CHARLES, COMTE DE VALOIS, was the younger brother of Philip the Fair, and therefore uncle of the three sovereigns lately dead. His eldest son Philip had been appointed guardian to the Queen of Charles IV.; and when it appeared that she had given birth to a daughter, and not a son, the barons, joining with the notables of Paris and the, good towns met to decide who was by right the heir to the throne,... more...

CHAPTER I THE HERMIT THRUSH SINGS Then twilight falls with the touchOf a hand that soothes and stills,And a swamp-robin sings into lightThe lone white star of the hills. Alone in the dusk he sings,And the joy of another dayIs folded in peace and borneOn the drift of years away.—BLISS CARMAN. Other years, by the time the mid-June days were come, the little brook that sang through John McIntyre's... more...

One The red sun rose slowly, achingly across the high Scottish moor, touching with melancholy gold the patching hoar frost and purple heath. For this was a land of pain, and stark beauty, and restless dream. Here the spirits of the dead walked by night through grim castles of shadow and dust, their glory long past. Here the spirits of the living grieved by day for a proud and chivalrous time forever... more...

PREFACE. Madam Guyon's correspondence was very extensive, occupying five printed volumes. Her style of writing is somewhat diffuse. In giving religious advice to many persons, there would necessarily be frequent repetitions. It has, therefore, occurred to the writer, that a selection and re-arrangement of thoughts, such as is found in this little volume, would be more acceptable and useful, than a... more...

She was one of those girls who have become much more common of late years among the upper-middle classes, the comfortably fixed classes, than they have ever been since the aristocracy left off marrying Italian prime-donne. You know the type of English beauty, so often insisted on, say, twenty years ago—placid, fair, gentle, blue-eyed, fining into distinction in Lady Clara Vere de Vere? Always she was... more...

CHAPTER ITHERE was not a person in Old Chester less tainted by the vulgarity of secretiveness than Miss Lydia Sampson. She had no more reticence than sunshine or wind, or any other elemental thing. How much of this was due to conditions it would be hard to say; certainly there was no "reticence" in her silence as to her neighbors' affairs; she simply didn't know them! Nobody ever... more...

CHAPTER I. 'Thou shalt have no other gods before me.' 'Mother,' said little Effie Maurice, on a Sabbath evening in winter, 'Mr L—— said to-day that we are all in danger of breaking the first commandment,—do you think we are?' 'Did not Mr L. give you his reasons for thinking so?' 'Yes, mother.' 'Didn't you think he gave good... more...

PREFACE. 'The last fruit off an old tree!' This, in the words of Walter Savage Landor, is what I have now the honour to set before the public in these hitherto 'Uncollected Writings of Thomas De Quincey.' It was my privilege to be associated intimately with the Author some thirty to forty years ago—from the beginning of 1850 until his death in 1859. Throughout the whole period... more...

I "I guess my daughter's in here," the old man said leading the way into the little salon de lecture. He was not of the most advanced age, but that is the way George Flack considered him, and indeed he looked older than he was. George Flack had found him sitting in the court of the hotel—he sat a great deal in the court of the hotel—and had gone up to him with characteristic directness... more...

FRENCH LITERATURE. Of French literature, taken as a whole, it may boldly be said that it is, not the wisest, not the weightiest, not certainly the purest and loftiest, but by odds the most brilliant and the most interesting, literature in the world. Strong at many points, at some points triumphantly strong, it is conspicuously weak at only one point,—the important point of poetry. In eloquence, in... more...