FIRST SCENE At Sea. The night had come to an end. The new-born day waited for its quickening light in the silence that is never known on land—the silence before sunrise, in a calm at sea. Not a breath came from the dead air. Not a ripple stirred on the motionless water. Nothing changed but the softly-growing light; nothing moved but the lazy mist, curling up to meet the sun, its master, on the... more...

NOTICES OF BUNYAN PREFATORY NOTICE. The subscriber has been requested by his friend the Rev. Jeremiah Chaplin, the worthy son of an honored father, [Footnote: The late Rev. Dr. Chaplin, the founder and first president of Waterville college, in the state of Maine.] and the editor of the present selections from Bunyan, to attach to them some prefatory remarks. Needless as he feels it himself to be, and... more...

INTRODUCTION In accordance with classic precedent, this anthology ought to have consisted of "1,001 Gems of German Thought," I have been content with half that number, not—heaven knows!—for any lack of material, but simply for lack of time and energy to make the ingathering. After all, enough is as good as a feast, and I think that the evidence as to the dominant characteristics of German... more...

MONTAIGNE AND SHAKSPERE For a good many years past the anatomic study of Shakspere, of which a revival seems now on foot, has been somewhat out of fashion, as compared with its vogue in the palmy days of the New Shakspere Society in England, and the years of the battle between the iconoclasts and the worshippers in Germany. When Mr. Fleay and Mr. Spedding were hard at work on the metrical tests; when... more...

PREFACE. Averse to writing, as well as to reading, diffuse Prolegomena, the author finds himself compelled to relate, at some length, the circumstances which led to the subject of these pages. In May 1849, the late Vice-Admiral Sir Charles Malcolm, formerly Superintendent of the Indian Navy, in conjunction with Mr. William John Hamilton, then President of the Royal Geographical Society of Great... more...

Education as a public business It is one of the complaints of the schoolmaster that the public does not defer to his professional opinion as completely as it does to that of practitioners in other professions. At first sight it might seem as though this indicated a defect either in the public or in the profession; and yet a wider view of the situation would suggest that such a conclusion is not a... more...

NOTE ON THE CONSTRUCTION OF A DISTILLERY CHIMNEY. FIG. 1—ELEVATION. At a recent meeting of the Industrial Society of Amiens, Mr. Schmidt, engineer of the Steam Users' Association, read a paper in which he described the process employed in the construction of a large chimney of peculiar character for the Rocourt distillery, at St. Quentin. This chimney, which is cylindrical in form, is 140 feet... more...

PREFACE As the reader, if he wishes, may discover without undue delay, the little volume of modern prose selections that he has before him is the result of no ambitious or pretentious design. It is not a collection of the best things that have lately been known and thought in the American world; it is not an anthology in which "all our best authors" are represented by striking or celebrated... more...

INTRODUCTION TO THE BRIDE OF LAMMERMOOR THE Author, on a former occasion, declined giving the real source from which he drew the tragic subject of this history, because, though occurring at a distant period, it might possibly be unpleasing to the feelings of the descendants of the parties. But as he finds an account of the circumstances given in the Notes to Law's Memorials, by his ingenious... more...

Gerontion Thou hast nor youth nor ageBut as it were an after dinner sleepDreaming of both. Here I am, an old man in a dry month,Being read to by a boy, waiting for rain.I was neither at the hot gatesNor fought in the warm rainNor knee deep in the salt marsh, heaving a cutlass,Bitten by flies, fought.My house is a decayed house,And the jew squats on the window sill, the owner,Spawned in some estaminet... more...