Startling as the subject of connecting China and New South Wales with Great Britain, through the West Indies, may at first sight appear, both as regards time and expense, still few things are more practicable. The labour and expense of crossing the Isthmus of America, either by Panama or by Lake Nicaragua, by a land conveyance, is trifling. With eight steam-boats, ONLY FOUR ADDITIONAL to the number... more...

There are two basic instincts in the character of the normal individual; the will to live, and the will to propagate the species. It is from the interplay of these instincts that prostitution took origin, and it is for this reason that this profession is the oldest in human experience, the first offspring, as it were, of savagery and of civilization. When Fate turns the leaves of the book of universal... more...

CHAPTER I EARLY YEARS Robert Hart began his romantic life in simple circumstances. He was born on the 20th day of February, 1835, in a little white house with green shutters on Dungannon Street, in the small Irish town of Portadown, County Armagh, and was the eldest of twelve children. His mother, a daughter of Mr. John Edgar, of Ballybreagh, must have been a delightful woman, all tenderness and... more...

PREFACE A few years ago I published a short sketch of Mendel's discovery in heredity, and of some of the recent experiments which had arisen from it. Since then progress in these studies has been rapid, and the present account, though bearing the same title, has been completely rewritten. A number of illustrations have been added, and here I may acknowledge my indebtedness to Miss Wheldale for the... more...

EXPLANATION OF THE TABLEAUX The blank spaces show where the foundation cards should be played during the deal. EXPLANATION OF TERMS Available cards. Those that are not "blocked" by other cards, i.e., not forbidden by the particular rules of each game, to be used. Released cards. Those which, by the removal of the cards that blocked them, have now become available. Suitable cards. Those whose... more...

"Painter and son of nature," wrote Voltaire, at that time the arbitrator and the dispenser of fame in cultured Europe, to Carlo Goldoni, then a rising dramatist, "I would entitle your comedies, 'Italy liberated from the Goths.'" The sage of Ferney's quick critical faculty had once again hit its sure mark, for it is Goldoni's supreme merit, and one of his chief titles... more...

PREFACE. Few men who have written books have been able to win so large a share of the personal affection of their readers as honest Izaak Walton has done, and few books are laid down with so genuine a feeling of regret as the "Complete Angler" certainly is, that they are no longer. "One of the gentlest and tenderest spirits of the seventeenth century," we all know his dear old face,... more...

AUBER. Daniel François Esprit Auber, one of the most prominent representatives of the opera comique, was born at Caen, in Normandy, Jan. 29, 1784. He first attracted attention in the musical world by his songs and ballads, written when a mere boy. Young as he was, they were great favorites in French and English drawing-rooms, and their success diverted him from his commercial intentions to that... more...

SECTION I. OF THE QUESTION RELATING TO THE STATE OF NATURE. Natural productions are generally formed by degrees. Vegetables are raised from a tender shoot, and animals from an infant state. The latter, being active, extend together their operations and their powers, and have a progress in what they perform, as well as in the faculties they acquire. This progress in the case of man is continued to a... more...

CHAPTER I The Unlucky Day of the Fool's Month—High Street, WestBromwich—My First Pedestrian Triumph—The Common EnglishBracken—The Sense of Beauty. I remember that in a fit of petulance at some childish misdemeanour, my mother once told me that I came into the world on the unlucky day of the fool's month. It was her picturesque way of saying that I was born on the thirteenth of April.... more...