Essays in Idleness

It would appear, then, that we have no _fortunati_, that we are not yet rich enough to afford the greatest of all luxuries—leisure to cultivate and enjoy “the best that has been...

Girt around with fear, and mystery, and subtle associations of evil, the cat comes down to us through the centuries; and from every land fresh traditions of sorcery claim it for...

There is a kind of humorousness which a true sense of humor would render impossible; there is a species of originality from which the artist shrinks aghast; and worse than mere...

To go back to Mr. Rudyard Kipling, however, from whom I have wandered far, he is more in love with the “dear delights” of battle than with its dismal carnage, and he wins an eas...

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Then Jove, half in wrath and half in pity, devised a means by which his rebellious creatures might be preserved. He enlarged the earth, moulded the mountains, and poured into mi...

It is an interesting question to determine, or to endeavor to determine, how far animals share man’s melancholy capacity for ennui. Schopenhauer, who, like Hartmann and all othe...

has never won their hearts. Its motive is too apparent, its nursery flavor too pronounced. It has none of the condescension of “Minnie and Winnie,” and grown people can read it...

These characteristic passages and others like them are all we hear of public matters from Charles Lamb, and few of us would ask for more. It is the continual sounding of the per...

All these and many more are gathered safely into this charming volume. Nothing we long to see appears to be left out, except, indeed, Waller’s “Go, Lovely Rose,” and Herrick’s “...

The breadth of atmosphere which humor requires for its development, the saneness anti sympathy of its revelations, are admirably described by one of the most penetrating and lea...