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Excerpt: The ancient and famous metropolis of the North sits overlooking a windy estuary from the slope and summit of three hills. No situation could be more commanding for the head city of a kingdom; none better chosen for noble prospects. From her tall precipice and terraced gardens she looks far and wide on the sea and broad champaigns. To the east you may catch at sunset the spark of the May lighthouse, where the Firth expands into the German Ocean; and away to the west, over all the carse of Stirling, you can see the first snows upon Ben Ledi....
Excerpt: Good Comedies are such rare productions, that notwithstanding the wealth of our literature in the Comic element, it would not occupy us long to run over the English list. If they are brought to the test I shall propose, very reputable Comedies will be found unworthy of their station, like the ladies of Arthur?s Court when they were reduced to the ordeal of the mantle....
Excerpt: Dear Baron, you have taken so warm an interest in my long, vast ?History of French Manners in the Nineteenth Century,? you have given me so much encouragement to persevere with my work, that you have given me a right to associate your name with some portion of it. Are you not one of the most important representatives of conscientious, studious Germany?...
Excerpt: Miss Sarah Jack, of Spanish Town, Jamaica by Anthony Trollope.
Excerpt: Chapter 1. How Sir Mordred presumed and took on him to be King of England, and would have married the queen, his father?s wife As Sir Mordred was ruler of all England, he did do make letters as though that they came from beyond the sea, and the letters specified that King Arthur was slain in battle with Sir Launcelot. Wherefore Sir Mordred made a parliament, and called the lords together, and there he made them to choose him king; and so was he crowned at Canterbury, and held a feast there fifteen days; and afterward he drew him unto Winchester, and there he took the Queen Guenever, and said plainly that he would wed her which was his uncle?s wife and his father?s wife....
Excerpt: Chapter 1. It had occurred to her early that in her position-- that of a young person spending, in framed and wired confinement, the life of a guinea-pig or a magpie-- she should know a great many persons without their recognizing the acquaintance. That made it an emotion the more lively--though singularly rare and always, even then, with opportunity still very much smothered--to see any one come in whom she knew outside, as she called it, any one who could add anything to the meanness of her function. Her function was to sit there with two young men--the other telegraphist and the counter-clerk; to mind the ?sounder,? which was always going, to dole out stamps and postal-orders, weigh letters, answer stupid questions, give difficult change and, more than anything else, count words as numberless as the sands of the sea, the words of the telegrams thrust, from morning to night, through the gap left in the high lattice, across the encumbered shelf that her forearm ached with rubbing. This transparent screen fenced out or fenced in, according to the side of the narrow counter on which the human lot was cast, the duskiest corne...
Excerpt: The Poetical Works of Alexander Pope: Volume One, with Memoir, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes by the Rev. George Gilfillan.
Contents LIFE OF ALEXANDER POPE.................................................................................................................................. 6 PREFACE2................................................................................................................................................................. 25 VARIATIONS IN THE AUTHOR?S MANUSCRIPT PREFACE. ........................................................................ 31 PASTORALS, WITH A DISCOURSE ON PASTORAL POETRY. WRITTEN IN THE YEAR MDCCIV...... 32 SPRING ...................................................................................................................................................................... 37 SUMMER ................................................................................................................................................................... 41 AUTUMN ................................................................................................................................................................... 44 WINTER .............................................................................
Excerpt: The French Revolution. (INDEX)
INDEX ABBAYE, massacres, Jourgniac, Sicard, and Maton?s account of. ACCEPTATION, grande, by Louis XVI. AGOUST, Captain d?, seizes two Parlementeers. AIGUILLON, d?, at Quiberon, account of, in favour, at death of Louis XV. AINTRIGUES, Count d?. ALTAR of Fatherland in Champ-de-Mars, scene at, christening at....
Excerpt: The autumn of the year 1803 was one of the finest in the early part of that period of the present century which we now call ?Empire.? Rain had refreshed the earth during the month of October, so that the trees were still green and leafy in November. The French people were beginning to put faith in a secret understanding between the skies and Bonaparte, then declared Consul for life,--a belief in which that man owes part of his prestige; strange to say, on the day the sun failed him, in 1812, his luck ceased!...
Excerpt: Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam Rendered into English Verse by Edward Fitzgerald.
Contents Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam ..........................................................................4 Introduction.....................................................................................................4 First Edition ..................................................................................................14 KUZA?NAMA. (?Book of Pots?)...............................................................24 Fifth Edition ..................................................................................................27 Notes ...............................................................................................................44...
Excerpt: Book First; Introduction -- Childhood and School-time -- OH, there is blessing in this gentle breeze, That blows from the green fields and from the clouds And from the sky; it beats against my cheek, And seems half conscious of the joy it gives. O welcome messenger! O welcome friend! A captive greets thee, coming from a house Of bondage, from yon city?s walls set free, A prison where he hath been long immured. Now I am free, enfranchised and at large, May fix my habitation where I will. What dwelling shall receive me, in what vale Shall be my harbour, underneath what grove Shall I take up my home, and what sweet stream Shall with its murmurs lull me to my rest? The earth is all before me--with a heart Joyous, nor scared at its own liberty, I look about, and should the guide I chuse Be nothing better than a wandering cloud I cannot miss my way. I breathe again--Trances of thought and mountings of the mind Come fast upon me. It is shaken off, As by miraculous gift ?tis shaken off, That burthen of my own unnatural self, The heavy weight of many a weary day Not mine, and such as were not made for me. Long months of peace--if su...
Table of Contents: Book First Introduction: Childhood and School-time, 1 -- Book Second Childhood and School-time (Continued), 20 -- Book Third Residence at Cambridge, 34 -- Book Fourth Summer Vacation, 53 -- Book Fifth Books, 67 -- Book Sixth Cambridge and the Alps, 85 -- Book Seventh Residence in London, 105 -- Book Eighth Retrospect: Love of Nature Leading to Love of Mankind, 126 -- Book Ninth Residence in France, 150 -- Book Tenth Residence in France and French Revolution, 176 -- Book Eleventh Imagination, How Impaired and Restored, 205 -- Book Twelfth Same Subject (Continued), 217 -- Book Thirteenth Conclusion, 228...
Excerpt: CHAPTER 1; Under certain circumstances there are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea. There are circumstances in which, whether you partake of the tea or not--some people of course never do--the situation is in itself delightful. Those that I have in mind in beginning to unfold this simple history offered an admirable setting to an innocent pastime. The implements of the little feast had been disposed upon the lawn of an old English country-house, in what I should call the perfect middle of a splendid summer afternoon. Part of the afternoon had waned, but much of it was left, and what was left was of the finest and rarest quality. Real dusk would not arrive for many hours; but the flood of summer light had begun to ebb, the air had grown mellow, the shadows were long upon the smooth, dense turf. They lengthened slowly, however, and the scene expressed that sense of leisure still to come which is perhaps the chief source of one?s enjoyment of such a scene at such an hour. From five o?clock to eight is on certain occasions a little eternity; but on such an occasion a...
Table of Contents: CHAPTER 1, 1 -- CHAPTER 2, 10 -- CHAPTER 3, 15 -- CHAPTER 4, 22 -- CHAPTER 5, 28 -- CHAPTER 6, 38 -- CHAPTER 7, 46 -- CHAPTER 8, 54 -- CHAPTER 9, 60 -- CHAPTER 10, 66 -- CHAPTER 11, 77 -- CHAPTER 12, 83 -- CHAPTER 13, 92 -- CHAPTER 14, 104 -- CHAPTER 15, 113 -- CHAPTER 16, 125 -- CHAPTER 17, 135 -- CHAPTER 18, 141 -- CHAPTER 19, 154 -- CHAPTER 20, 170 -- CHAPTER 21, 181 -- CHAPTER 22, 187 -- CHAPTER 23, 202 -- CHAPTER 24, 210 -- CHAPTER 25, 221 -- CHAPTER 26, 227 -- CHAPTER 27, 238 -- CHAPTER 28, 247...
Excerpt: We all settled down in a circle and our good friend Alexandr Vassilyevitch Ridel (his surname was German but he was Russian to the marrow of his bones) began as follows: I am going to tell you a story, friends, of something that happened to me in the ?thirties ... forty years ago as you see. I will be brief--and don?t you interrupt me....
Contents KNOCK, KNOCK, KNOCK ............................................................................................................ 4 THE INN ......................................................................................................................................... 31 LIEUTENANT YERGUNOV¡S STORY....................................................................................... 76 THE DOG...................................................................................................................................... 107 THE WATCH ................................................................................................................................ 122...
Excerpt: On Being Found Out? and ?The Notch on the Ax? by William Makepeace Thackeray, from Classic Mystery and Detective Stories -- Old Time English, ed. Julian Hawthowrne....
Introduction: In sending forth this little book, I am inclined to add a few explanatory words as to the use I have made of historical personages. The origin of the whole story was probably Freytag?s first series of pictures of German Life: probably, I say, for its first commencement was a dream, dreamt some weeks after reading that most interesting collection of sketches. The return of the squire with the tidings of the death of the two knights was vividly depicted in sleep; and, though without local habitation or name, the scene was most likely to have been a reflection from the wild scenes so lately read of....
Excerpt: The Shade of Cardinal Richelieu. In a splendid chamber of the Palais Royal, formerly styled the Palais Cardinal, a man was sitting in deep reverie, his head supported on his hands, leaning over a gilt and inlaid table which was covered with letters and papers. Behind this figure glowed a vast fireplace alive with leaping flames; great logs of oak blazed and crackled on the polished brass andirons whose flicker shone upon the superb habiliments of the lonely tenant of the room, which was illumined grandly by twin candelabra rich with wax-lights....
Excerpt: The Second Cabin. I first encountered my fellow-passengers on the Broomielaw in Glasgow. Thence we descended the Clyde in no familiar spirit, but looking askance on each other as on possible enemies. A few Scandinavians, who had already grown acquainted on the North Sea, were friendly and voluble over their long pipes; but among English speakers distance and suspicion reigned supreme. The sun was soon overclouded, the wind freshened and grew sharp as we continued to descend the widening estuary; and with the falling temperature the gloom among the passengers increased....
Excerpt: PREFACE; I HAVE endeavoured in this Ghostly little book, to raise the Ghost of an Idea, which shall not put my readers out of humour with themselves, with each other, with the season, or with me. May it haunt their houses pleasantly, and no one wish to lay it. Their faithful Friend and Servant, C. D. December, ....
Table of Contents: ILLUSTRATION: HE HAD BEEN TIM?S BLOOD HORSE, ii -- PREFACE, 1 -- MARLEY?S GHOST, 2 -- THE FIRST OF THE THREE SPIRITS, 17 -- THE SECOND OF THE THREE SPIRITS, 31 -- THE LAST OF THE THREE SPIRITS, 49 -- THE END OF IT, 61 -- ILLUSTRATION: BOB CRATCHIT AND TINY TIM., 67...
Excerpt: Why Mrs. General Talboys first made up her mind to pass the winter of 1859 at Rome I never clearly understood. To myself she explained her purposes, soon after her arrival at the Eternal City, by declaring, in her own enthusiastic manner, that she was inspired by a burning desire to drink fresh at the still living fountains of classical poetry and sentiment....
Excerpt: In the middle years of the nineteenth century there first became abundant in this strange world of ours a class of men, men tending for the most part to become elderly, who are called, and who are very properly called, but who dislike extremely to be called--?Scientists.? They dislike that word so much that from the columns of Nature, which was from the first their distinctive and characteristic paper, it is as carefully excluded as if it were--that other word which is the basis of all really bad language in this country. But the Great Public and its Press know better, and ?Scientists? they are....