INTRODUCTION Collections of sermons by noted preachers of different periods are not an altogether uncommon contribution to literature. Italy, Germany, Holland, France, Great Britain and the United States have in this way furnished copious illustrations of the gifts of their illustrious preachers. Such treasures are found in the Latin and even in the Greek Church. Protestant communions especially, in... more...

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH MARCUS AURELIUS ANTONINUS. M. Antoninus was born at Rome, A.D. 121, on the 26th of April. His father, Annius Verus, died while he was praetor. His mother was Domitia Calvilla, also named Lucilla. The Emperor T. Antoninus Pius married Annia Galeria Faustina, the sister of Annius Verus, and was consequently the uncle of M. Antoninus. When Hadrian adopted Antoninus Pius and declared... more...

Two Christmas Celebrations. A great many years ago, Augustus Caesar, then Emperor of Rome, ordered his mighty realm to be taxed; and so, in Judea, it is said, men went to the towns where their families belonged, to be registered for assessment. From Nazareth, a little town in the north of Judea, to Bethlehem, another little but more famous town in the south, there went one Joseph, the carpenter, and... more...

MY BUNKIE   He's mostly gnarls and freckles and tan,  He'd surely come under society's ban,  He's a swearin', fightin' cavalryman,    But—he's my bunkie.   He's weathered the winds of the Western waste.  (You, gentle Christian, would call him debased)  And he's loved at his ease and married in haste,    Has my bunkie.   In a... more...

INTRODUCTION André Dacier's Poëtique d'Aristote Traduite en François avec des Remarques was published in Paris in 1692. His translation of Horace with critical remarks (1681-1689) had helped to establish his reputation in both France and England. Dryden, for example, borrowed from it extensively in his Discourse Concerning the Original and Progress of Satire (1693). No doubt this earlier... more...

TO ALL SVCH AS HAVE receiued either pleasure or profite by the two former published bookes of this Argument: And to all beside, that desire to know the wonderfull slie deuises of this hellish crew of Conny-catchers. [Illustration: I] In the time of king Henrie the fourth, as our English Chronicles haue kept in remembrance, liued diuerse sturdie and loose companions in sundrie places about the Citie of... more...

INTRODUCTION When the traveller, bent on some important quest, makes a prolonged and perilous journey and returns in safety to his friends and neighbors, instinctively those who have known him in former years realize that he is, and he is not, the same person who had dwelt among them. He has seen unfamiliar peoples, traversed strange lands, encountered unexpected dangers. Old prepossessions have been... more...

The cemetery of Père Lachaise is the Westminster Abbey of Paris. Both are the dwellings of the dead; but in one they repose in green alleys and beneath the open sky—in the other their resting place is in the shadowy aisle and beneath the dim arches of an ancient abbey. One is a temple of nature; the other a temple of art. In one the soft melancholy of the scene is rendered still more touching by the... more...

CHAPTER I A GREAT BANK ROBBERY On the eleventh day of April, 18—, the officers of the Bank of England were greatly excited on receiving notice of a special meeting called for that night at ten o'clock, an unusual hour, and indicating, surely, something of great importance. Promptly at the hour appointed fifteen directors occupied their usual places in the council chamber. There were also present... more...

THE TRAVELLERS. In the month of June, (the jubilee month of poets and travellers) in the year eighteen hundred and eighteen, Mr. Sackville, his wife, and their two children, Edward and Julia, made the grand tour of Niagara, the lakes, Montreal, Quebec, &c. Both parents and children kept journals, in which they recorded with fidelity whatever they observed which they deemed worthy of note. We have... more...