CHAPTER I.   Luce. Is the wind there?           That makes for me.  Isab. Come, I forget a business.                 Wit without Money. LORD VARGRAVE'S travelling-carriage was at his door, and he himself was putting on his greatcoat in his library, when Lord Saxingham entered. "What! you are going into the country?" "Yes; I wrote you word,—to see Lisle... more...

THE NEW HYPERION. FROM PARIS TO MARLY BY WAY OF THE RHINE. [The author's vignettes neatly copied by Gusatave Doré.] The behavior of a great Hope is like the setting of the sun. It splashes out from under a horizontal cloud, so diabolically incandescent that you see a dozen false suns blotting the heavens with purple in every direction. You bury your eyes in a handkerchief, with your back... more...

An Old Sea-Lion. “Hullo, Dad!” I cried out, stopping abruptly in front of the red granite coloured Reform Club, down the marble steps of which a queer-looking old gentleman was slowly descending. “Who is that funny old fellow there? He’s just like that ‘old clo’’ man we saw at the corner of the street this morning, only that he hasn’t got three hats on, one on top of another, the same... more...

Chapter I. I am a native of _____, in the United States of America. My ancestors migrated from England in the reign of Charles II.; and my grandfather was not undistinguished in the War of Independence. My family, therefore, enjoyed a somewhat high social position in right of birth; and being also opulent, they were considered disqualified for the public service. My father once ran for Congress, but... more...

The “Mercury” appears. This is a yarn of the days when the clipper sailing-ship was at the zenith of her glory and renown; when she was the recognised medium for the transport of passengers—ay, and, very frequently, of mails between Great Britain and the Colonies; and when steamers were, comparatively speaking, rare objects on the high seas. True, a few of the great steamship lines, such as the... more...

PREFACE Every generation demands that history shall be rewritten. This is not alone because it requires that the work should be adapted to its own point of view, but because it is instinctively seeking those lines which connect the problems and lessons of the past with its own questions and circumstances. If it were not for the existence of lines of this kind, history might be entertaining, but would... more...

"I entered literary life as a meteor, and I shall leave it like athunderbolt." These words of Maupassant to José Maria de Heredia onthe occasion of a memorable meeting are, in spite of their morbidsolemnity, not an inexact summing up of the brief career during which,for ten years, the writer, by turns undaunted and sorrowful, with thefertility of a master hand produced poetry, novels, romances... more...

JOSEPH DE MAISTRE. Owing to causes which lie tolerably near the surface, the remarkable Catholic reaction which took place in France at the beginning of the present century, has never received in England the attention that it deserves; not only for its striking interest as an episode in the history of European thought, but also for its peculiarly forcible and complete presentation of those ideas with... more...

CHAPTER IThe Trainer The Spring Meeting at Polefax was always Old Mat's day out. And it was part of the accepted order of things that he should come to the Meeting driving in his American buggy behind the horse with which later in the day he meant to win the Hunters' Steeplechase. There were very few sporting men who remembered the day when Mat had not been a leading figure in the racing... more...

THE COLLECTION OF ANTIQUITIES There stands a house at a corner of a street, in the middle of a town, in one of the least important prefectures in France, but the name of the street and the name of the town must be suppressed here. Every one will appreciate the motives of this sage reticence demanded by convention; for if a writer takes upon himself the office of annalist of his own time, he is bound to... more...