INTRODUCTION The history of the proletariat in England begins with the second half of the last century, with the invention of the steam-engine and of machinery for working cotton.  These inventions gave rise, as is well known, to an industrial revolution, a revolution which altered the whole civil society; one, the historical importance of which is only now beginning to be recognised.  England is the... more...

A. A.(A.) on solemnization of matrimony, 46.Admiration, a note of, 86.Adur, origin of, 71. 108.Æneas, Silvius, 423.Aërostation, works on, 199. 251. 269. 285. 317. 380. 459.Aerostation, squib on Lunardi, 469."A Frog he would," &c., 45. 188.A.(F.R.) on Dr. Maginn, 109.—— on the Darby Ram, 285.—— on "Epistolm Obscururum Virorum," 122.—— on Parse, 522.—— on Hockey,... more...

Miss Mink's Soldier Miss Mink sat in church with lips compressed and hands tightly clasped in her black alpaca lap, and stubbornly refused to comply with the request that was being made from the pulpit. She was a small desiccated person, with a sharp chin and a sharper nose, and narrow faded eyes that through the making of innumerable buttonholes had come to resemble them. For over forty years she... more...

LIVES OF ENGLISH POETS. * * * * * SAMUEL JOHNSON. There is, perhaps, no one among our English writers, who for so great a part of his life has been an object of curiosity to his contemporaries as Johnson. Almost every thing he said or did was thought worthy of being recorded by some one or other of his associates; and the public were for a time willing to listen to all they had to say of him. A mass of... more...

CHAPTER I AT APHRODITE'S TEMPLE. When the ship of Polyanthus, the Saguntine pilot, arrived off the port of his native land, the mariners and fishermen, their vision sharpened by ever watching the distant horizon, had already recognized his saffron-dyed sail and the image of Victory, which, with extended wings, and holding a crown in her right hand, stretched along the prow until it dipped its feet... more...

A MERRY DANCER Nobody in Pleasant Valley ever paid any attention to Freddie Firefly in the daytime. But on warm, and especially on dark summer nights he always appeared at his best. Then he went gaily flitting through the meadows. And sometimes he even danced right in Farmer Green's dooryard, together with a hundred or two of his nearest relations. No one could help noticing those sprightly... more...

CHAPTER I He awoke in the dark. His awakening was simple, easy, without movement save for the eyes that opened and made him aware of darkness. Unlike most, who must feel and grope and listen to, and contact with, the world about them, he knew himself on the moment of awakening, instantly identifying himself in time and place and personality. After the lapsed hours of sleep he took up, without effort,... more...

A SPIRIT OF AVARICE Mr. John Blows stood listening to the foreman with an air of lofty disdain. He was a free-born Englishman, and yet he had been summarily paid off at eleven o'clock in the morning and told that his valuable services would no longer be required. More than that, the foreman had passed certain strictures upon his features which, however true they might be, were quite irrelevant to... more...

Chapter I."There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,There is a rapture on the lonely shore.There is society where none intrudes,By the deep sea, and music in its roar:I love not man the less, but nature more,From these our interviews, in which I stealFrom all I may be, or have been before,To mingle with the universe, and feelWhat I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal" Childe Harold.... more...

LETTERS. From Miss Molly Brown of Kentucky to Miss Nance Oldham of Vermont. Chatsworth, Kentucky. My dearest Nance: Our passage to Antwerp is really engaged and in two weeks Mother and I will be on the water. I can hardly believe it is I, Molly Brown, about to have this "great adventure." That is what Mother and I call this undertaking: "Our great adventure." Mother says it sounds Henry... more...