Bones and I

“Why are these things so?” I exclaim, plumping down again into my seat. “Why have the times been out of joint ever since Hamlet’s first appearance on the stage, with black tight...

Most people are ashamed of their skeletons, hiding them up in their respective cupboards as though the very ownership were a degradation—alluding to them, perhaps, occasionally...

So Jonah was exceeding glad of the Gourd. I can understand his feelings perfectly. Does it not happen to most of us, at least once in a lifetime, thus to be “exceeding glad of t...

Leaning idly against the chimney-piece the other night, contemplating my companion in his usual attitude, my elbow happened to brush off the slab a Turkish coin of small value a...

“The African Magician never minded all their scoffs and holloaings, or all they could say to him, but still cry’d _Who’ll change old Lamps for new ones?_ which he repeated so of...

I have been burning old letters to-night; their ashes are fluttering in the chimney even now; and, alas! while they consume, fleeting and perishable like the moments they record...

We are all looking for it; shall we ever find it? Can it be cultivated in hothouses by Scotch head-gardeners with high wages and Doric accent? or shall we come upon it accidenta...

_Romæ Tibur Amem, ventosus. Tibure Romam!_ quoth the Latin satirist, ridiculing his own foibles, like his neighbour’s, with the laughing, half-indulgent banter that makes him th...

A hundred years ago there was scarce a decent country house in England or Scotland that did not pride itself on two advantages—the inexhaustible resources of its cellar and the...

Fifty years ago, when the burning of a bishop at Smithfield would scarce have created more sensation in clerical circles than a Ritualistic Commission or a Pan-Anglican Synod, o...

“Coming events cast their shadows before,” says a favourite adage of that proverbial philosophy which is often so quaint and truthful, sometimes so contradictory and far-fetched...

Amongst all the works of our great poet, works in which criticism, searching diligently for flaws, discovers every day new beauties, surely this noble poem is the very crown and...