HEPSEY BURKE The noisy, loose-jointed train pulled out of the station, leaving behind it a solitary young man, enveloped in smoke and cinders. In the middle of the platform stood a little building with a curb roof, pointed at both ends like a Noah’s Ark; and the visitor felt that if he could only manage to lift up one side of the roof he would find the animals “two by two,” together with the... more...

PREFACE. It is perhaps a matter rather for regret than for surprise that so few attempts have been made to describe, as a whole, the life and character of Henry VIII. No ruler has left a deeper impress on the history of his country, or done work which has been the subject of more keen and lasting contention. Courts of law are still debating the intention of statutes, the tenor of which he dictated; and... more...

THE HIGHER PANTHEISMIN A NUTSHELL One, who is not, we see: but one, whom we see not, is:Surely this is not that: but that is assuredly this.What, and wherefore, and whence? for under is over and under:If thunder could be without lightning, lightning could be without thunder.Doubt is faith in the main: but faith, on the whole, is doubt:We cannot believe by proof: but could we believe without?Why, and... more...

LIFE OF THE AUTHOR. Probably some of the readers of this volume will feel an interest in the author's life. Although there are but few works, in which the mind of the author is more clearly and purely reflected than in this; yet it is natural that the reader should feel some interest in the outward circumstances of one, who has become dear to him; and those friends of Novalis, who have never known... more...

CHAPTER I MRS. CARTER RECEIVES A LETTER "Is that the latest style?" inquired James Leech, with a sneer, pointing to a patch on the knee of Herbert Carter's pants. Herbert's face flushed. He was not ashamed of the patch, for he knew that his mother's poverty made it a necessity. But he felt that it was mean and dishonorable in James Leech, whose father was one of the rich men of... more...

CHAPTER ILONGFELLOW AS A CLASSIC The death of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow made the first breach in that well-known group of poets which adorned Boston and its vicinity so long. The first to go was also the most widely famous. Emerson reached greater depths of thought; Whittier touched the problems of the nation’s life more deeply; Holmes came personally more before the public; Lowell was more... more...

Chauncey knocked the dottle out of his corncob and briefly startled Old Shep by inquiring unemotionally, "Will you never finish that blasted stick?" Which in Old Chauncey was tantamount to fury. Words being precious things, both old boys hoarded every syllable; Shep tightened his leathery lips and with the scalpel-point of the knife flicked away a mote of pine. Each link of the chain he was... more...

THREE HEAVY HUSBANDS I He had a high nose. He looked at one over the collar, so to speak. His regard was very assured, and his speech was that short bundle of monosyllables which the subaltern throws at the orderly. He had never been questioned, and, the precedent being absent, he had never questioned himself. Why should he? We live by question and answer, but we do not know the reply to anything until... more...

Not far from Westminster Abbey, as most of our readers know well, stands the gorgeous pile which Mr. Barry has designed, and for which, in a pecuniary sense, a patient public has been rather handsomely bled.  Few are there who have looked at that pile from the Bridge—or from the numerous steamers which throng the river—or loitered round it on a summer’s eve, without feeling some little reverence... more...

PRELUDE. The heroic deeds of Highlanders, both in these islands and elsewhere, have been told in verse and prose, and not more often, nor more loudly, than they deserve. But we must remember, now and then, that there have been heroes likewise in the lowland and in the fen. Why, however, poets have so seldom sung of them; why no historian, save Mr. Motley in his "Rise of the Dutch Republic," has... more...