Literary and General Lectures and Essays

Thus, at least, we can explain that rigidity, which Mr. Ruskin tells us, "is a special element of Gothic architecture. Greek and Egyptian buildings," he says--and I should have...

Few readers of this magazine probably know anything about "Mystics;" know even what the term means: but as it is plainly connected with the adjective "mystical" they probably su...

I should wish therefore in the first few lectures on English literature to glance at the character of our old Saxon ancestors, and the legends connected with their first invasio...

ATHERTON. Angela de Foligni, who made herself miserable--I must say something the converse of flourished--about the beginning of the fourteenth century, was a fine model pupil o...

Oh tomb! Oh bridal chamber! Oh deep-delved And strongly-guarded mansion! I descend To meet in your dread chambers all my kindred, Who in dark multitudes have crowded down Where...

Let the poets of the new school consider carefully Wolfe's "Sir John Moore," Campbell's "Hohenlinden," "Mariners of England," and "Rule Britannia," Hood's "Song of the Shirt" an...

And thus arose a spasmodic, vague, extravagant, effeminate, school of poetry, which has been too often hastily and unfairly fathered upon Byron. Doubtless Byron has helped to it...

The Hebrew, on the other hand, begins from the belief of an objective external God, but One who cares for more than his individual soul; as One who is the ever-present guide, an...

Thoroughly and practically convinced as we are of the truth of these words, it gave us some pain when, in the work of a very worthy person, "The Church in the Catacombs," by Dr....

Mrs. Jameson acknowledges her great obligations to M. Rio; and all students of art must be thankful to him for the taste, learning, and earnest religious feeling which he has ex...

I said that the ages of history were analogous to the ages of man, and that each age of literature was the truest picture of the history of its day; and for this very reason Eng...

But the poet is to have a faith nowadays of course--a "faith in nature." This article of Wordsworth's poetical creed is to be assumed as the only necessary one, and we are to ig...

True, he has written a great deal of nonsense; nonsense in matter as well as in manner. But therein, too, he has only followed the reigning school. As for manner, he does someti...

Contents: {0} The Stage as it was Once Thoughts on Shelley and Byron Alexander Smith and Alexander Pope Tennyson Burns and his School The Poetry of Sacred and Legendary Art On E...

Perhaps the young peasant who most expressly stands out as the pupil and successor of Burns, is Robert Nicoll. He is a lesser poet, doubtless, than his master, and a lesser man,...

We entreat Protestant readers not to be alarmed at us. We have not the slightest tendency toward the stimulants of Popery, either in their Roman unmixed state, or in their dilut...

For what are these men, if they are not heroes and saints? Not of the Popish sort, abject and effeminate, but of the true, human, evangelic sort, masculine and grand--like the f...

We cannot deny, however, that, in spite of all faults, these men had a strength. They have exercised an influence. And they have done so by virtue of seeing a fact which more co...

After the time of Burns, as was to be expected, Scottish song multiplies itself tenfold. The nation becomes awakened to the treasures of its own old literature, and attempts, wh...

These may seem lofty words, but I do not think they are likely to make us lofty-minded. I think that the belief of them will tend to make us all more reverent and earnest in exa...

No wonder that in such a time, a genius like Burns should receive not only no guidance, but no finer appreciation. True; he was admired, petted, flattered; for that the man was...

Forward, forward, let us range; Let the peoples spin for ever down the ringing grooves of change; Through the shadow of the world we sweep into the younger day: Better fifty yea...

And here, perhaps, lay the secret of the extraordinary personal influence which he exercised; namely, in that truly formidable element which underlaid a character which (as one...