Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 07

"Yesterday at supper," said she, "we talked it all over, and discussed all your characters; but Dr. Johnson's favorite is Mr. Smith. He declares the fine gentleman _manqué_ was...

Oft ha'e I roved by bonnie Doon, To see the rose and woodbine twine; And ilka bird sang o' its luve, And fondly sae did I o' mine. Wi' lightsome heart I pu'd a rose, Fu' sweet u...

A still greater source of her success was her robust and abounding, though sometimes rather broad and cheap, fun. In her time decent novels were apt to be appallingly serious in...

That near relative of the kingbird, the great crested fly-catcher, has one well-known peculiarity: he appears never to consider his nest finished until it contains a cast-off sn...

Then I saw in my dream, that in the morning the shepherds called up Christian and Hopeful to walk with them upon the mountains; so they went forth with them, and walked a while,...

Burke's contributions to it were his pamphlet, 'Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents,' and several speeches in Parliament: the first, like the pamphlet, on the gener...

When the Hodgson family suffered pecuniary loss, and hoping to better its fortunes came to America, then best known to Frances from the pages of 'Uncle Tom's Cabin,' she was fif...

Bunyan was a voluminous writer, and his works, many of them posthumous, are said to equal in number the sixty years of his life. But even the devout and sympathetic critic is co...

The chulos ran towards the bull and excited him, and in pursuing them met Pepe Vera, face to face, who had awaited his approach with a firm step. It was the solemn moment of the...

Throughout all Gaul there are two orders of those men who are of any rank and dignity: for the commonalty is held almost in the condition of slaves, and dares to undertake nothi...

He realized this, as he idled about one Sunday morning where the intersection of Royal and Conti Streets some seventy years ago formed a central corner of New Orleans. Yes, yes,...

Sir, I understand this whole question. The great mass of both parties to the North are opposed to abolition: the Democrats almost exclusively; the Whigs less so. Very few are to...

To restore order and repose to an empire so great and so distracted as ours, is, merely in the attempt, an undertaking that would ennoble the flights of the highest genius and o...

As we are wont to argue the invisible things of God, even his eternal power and Godhead, from the things that are seen, finding them all images of thought and vehicles of intell...

Dr. Hawkesworth observes that these Fairy Tales find favor "because even their machinery, wild and wonderful as it is, has its laws; and the magicians and enchanters perform not...

Onward we went--but slack and slow: His savage force at length o'erspent, The drooping courser, faint and low, All feebly foaming went.... At length, while reeling on our way, M...

He wrote a paper which he gave Jean, in the belief that it constituted a marriage between them,--a belief which was perhaps justifiable in the existing condition of Scottish law...

What, sir, would a virtuous and enlightened ministry do on the view of the ruins of such works before them? on the view of such a chasm of desolation as that which yawned in the...

Thy Godlike crime was to be kind, To render with thy precepts less The sum of human wretchedness, And strengthen Man with his own mind; But baffled as thou wert from high, Still...

Let me call to my aid, then, some thoughtful spirit in my audience: not a poet, of necessity, or a man of genius, but a man of large meditation, one who is accustomed to observe...

The seven books of the Gallic War are each the account of a year's campaigning. They were written apparently in winter quarters. When Cæsar entered on the administration of his...

Upon the delivery of this speech, the minds of all were changed in a surprising manner, and the highest ardor and eagerness for prosecuting the war were engendered; and the tent...

At 3 P.M. we left El Zaribah, traveling towards the S.W., and a wondrously picturesque scene met the eye. Crowds hurried along, habited in the pilgrim garb, whose whiteness cont...

"Excuse me, ladies," said Pete humbly, "I'm not in the habit of babies. A bit excited, you see, Mistress Nancy, ma'am. Couldn't help putting a bull of a roar out, not being used...

So he was, but not by consistent hypocritical premeditation; for his pose was not so much of set purpose as in obedience to a false education, an undisciplined temper, and a cha...

In his arms he bore--and all the people shouted at once when they saw it--the tiger. He had lifted it high up with its back to his breast, his arms clasped under its shoulders;...

you have undone him, he complains, if you trouble him: tell him what inconvenience will follow, what will be the event, all is one, _canis ad vomitum_, 'tis so pleasant he canno...

Doubtless German literature owes less to Bürger than English owes to Burns, but it owes much. Bürger revived the ballad form in which so much of the finest German poetry has sin...

Callimachus, the most learned of poets, was the son of Battus and Mesatme of Cyrene, and a disciple of Hermocrates, who like his more celebrated pupil was a grammarian, or a fol...

"Now," she said to herself, "you've done it! And you're just as nasty and hard-hearted and suspicious and mean as--as pusley!" And she wept to think of her hardness of heart. "H...

I stood in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs; A palace and a prison on each hand; I saw from out the wave her structures rise As from the stroke of the enchanter's wand: A thousand...

When chill November's surly blast Made fields and forests bare, One evening, as I wandered forth Along the banks of Ayr, I spied a man, whose aged step Seemed weary, worn with c...

His steps are not upon thy paths--thy fields Are not a spoil for him--thou dost arise And shake him from thee; the vile strength he wields For earth's destruction thou dost all...

[Transcriber's Note: Minor spelling and typographical errors corrected without note. Other archaic and variable spelling preserved as printed. Editor's punctuation style preserv...

He who hath bent him o'er the dead Ere the first day of death is fled,-- The first dark day of nothingness, The last of danger and distress, (Before Decay's effacing fingers Hav...

LISANDER-- It must Have been some image of thy phantasy. Such melancholy as thou feedest is Skillful in forming such in the vain air Out of the motes and atoms of the day.

And evermore, when winter comes in his garb of snows, And the returning schoolboy is told how fast he grows; Shall I--with that soft hand in mine--enact ideal Lancers, And dream...