Archaic England

"It is our duty to begin research even if we have to penetrate many a labyrinth leading to nowhere and to lament the loss of many a plausible system. A false theory negatived is...

"O queen, whom Jove hath willed To found this new-born city, here to reign, And stubborn tribes with justice to refrain, We, Troy's poor fugitives, implore thy grace, Storm-tost...

"In the old time every Wood and Grove, Field and Meadow, Hill and Cave, Sea and River, was tenanted by tribes and communities of the great Fairy Family, and at least one of its...

"Where one might look to find a legitimate national pride in the monuments of our forefathers there seems to be a perverse conspiracy to give the credit to anyone rather than to...

"But, I do not know how it comes to pass, it is the unhappy fashion of our age to derive everything curious and valuable, whether the works of art or nature, from foreign countr...

"We could not blot out from English poetry its visions of the fairyland without a sense of irreparable loss. No other literature save that of Greece alone can vie with ours in i...

"Do you imagine that Robin Goodfellow--a mere name to you--conveys anything like the meaning to your mind that it did to those for whom the name represented a still living belie...

"The Anglo-Saxons, down to a late period, retained the heathenish Yule, as all Teutonic Christians did the sanctity of Easter-tide; and from these two, the Yule-boar and Yule-br...

At bottom, a man is what his thinking is, thoughts being the artists who give colour to our days. Optimists and pessimists live in the same world, walk under the same sky, and o...

"As the palimpsest of language is held up to the light and looked at more closely, it is found to be full of older forms beneath the later writing. Again and again has the most...

Upon the Syrian sea the people live, Who style themselves Phoenicians, These were the first great founders of the world-- Founders of cities and of mighty states-- Who showed a...

"But all the beauty of the pleasaunce drew its being from the song of the bird; for from his chant flowed love which gives its shadow to the tree, its healing to the simple, and...

"Scarce stand the vessels hauled upon the beach, And bent on marriages the young men vie To till new settlements, while I to each Due law dispense and dwelling place supply, Whe...

This alleged work of Plautus, and these strange lines, have long been before the world, and under the notice of men of letters. Is there any reason to doubt whether it is genuin...

"If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away."--H...

heads of Jacob and ye princes of the house of Israel; Is it not for you to know judgement? who hate the good, and love the evil; who pluck off their skin off them, and their fle...