose, not even the inadequacies of a translation can obscure the force of his argument. The only introduction, therefore, that seems possible must take the form of a request to the reader to study M. Faguet's criticism of modern democracy with the daily paper... more...

INTRODUCTION Every now and then in our reading we come suddenly face to face with first things,—the very elemental sources beyond which no man may go. There is a distinct satisfaction in dealing with such beginnings, and, when they are those of literature, the sense of freshness is nothing short of inspiring. To share the same lofty outlook, to breathe the same high air with those who first sensed a... more...

November 1st. I went this morning with Sir W. Pen by coach to Westminster, and having done my business at Mr. Montagu's, I went back to him at Whitehall, and from thence with him to the 3 Tun Tavern, at Charing Cross, and there sent for up the maister of the house's dinner, and dined very well upon it, and afterwards had him and his fayre sister (who is very great with Sir W. Batten and Sir... more...

CHAPTER I. MR. MALARIUS' FRIEND. There is probably neither in Europe nor anywhere else a scholar whose face is more universally known than that of Dr. Schwaryencrona, of Stockholm. His portrait appears on the millions of bottles with green seals, which are sent to the confines of the globe. Truth compels us to state that these bottles only contain cod liver oil, a good and useful medicine; which... more...

INTRODUCTION I Turgenev is an author who no longer belongs to Russia only. During the last fifteen years of his life he won for himself the reading public, first in France, then in Germany and America, and finally in England. In his funeral oration the spokesman of the most artistic and critical of European nations, Ernest Renan, hailed him as one of the greatest writers of our times: 'The Master,... more...

PREFACE "Beyond doubt the finished historian must be a traveller: he must see with his own eyes the true look of a wide land; he must see, too, with his eyes the very spots where great events happened; he must mark the lie of a city, and take in, as far as a non-technical eye can, all that is special about a battle-field." So wrote Mr. Freeman in his Methods of Historical Study, and he... more...

CHAPTER I AT BOTTOM'S ORDINARY It was past four o'clock on a sunny October day, when a stranger, who had ridden over the "corduroy" road between Applegate and Old Church, dismounted near the cross-roads before the small public house known to its frequenters as Bottom's Ordinary. Standing where the three roads meet at the old turnpike-gate of the county, the square brick building,... more...