PREFACE Just as a little child holds out its hands to catch the sunbeams, to feel and to grasp what, so its eyes tell it, is actually there, so, down through the ages, men have stretched out their hands in eager endeavour to know their God. And because only through the human was the divine knowable, the old peoples of the earth made gods of their heroes and not unfrequently endowed these gods with as... more...

Two incidents, widely different in character yet bound together by results, marked the night of January the twenty-third. On that night the blackest fog within a four years' memory fell upon certain portions of London, and also on that night came the first announcement of the border risings against the Persian government in the province of Khorasan the announcement that, speculated upon, even... more...

INTRODUCTION. It is now about fifteen centuries since the Madonna with her Babe was first introduced into art, and it is safe to say that, throughout all this time, the subject has been unrivalled in popularity. It requires no very profound philosophy to discover the reason for this. The Madonna is the universal type of motherhood, a subject which, in its very nature, appeals to all classes and... more...

INTRODUCTION The series of speeches included in this volume ranges, in point of time, from the earlier months of Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman's Government to the latest phase in the fortunes of Mr. Asquith's succeeding Ministry, and forms an argumentative defence of the basis of policy common to both Administrations. The addresses it contains deal with nearly all the great political topics of... more...

The day broke gray and dull. The clouds hung heavily, and there was a rawness in the air that suggested snow. A woman servant came into a room in which a child was sleeping and drew the curtains. She glanced mechanically at the house opposite, a stucco house with a portico, and went to the child's bed. "Wake up, Philip," she said. She pulled down the bed-clothes, took him in her arms, and... more...

This work is a continuation of the "Orlando Innamorato" of Matteo Maria Boiardo, which was left unfinished upon the author's death in 1494. It begins more or less at the point where Boiardo left it. This is a brief synopsis of Boiardo's work, omitting most of the numerous digressions and incidental episodes associated with these events: To the court of King Charlemagne comes Angelica... more...

CLERVAUX (clara vallis), a town in the northern province of Oesling, grand-duchy of Luxemburg, on the Clerf, a tributary of the Sûre. Pop. (1905) 866. In old days it was the fief of the de Lannoy family, and the present proprietor is the bearer of a name not less well known in Belgian history, the count de Berlaymont. The old castle of the de Lannoys exists, and might easily be restored, but its... more...

THE GREAT FAILURE. The crucial fact, in this epoch of commercial catastrophes, is not the stoppage of Smith, Jones, and Robinson,—nor the suspension of specie payments by a greater or less number of banks,—but the paralysis of the trade of the civilized globe. We have had presented to us, within the last quarter, the remarkable, though by no means novel, spectacle of a sudden overthrow of... more...

JAMES NELSON BARKER (1784-1858) In a letter written to William Dunlap, from Philadelphia, on June 10, 1832, James Nelson Barker very naïvely and very fully outlined his career, inasmuch as he had been informed by Manager Wood that Mr. Dunlap wished such an account for his "History of the American Stage." From this account, we learn that whatever dramatic ability Mr. Barker possessed came from... more...

FRANK ASKS QUESTIONS. September was again at hand, and the cadets at Fardale Military Academy had broken camp, and returned to barracks. For all of past differences, which had been finally settled between them—for all that they had once been bitter enemies, and were by disposition and development as radically opposite as the positive and negative points of a magnetic needle, Frank Merriwell and... more...