An Accursed Raceby Elizabeth GaskellWe have our prejudices in England. Or, if that assertion offends anyof my readers, I will modify it: we have had our prejudices inEngland. We have tortured Jews; we have burnt Catholics andProtestants, to say nothing of a few witches and wizards. We havesatirized Puritans, and we have dressed-up Guys. But, after all, Ido not think we have been so bad as our Continental friends. To besure, our insular position has kept us free, to a certain degree,from the inroads of alien races; who, driven from one land of refuge,steal into another equally unwilling to receive them; and where, for...
The Two Captainsby Friedrich Heinrich Karl, Freiherr de La Motte-FouqueCHAPTER I.A Mild summer evening was resting on the shores of Malaga, awakeningthe guitar of many a merry singer among the ships in the harbor, andin the city houses, and in many an ornamental garden villa.Emulating the voices of the birds, the melodious tones greeted therefreshing coolness, and floated like perfumed exhalations frommeadow and water, over the enchanting region. Some troops ofinfantry who were on the shore, and who purposed to spend the nightthere, that they might be ready for embarkation early on thefollowing morning, forgot amid the charms of the pleasant eventide...
A Simpletonby Charles ReadePREFACE.It has lately been objected to me, in studiously courteous terms ofcourse, that I borrow from other books, and am a plagiarist. Tothis I reply that I borrow facts from every accessible source, andam not a plagiarist. The plagiarist is one who borrows from ahomogeneous work: for such a man borrows not ideas only, but theirtreatment. He who borrows only from heterogeneous works is not aplagiarist. All fiction, worth a button, is founded on facts; andit does not matter one straw whether the facts are taken frompersonal experience, hearsay, or printed books; only those booksmust not be works of fiction.Ask your common sense why a man writes better fiction
Memoirs of Carwin the BiloquistCharles Brockden BrownChapter I.I was the second son of a farmer, whose place of residence was a western district of Pennsylvania. My eldest brother seemed fitted by nature for the employment to which he was destined. His wishes never led him astray from the hay-stack and the furrow. His ideas never ranged beyond the sphere of his vision, or suggested the possibility that to-morrow could differ from to-day. He could read and write, because he had no alternative between learning the lesson prescribed to him, and punishment. He was diligent, as long as fear urged him forward, but his exertions ceased with the cessation of this motive. The limits of his acq
THE CROW[13][13] From the Polish. Kletke.Once upon a time there were three Princesses who were all threeyoung and beautiful; but the youngest, although she was notfairer than the other two, was the most loveable of them all.About half a mile from the palace in which they lived there stooda castle, which was uninhabited and almost a ruin, but the gardenwhich surrounded it was a mass of blooming flowers, and in thisgarden the youngest Princess used often to walk.One day when she was pacing to and fro under the lime trees, ablack crow hopped out of a rose-bush in front of her. The poorbeast was all torn and bleeding, and the kind little Princess was...
410 BCTHE PHOENISSAEby Euripidestranslated by E. P. ColeridgeCHARACTERS IN THE PLAYJOCASTA, wife of OEDIPUSOLD SERVANT, an attendant of ANTIGONEANTIGONE, daughter Of OEDIPUSCHORUS OF PHOENICIAN MAIDENSPOLYNEICES, exiled son of OEDIPUSETEOCLES, now King of Thebes; son of OEDIPUSCREON, brother of JOCASTATEIRESIAS, a blind prophetMENOECEUS, son of CREONFIRST MESSENGERSECOND MESSENGEROEDIPUS, formerly King of ThebesDaughter of TEIRESIAS, guards, attendants...
Sarrasineby Honore de BalzacTranslated by Clara Bell and othersDEDICATIONTo Monsieur Charles Bernard du Grail.SARRASINEI was buried in one of those profound reveries to which everybody,even a frivolous man, is subject in the midst of the most uproariousfestivities. The clock on the Elysee-Bourbon had just struck midnight.Seated in a window recess and concealed behind the undulating folds ofa curtain of watered silk, I was able to contemplate at my leisure thegarden of the mansion at which I was passing the evening. The trees,being partly covered with snow, were outlined indistinctly against thegrayish background formed by a cloudy sky, barely whitened by the...
Of Refinement in the Artsby David HumeLUXURY is a word of an uncertain signification, and may betaken in a good as well as in a bad sense. In general, it meansgreat refinement in the gratification of the senses; and anydegree of it may be innocent or blameable, according to the age,or country, or condition of the person. The bounds between thevirtue and the vice cannot here be exactly fixed, more than inother moral subjects. To imagine, that the gratifying of anysense, or the indulging of any delicacy in meat, drink, orapparel, is of itself a vice, can never enter into a head, thatis not disordered by the frenzies of enthusiasm. I have, indeed,heard of a monk abroad, who, because the window
Stories of a Western Townby Octave ThanetCONTENTSThe Besetment of Kurt LiedersThe Face of FailureTommy and ThomasMother EmeritusAn Assisted ProvidenceHarry LossingTHE BESETMENT OF KURT LIEDERS A SILVER rime glistened all down the street. There was a drabble of dead leaves on the sidewalk which was of wood, and on the roadway which was of macadam and stiff mud. The wind blew sharply, for it was a December day and only six in the morning. Nor were the houses high enough to furnish any independent bulwark; they were low, wooden dwellings, the tallest a bare two stories in height, the majority only one story. But they were in good painting and repair, and most of them had a homely gayety of ge
THE COMPARISON OF FABIUS WITH PERICLESby Plutarchtranslated by John DrydenWE have here had two lives rich in examples, both of civil andmilitary excellence. Let us first compare the two men in their warlikecapacity. Pericles presided in his commonwealth when it was in itsmost flourishing and opulent condition, great and growing in power; sothat it may be thought it was rather the common success and fortunethat kept him from any fall or disaster. But the task of Fabius, whoundertook the government in the worst and most difficult times, wasnot to preserve and maintain the well-established felicity of a...
Sally Dowsby Bret HarteCONTENTSSALLY DOWSTHE CONSPIRACY OF MRS. BUNKERTHE TRANSFORMATION OF BUCKEYE CAMPTHEIR UNCLE FROM CALIFORNIASALLY DOWS.PROLOGUE.THE LAST GUN AT SNAKE RIVER.What had been in the cool gray of that summer morning a dewycountry lane, marked only by a few wagon tracks that neverencroached upon its grassy border, and indented only by the faintfootprints of a crossing fox or coon, was now, before high noon,already crushed, beaten down, and trampled out of all semblance ofits former graciousness. The heavy springless jolt of gun-carriageand caisson had cut deeply through the middle track; the hoofs of...
Romantic BalladsTranslated from the Danish and Miscellaneous Piecesby George BorrowContents:PrefaceLines from Allan Cunningham to George BorrowThe Death-raven. From the Danish of OehlenslaegerFridleif and Helga. From the Danish of OehlenslaegerSir Middel. From the Old DanishElvir-shades. From the Danish of OehlenslaegerThe Heddybee-spectre. From the Old DanishSir John. From the Old DanishMay Asda. From the Danish of OehlenslaegerAager and Eliza. From the Old DanishSaint Oluf. From the Old DanishThe Heroes of Dovrefeld. From the Old DanishSvend Vonved. From the Old DanishThe Tournament. From the Old DanishVidrik Verlandson. From the Old Danish...