Excerpt: Dedication. Bob Southey! You?re a poet -- Poet-laureate, And representative of all the race, Although ?t is true that you turn?d out a Tory at Last,-- yours has lately been a common case; And now, my Epic Renegade! what are ye at? With all the Lakers, in and out of place? A nest of tuneful persons, to my eye Like ?four and twenty Blackbirds in a pyre....

Excerpt: Story of the Door. Mr. Utterson the lawyer was a man of a rugged countenance that was never lighted by a smile; cold, scanty and embarrassed in discourse; backward in sentiment; lean, long, dusty, dreary and yet somehow lovable. At friendly meetings, and when the wine was to his taste, something eminently human beaconed from his eye; something indeed which never found its way into his talk, but which spoke not only in these silent symbols of the after-dinner face, but more often and loudly in the acts of his life. He was austere with himself; drank gin when he was alone, to mortify a taste for vintages; and though he enjoyed the theater, had not crossed the doors of one for twenty years. But he had an approved tolerance for others; sometimes wondering, almost with envy, at the high pressure of spirits involved in their misdeeds; and in any extremity inclined to help rather than to reprove. ?I incline to Cain?s heresy,? he used to say quaintly: ?I let my brother go to the devil in his own way.? In this character, it was frequently his fortune to be the last reputable acquaintance and the last good influence in the lives of d...

Preface: In making this abridgement of Boswell?s Life of Johnson I have omitted most of Boswell?s criticisms, comments, and notes, all of Johnson?s opinions in legal cases, most of the letters, and parts of the conversation dealing with matters which were of greater importance in Boswell?s day than now. I have kept in mind an old habit, common enough, I dare say, among its devotees, of opening the book of random, and reading wherever the eye falls upon a passage of especial interest. All such passages, I hope, have been retained, and enough of the whole book to illustrate all the phases of Johnson?s mind and of his time which Boswell observed....

Excerpt: Young Folks? History of England by Charlotte M. Yonge.

Contents Young Folks? History of England ..................................... 6 CHAPTER I JULIUS CAESAR. B.C. 55 ........................................................................................ 6 CHAPTER II THE ROMANS IN BRITAIN. A.D. 41?418.......................................................... 8 CHAPTER III THE ANGLE CHILDREN A.D. 597.................................................................... 10 CHAPTER IV THE NORTHMEN. A.D. 858?958...................................................................... 12 CHAPTER V THE DANISH CONQUEST. A.D. 958?1035 ...................................................... 15 CHAPTER VI THE NORMAN CONQUEST. A.D. 1035?1066 ................................................ 17 CHAPTER VII WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR. A.D. 1066?1087 ......................................... 19 CHAPTER VIII WILLIAM II., RUFUS. A.D. 1087-1100 ........................................................... 22 CHAPTER IX HENRY I., BEAU-CLERC. A.D. 1100?1135 ..................................................... 24 CHAPTER X STEPHEN. A.D. 1135?1154 .........................................................................

Excerpt: A chapter of which the last page only is of any importance comedy is a game played to throw reflections upon social life, and it deals with human nature in the drawing-room of civilized men and women, where we have no dust of the struggling outer world, no mire, no violent crashes, to make the correctness of the representation convincing. Credulity is not wooed through the impressionable senses; nor have we recourse to the small circular glow of the watchmaker?s eye to raise in bright relief minutest grains of evidence for the routing of incredulity....

Excerpt: Preface By Way Of Criticism. These studies are collected from the monthly press. One appeared in the New Quarterly, one in MacMillan?s, and the rest in the Cornhill Magazine. To the Cornhill I owe a double debt of thanks; first, that I was received there in the very best society, and under the eye of the very best of editors; and second, that the proprietors have allowed me to republish so considerable an amount of copy....

Contents PREFACE BY WAY OF CRITICISM. ........................................................................................... 4 CHAPTER I ? VICTOR HUGO?S ROMANCES ........................................................................ 15 CHAPTER II ? SOME ASPECTS OF ROBERT BURNS.......................................................... 34 CHAPTER III ? WALT WHITMAN............................................................................................. 63 CHAPTER IV ? HENRY DAVID THOREAU: HIS CHARACTER AND OPINIONS........... 84 CHAPTER V ? YOSHIDA-TORAJIRO..................................................................................... 107 CHAPTER VI ? FRANCOIS VILLON, STUDENT, POET, AND HOUSEBREAKER.........117 CHAPTER VII ? CHARLES OF ORLEANS ............................................................................ 141 CHAPTER VIII ? SAMUEL PEPYS .......................................................................................... 170 CHAPTER IX ? JOHN KNOX AND HIS RELATIONS TO WOMEN .................................. 190...