ACT I. SCENE: [Country public-house or shebeen, very rough and untidy. There is a sort of counter on the right with shelves, holding many bottles and jugs, just seen above it. Empty barrels stand near the counter. At back, a little to left of counter, there is a door into the open air, then, more to the left, there is a settle with shelves above it, with more jugs, and a table beneath a window. At the... more...

Boundaries and Devolution of the Empire of Germany during the Carlovingian Dynasty. 800-911. The Ocean on the north, the Danube on the south, the Rhine on the west, and the Sarmatian Provinces on the east, are the boundaries assigned by Tacitus to Antient Germany. It formed the most extensive portion of the territories of Charlemagne; descended, at his decease, to his son, Lewis the Debonnaire; and, on... more...

PART I I "The firmament turns, and times are changing." Moorish Proverb. By the western gate of the Mediterranean, where the narrowed sea has so often tempted invaders, the decrepit Moorish Empire has become itself a bait for those who once feared it. Yet so far Morocco remains untouched, save where a fringe of Europeans on the coast purvey the luxuries from other lands that Moorish tastes... more...

MAZELLI Canto I. I. "Stay, traveller, stay thy weary steed,The sultry hour of noon is near,Of rest thy way-worn limbs have need,Stay, then, and, taste its sweetness here.The mountain path which thou hast spedIs steep, and difficult to tread,And many a farther step 'twill cost,Ere thou wilt find another host;But if thou scorn'st not humble fare,Such as the pilgrim loves to share,—Not... more...

Thename of Free Joe strikes humorously upon the ear of memory. It is impossible to say why, for he was the humblest, the simplest, and the most serious of all God's living creatures, sadly lacking in all those elements that suggest the humorous. It is certain, moreover, that in 1850 the sober-minded citizens of the little Georgian village of Hillsborough were not inclined to take a humorous view of... more...

Nothing more generally or more recurrently solicits us, in the light of literature, I think, than the interest of our learning how the poet, the true poet, and above all the particular one with whom we may for the moment be concerned, has come into his estate, asserted and preserved his identity, worked out his question of sticking to that and to nothing else; and has so been able to reach us and touch... more...

I LONDON A GENERAL SKETCH [Footnote: From articles written for the Toronto "Week."Afterward (1888) issued by The Macmillan Company in the volume entitled"The Trip to England."] BY GOLDWIN SMITH The huge city perhaps never imprest the imagination more than when approaching it by night on the top of a coach you saw its numberless lights flaring, as Tennyson says, "like a dreary... more...

ACT I At the most wretched hour between a black night and a wintry morning in the year 1777, Mrs. Dudgeon, of New Hampshire, is sitting up in the kitchen and general dwelling room of her farm house on the outskirts of the town of Websterbridge. She is not a prepossessing woman. No woman looks her best after sitting up all night; and Mrs. Dudgeon's face, even at its best, is grimly trenched by the... more...

CHAPTER I The wife of Belisarius, whom I have spoken of in my previous writings, was the daughter and grand-daughter of chariot-drivers, men who had practised their art in the circus at Byzantium and at Thessalonica. Her mother was one of the prostitutes of the theatre. She herself at first lived a lewd life, giving herself up to unbridled debauchery; besides this, she devoted herself to the study of... more...

INTRODUCTION. Very little is known concerning the life of Tacitus, the historian, except that which he tells us in his own writings and those incidents which are related of him by his contemporary, Pliny. His full name was Caius Cornelius Tacitus. The date of his birth can only be arrived at by conjecture, and then only approximately. The younger Pliny speaks of him as prope modum aequales, about the... more...