Job and His Three Friends. THE BIBLE AND THE HOLY LAND. PATRIARCHS, KINGS, AND KINGDOMS. SCENES IN THE LIVES OF THE PATRIARCHS. The patriarchs might be called family kings--the divinely appointedrulers of households. They were the earliest sovereigns under God ofwhich we have any account. Their authority was gradually extended by theunion of households, whose retinue of servants was often large,... more...

Old Jabe belonged to the Meriwethers, a fact which he never forgot or allowed anyone else to forget; and on this he traded as a capital, which paid him many dividends of one kind or another, among them being a dividend in wives. How many wives he had had no one knew; and Jabe's own account was incredible. It would have eclipsed Henry VIII and Bluebeard. But making all due allowance for his... more...

CHAPTER I. Confession, or The Blind Heart.   "Who dares bestow the infant his true name?  The few who felt and knew, but blindly gave  Their knowledge to the multitude—they fell  Incapable to keep their full hearts in,  They, from the first of immemorial time,  Were crucified or burnt."—Goethe's "Faust." The pains and penalties of folly are not necessarily death.... more...

CHAPTER I: THE CONTRAST Look here upon this picture, and on this,The counterfeit presentment of two brothers. HAMLET The latter part of the fifteenth century prepared a train of future events that ended by raising France to that state of formidable power which has ever since been from time to time the principal object of jealousy to the other European nations. Before that period she had to struggle for... more...

WHAT IS ‘POPULAR POETRY’? I think it was a Young Ireland Society that set my mind running on ‘popular poetry.’ We used to discuss everything that was known to us about Ireland, and especially Irish literature and Irish history. We had no Gaelic, but paid great honour to the Irish poets who wrote in English, and quoted them in our speeches. I could have told you at that time the dates of the... more...

CHAPTER I THE SEED Il faut se garder des premiers mouvements, parce qu'ils sont presque toujours honnétes. "Dearest Anna,—I see from the newspaper before me of March 13, that I am reported dead. Before attempting to investigate the origin of this mistake, I hasten to write to you, knowing, dearest, what a shock this must have been to you. It is true that I was in the Makar Akool affair, and... more...

DUBLIN POST OFFICE. The general post-office, Dublin, was at first held in a small building on the site of the Commercial Buildings, and was afterwards removed to a larger house opposite the bank on College Green (since converted into the Royal Arcade;) and on January 6, 1818, the new post-office in Sackville-street was opened for business. The foundation-stone of this magnificent building, which is... more...

In the very olden time there lived a semi-barbaric king, whose ideas, though somewhat polished and sharpened by the progressiveness of distant Latin neighbors, were still large, florid, and untrammeled, as became the half of him which was barbaric. He was a man of exuberant fancy, and, withal, of an authority so irresistible that, at his will, he turned his varied fancies into facts. He was greatly... more...

AN ALLEGORY."Thou that hast given so much to me,Give one thing more—a grateful heart."George Herbert. "Well, father, I don't believe the Browns are a bit better off than we are; and yet when I spent the day with young Brown, we cooked all sorts of messes in the afternoon; and he wasted twice as much rum and brandy and lemons in his trash, as I should want to make good punch of. He... more...

MAJOR ROBERT ROGERS (1727-1795) Robert Rogers, a soldier of fortune, is the Davy Crockett of Colonial times. Born at Dumbarton, New Hampshire, on November 17th (some authorities say 1730, another 1731, while the Dictionary of National Biography says 1727), he was the son of James Rogers, a farmer living in a frontier cabin at Methuen, in upper Massachusetts. Robert's boyhood was spent in an... more...