DAPHNAIDES:OR THE ENGLISH LAUREL, FROM CHAUCER TO TENNYSON. They in thir time did many a noble dede,And for their worthines full oft have boreThe crown of laurer leavés on the hede,As ye may in your oldé bookés rede:And how that he that was a conquerourHad by laurer alway his most honour.             DAN CHAUCER:The Flowre and the Leaf.It is to be lamented that antiquarian zeal is so... more...

ELOQUENCE. It is the doctrine of the popular music-masters, that whoever can speak can sing. So, probably, every man is eloquent once in his life. Our temperaments differ in capacity of heat, or we boil at different degrees. One man is brought to the boiling point by the excitement of conversation in the parlor. The waters, of course, are not very deep. He has a two-inch enthusiasm, a pattypan... more...

CHAPTER I WHY NOT? Polly Street drove her little electric down Michigan Boulevard, with bitterness in her heart. It was a cold wet day in the early spring of 1920, and Chicago was doing her best to show her utter indifference to anyone’s opinion as to what spring weather ought to be. It was the sort of day when, if you had any ambition left after a dreary winter, you began to plot desperate things.... more...

RAILWAY-ENGINEERING IN THE UNITED STATES.[1] Though our country can boast of no Watt, Brindley, Smeaton, Rennie, Telford, Brunel, Stephenson, or Fairbairn, and lacks such experimenters as Tredgold, Barlow, Hodgkinson, and Clark, yet we have our Evans and Fulton, our Whistler, Latrobe, Roebling, Haupt, Ellet, Adams, and Morris,—engineers who yield to none in professional skill, and whose work will... more...

V. Rome is preeminently the city of monuments and inscriptions, and the lapidary style is the one most familiar to her. The Republic, the Empire, the Papacy, the Heathens, and the Christians have written their record upon marble. But gravestones are proverbially dull reading, and inscriptions are often as cold as the stone upon which they are engraved. The long gallery of the Vatican, through which one... more...

CHAPTER I With what a strange thrill I look out from my stateroom window, early one April morning, and catch a glimpse of the flashing light on one of the green promontories of the Golden Gate! I dress hurriedly and run out to find that a light is flaming on the other promontory, and that we are entering the great Bay of San Francisco. It has taken a long preparation to give me the feeling of pride and... more...

THE HUNDRED DAYS. PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. That period of history between the 20th of March and the 28th of June, 1815, being the interregnum in the reign of Louis the Eighteenth, caused by the arrival of Napoleon from Elba and his assumption of the government of France, is known as "The Hundred Days." It is as interesting as it was eventful, and has been duly chronicled wherever facts have been... more...

CHESUNCOOK. At 5 P.M., September 13th, 185-, I left Boston in the steamer for Bangor by the outside course. It was a warm and still night,—warmer, probably, on the water than on the land,—and the sea was as smooth as a small lake in summer, merely rippled. The passengers went singing on the deck, as in a parlor, till ten o'clock. We passed a vessel on her beam-ends on a rock just outside the... more...

THE CATACOMBS OF ROME. ————parti elette Di Roma, che son state cimitero Alla milizia che Pietro seguette. PARADISO, c. ix. "Roma Sotterranea,"—the underground Rome of the dead,—the buried city of graves. Sacred is the dust of its narrow streets. Blessed were those who, having died for their faith, were laid to rest in its chambers. In pace is the epitaph that marks the places where... more...

The want of an introduction to the study of Old-English has long been felt. Vernon's Anglo-Saxon Guide was an admirable book for its time, but has long been completely antiquated. I was therefore obliged to make my Anglo-Saxon Reader a somewhat unsatisfactory compromise between an elementary primer and a manual for advanced students, but I always looked forward to producing a strictly elementary... more...