Of all the hard-working people on the earth, there are none so serviceable to her neighbours as the moon. She lights lovers and thieves. She keeps watch-dogs waking. She is a constant resource to poets and romance-writers. She helps the compounders of almanacks amazingly. She has something to do with the weather, and the tides, and the harvest; and in short she has a finger in every man's pie, and probably more or less effect upon every man's brain. She is a charming creature in all her variations. Her versatility is not the offspring of caprice; and she is constant in the midst of every...
Of all the hard-working people on the earth, there are none so serviceable to her neighbours as the moon. She lights lovers and thieves. She keeps wat...
It was an awfully dark and tempestuous night; the wind howled in fury through the trees, and round the towers; the large drops of rain dashed against the casements, the small lozenges of glass rattled and clattered in their leaden frames, and the thick boards of the oaken floor heaved and shivered under the force of the tempest. From time to time a keen blue streak of lightning crossed the descending deluge, and for an instant the great black masses of the forest, and the high and broken rocks around, appeared like spectres of a gone-by world, and sank into Egyptian darkness again, almost as...
It was an awfully dark and tempestuous night; the wind howled in fury through the trees, and round the towers; the large drops of rain dashed against ...
Merry England --Oh, merry England What a difference has there always been between thee and every other land What a cheerfulness there seems to hang about thy very name What yeoman-like hilarity is there in all the thoughts of the past What a spirit of sylvan cheer and rustic hardihood in all the tales of thy old times
Merry England --Oh, merry England What a difference has there always been between thee and every other land What a cheerfulness there seems to hang ...
It may be very well in most cases to plunge, according to the rule of the Latin poet, into the middle of things. It may be very well even, according to the recommendation of Count Antoine Hamilton, to 'begin with the beginning.' But there are other cases where there may be antecedents to the actual story, which require to be known before the tale itself is rightly comprehended. With this view, then, I will give one short scene not strictly attached to that which is to follow, ere I proceed with my history.
It may be very well in most cases to plunge, according to the rule of the Latin poet, into the middle of things. It may be very well even, according t...
Although there is something chilling in that sad, inevitable word, the past--although in looking through the thronged rolls of history, and reading of all the dead passions, the fruitless anxieties, the vain, unproductive yearnings of beings that were once as full of thrilling life and feeling as ourselves, and now are nothing, we gain but the cold moral of our own littleness--still the very indistinctness of the distance softens and beautifies the objects of a former epoch that we thus look back upon; and in the far retrospect of the days gone by, a thousand bright and glistening spots stand...
Although there is something chilling in that sad, inevitable word, the past--although in looking through the thronged rolls of history, and reading of...
"Among the minor trials of faith, few, perhaps, are more difficult to contend against than that growing conviction, which, commencing very soon after the holiday happiness of youth has been first tasted, becomes stronger every year, as experience unfolds to us the great, dark secrets of the world in which we are placed--the conviction of the general worthlessness of our fellow-men. A few splendid exceptions, a few bright and glorious spirits, a few noble and generous hearts, are not sufficient to cheer and to brighten the bleak prospect of the world's unworthiness; and we can only reconcile...
"Among the minor trials of faith, few, perhaps, are more difficult to contend against than that growing conviction, which, commencing very soon after ...
In this King Arthur's reign, A lusty knight was pricking o'er the plain.--Dryden. On the morning of the 24th day of March, 1520, a traveller was seen riding in the small, rugged cross-road which, traversing the eastern part of Kent, formed the immediate communication between Wye 1] and Canterbury. Far be it from me to insinuate that this road pursued anything like a direct course from the one place to the other: on the contrary, it seemed, like a serpent, to get on only by twisting; and yet truly, as its track now lies pictured on the old county map before me, I can discover no possible...
In this King Arthur's reign, A lusty knight was pricking o'er the plain.--Dryden. On the morning of the 24th day of March, 1520, a traveller was seen ...
One of the finest characters in the world was the old English merchant. We may and have improved upon many things, but not upon that. A different spirit reigns in commerce from that which ruled it long ago, and not a better one. We are more the shopkeeper, as a celebrated but not a great man called us, and less the merchant. As a people, our commerce is more extended, but the separate transactions are smaller; and minute dealings almost always produce paltry minds. Not at all do I mean to say that the old English merchant is without his representatives; but they are fewer than in other times,...
One of the finest characters in the world was the old English merchant. We may and have improved upon many things, but not upon that. A different spir...
George Payne Rainsford James, Historiographer Royal to King William IV., was born in London in the first year of the nineteenth century, and died at Venice in 1860. His comparatively short life was exceptionally full and active. He was historian, politician and traveller, the reputed author of upwards of a hundred novels, the compiler and editor of nearly half as many volumes of letters, memoirs, and biographies, a poet and a pamphleteer, and, during the last ten years of his life, British Consul successively in Massachusetts, Norfolk (Virginia), and Venice. He was on terms of friendship with...
George Payne Rainsford James, Historiographer Royal to King William IV., was born in London in the first year of the nineteenth century, and died at V...
There is a mountain pass, not far from the shores of the Lago Maggiore, which has been famous of late years for anything but fetes and festivals. There, many an unfortunate traveller has been relieved of the burden of worldly wealth, and sometimes of all earthly cares; and there, many a postillion has quietly received, behind an oak-tree or a chesnut, a due share of the day's earnings from a body of those Italian gentlemen whose life is generally spent in working upon the highways, either with a long gun in their hands or a chain round their middles."
There is a mountain pass, not far from the shores of the Lago Maggiore, which has been famous of late years for anything but fetes and festivals. Ther...
