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Preface: Thirteen men were banded together in Paris under the Empire, all imbued with one and the same sentiment, all gifted with sufficient energy to be faithful to the same thought, with sufficient honor among themselves never to betray one another even if their interests clashed; and sufficiently wily and politic to conceal the sacred ties that united them, sufficiently strong to maintain themselves above the law, bold enough to undertake all things, and fortunate enough to succeed, nearly always, in their undertakings; having run the greatest dangers, but keeping silence if defeated; inaccessible to fear; trembling neither before princes, nor executioners, not even before innocence; accepting each other for such as they were, without social prejudices,--criminals, no doubt, but certainly remarkable through certain of the qualities that make great men, and recruiting their number only among men of mark....

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Excerpt: Taras Bulba and Other Tales by Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol.

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Contents INTRODUCTION ............................................................ 4 TARAS BULBA.............................................................. 13 ST. JOHN?S EVE ......................................................... 130 THE CLOAK ................................................................ 146 HOW THE TWO IVANS QUARRELLED .................. 176 THE MYSTERIOUS PORTRAIT ................................ 223 THE CALASH .............................................................. 270...

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Excerpt: Wilhelm Tell by Johann Christoph Freidrich von Schiller, translated by Theodore Martin.

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THE SIXTY-SECOND BOOK OF THE HOLY BIBLE CONTAINING THE OLD AND NEW TESTAMENTS TRANSLATED OUT OF THE ORIGINAL TONGUES AND WITH THE FORMER TRANSLATIONS DILIGENTLY COMPARED & REVISED SET FORTH IN 1611 AND COMMONLY KNOWN AS THE KING JAMES VERSION ...

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Excerpt: Chapter 1. That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of life -- 2. (For the life was manifested, and we have seen it, and bear witness, and shew unto you that eternal life, which was with the Father, and was manifested unto us;) -- 3 That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you, that ye also may have fellowship with us: and truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ -- 4. And these things write we unto you, that your joy may be full -- 5. This then is the message which we have heard of him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all -- 6. If we say that we have fellowship with him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth -- 7 But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin....

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Excerpt: Chapter 1. It was in the early days of April; Bernard Longueville had been spending the winter in Rome. He had travelled northward with the consciousness of several social duties that appealed to him from the further side of the Alps, but he was under the charm of the Italian spring, and he made a pretext for lingering....

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Excerpt: Preface to Major Barbara: First Aid to Critics by George Bernard Shaw.

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Excerpt: The Divine Comedy, Volume One, Hell [The Inferno] by Dante Aligheri, trans Charles Eliot Norton.

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Contents INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................................7 AIDS TO THE STUDY OF THE DIVINE COMEDY .......................................................... 14 HELL .............................................................................. 16 CANTO I. Dante, astray in a wood, reaches the foot of a hill which he begins to ascend; he is hindered by three beasts; he turns back and is met by Virgil, who proposes to guide him into the eternal world. ....................................... 16 CANTO II. Dante, doubtful of his own powers, is discouraged at the outset.?Virgil cheers him by telling him that he has been sent to his aid by a blessed Spirit from Heaven.?Dante casts off fear, and the poets proceed. ................ 19 CANTO III. The gate of Hell.?Virgil lends Dante in.?The punishment of the neither good nor bad.?Aeheron, and the sinners on its bank.?Charon.?Earthquake.?Dante swoons. ................................................................. 22 CANTO IV. The further side of Acheron.?Virgil leads Dante into Limbo, the First Circle of Hell, cont...

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Excerpt: ACT I. (SCENE.--A large room looking upon a garden door in the left-hand wall, and two in the right. In the middle of the room, a round table with chairs set about it, and books, magazines and newspapers upon it. In the foreground on the left, a window, by which is a small sofa with a work-table in front of it. At the back the room opens into a conservatory rather smaller than the room. From the right-hand side of this, a door leads to the garden. Through the large panes of glass that form the outer wall of the conservatory, a gloomy fjord landscape can be discerned, half-obscured by steady rain....

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Excerpt: BOOK I. INSCRIPTIONS. One?s-self I sing, a simple separate person, Yet utter the word Democratic, the word En-Masse. Of physiology from top to toe I sing, Not physiognomy alone nor brain alone is worthy for the Muse, I say the Form complete is worthier far, The Female equally with the Male I sing. Of Life immense in passion, pulse, and power, Cheerful, for freest action form?d under the laws divine, The Modern Man I sing....

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Contents LEAVES OF GRASS.......................8 BOOK I. INSCRIPTIONS..................9 One?s-Self I Sing...................................9 As I Ponder?d in Silence.....................10 In Cabin?d Ships at Sea.......................11 To Foreign Lands................................12 To a Historian.....................................12 To Thee Old Cause..............................13 Eidolons................................................14 For Him I Sing....................................18 When I Read the Book........................18 Beginning My Studies.........................18 Beginners............................................19 To the States.......................................19 On Journeys Through the States..........19 To a Certain Cantatrice.......................20 Me Imperturbe....................................20 Savantism..............................................21 The Ship Starting................................21 I Hear America Singing......................21 What Place Is Besieged?......................22 Still Though the One I Sing................22 Shut Not Your Doors..........................

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Excerpt: It was a foggy day in London, and the fog was heavy and dark. Animate London, with smarting eyes and irritated lungs, was blinking, wheezing, and choking; inanimate London was a sooty spectre, divided in purpose between being visible and invisible, and so being wholly neither. Gaslights flared in the shops with a haggard and unblest air, as knowing themselves to be night-creatures that had no business abroad under the sun; while the sun itself when it was for a few moments dimly indicated through circling eddies of fog, showed as if it had gone out and were collapsing flat and cold....

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Excerpt: The talisman towards the end of the month of October 1829 a young man entered the Palais-Royal just as the gaming-houses opened, agreeably to the law which protects a passion by its very nature easily excisable. He mounted the staircase of one of the gambling hells distinguished by the number 36, without too much deliberation. ?Your hat, sir, if you please?? a thin, querulous voice called out. A little old man, crouching in the darkness behind a railing, suddenly rose and exhibited his features, carved after a mean design....

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Excerpt: Overruled by George Bernard Shaw.

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Excerpt: Chapter 1. Princess Shtcherbatskaya considered that it was out of the question for the wedding to take place before Lent, just five weeks off, since not half the trousseau could possibly be ready by that time. But she could not but agree with Levin that to fix it for after Lent would be putting it off too late, as an old aunt of Prince Shtcherbatsky?s was seriously ill and might die, and then the mourning would delay the wedding still longer. And therefore, deciding to divide the trousseau into two parts--a larger and smaller trousseau--the princess consented to have the wedding before Lent. She determined that she would get the smaller part of the trousseau all ready now, and the larger part should be made later, and she was much vexed with Levin because he was incapable of giving her a serious answer to the question whether he agreed to this arrangement or not. The arrangement was the more suitable as, immediately after the wedding, the young people were to go to the country, where the more important part of the trousseau would not be wanted....

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Excerpt: This little play is really a religious tract in dramatic form. If our silly censorship would permit its performance, it might possibly help to set right-side-up the perverted conscience and re-invigorate the starved self-respect of our considerable class of loose-lived playgoers whose point of honor is to deride all official and conventional sermons....

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Excerpt: Renewal of Life by Transmission. The most notable distinction between living and inanimate things is that the former maintain themselves by renewal. A stone when struck resists. If its resistance is greater than the force of the blow struck, it remains outwardly unchanged. Otherwise, it is shattered into smaller bits. Never does the stone attempt to react in such a way that it may maintain itself against the blow, much less so as to render the blow a contributing factor to its own continued action....

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Contents Chapter One: Education as a Necessity of Life .............................................................................. 5 Chapter Two: Education as a Social Function .............................................................................. 14 Chapter Three: Education as Direction ........................................................................................ 28 Chapter Four: Education as Growth ............................................................................................. 46 Chapter Five: Preparation, Unfolding, and Formal Discipline................................................... 58 Chapter Six: Education as Conservative and Progressive ........................................................... 74 Chapter Seven: The Democratic Conception in Education ......................................................... 85 Chapter Eight: Aims in Education .............................................................................................. 105 Chapter Nine: Natural Development and Social Efficiency as Aims.........................................116 Chapter Ten: Interest and Discipline ......

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Excerpt: Chapter 1. Last year, on the evening of March 22, I had a very strange adventure. All that day I had been walking about the town trying to find a lodging. My old one was very damp, and I had begun to have an ominous cough. Ever since the autumn I had been meaning to move, but I had hung on till the spring. I had not been able to find anything decent all day. In the first place I wanted a separate tenement, not a room in other people?s lodgings; secondly, though I could do with one room, it must be a large one, and, of course, it had at the same time to be as cheap as possible. I have observed that in a confined space even thought is cramped; When I was brooding over a future novel I liked to walk up and down the room. By the way, I always like better brooding over my works and dreaming how they should be written than actually writing them. And this really is not from laziness. Why is it?...

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Excerpt: War and Peace: Book Thirteen by Leo Tolstoy.

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Introduction: Francois Marie Arouet, who called himself Voltaire, was the son of Francois Arouet of Poitou, who lived in Paris, had given up his office of notary two years before the birth of this his third son, and obtained some years afterwards a treasurer?s office in the Chambre des Comptes. Voltaire was born in the year 1694. He lived until within ten or eleven years of the outbreak of the Great French Revolution, and was a chief leader in the movement of thought that preceded the Revolution. Though he lived to his eighty-fourth year, Voltaire was born with a weak body....

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Contents LETTER I.?ON THE QUAKERS .............................................................................................................................. 6 LETTER II.?ON THE QUAKERS .......................................................................................................................... 10 LETTER III.?ON THE QUAKERS ......................................................................................................................... 12 LETTER IV.?ON THE QUAKERS......................................................................................................................... 16 LETTER V.?ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND .................................................................................................. 20 LETTER VI.?ON THE PRESBYTERIANS............................................................................................................ 23 LETTER VII.?ON THE SOCINIANS, OR ARIANS, OR ANTITRINITARIANS ............................................. 24 LETTER VIII.?ON THE PARLIAMENT ............................................................................................................... ...