The Portland Sketch Book

Produced by Roberta Staehlin, JoAnn Greenwood, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available...

Show him the hundreds and hundreds of coasters that run up every creek and inlet of tide-water there, at times left high and dry, as if the ocean would never float them more: an...

A long-sparred vessel could be seen, relieved against the black bank of clouds, that were crowding down the horizon. Surprise was imaged on every countenance, and when the order...

The boats shoved off, loaded gunwale deep with gold and silver, ivory, tortoise-shell and the most choice of the merchandise found in the cavern, and in fifteen minutes all was...

Others again, warned, perhaps, by the disasters consequent upon the policy last described, have gone to the extreme, not less hurtful, and far more presumptuous, of excluding re...

An eminence in the road afforded us the first view of Loch Katrine, a blue and bright expanse of water, cradled among lofty hills, though moderate both in point of altitude and...

"God! There is no God but he; the living, the self-subsisting; neither slumber nor sleep seizeth him; to him belongeth whatsoever is in heaven, and on earth. Who is he that can...

But after all, as I sat meditating on the ups and downs of life during the evening of the funeral, the question arose in my mind, is all safe? May not some unfledged Galens remo...

Truly 'the melancholy days are come'--Death annually lifts up his solemn hymn, and the rustling of the dying leaves and the certainty of their speedy death afford to us all 'elo...

Notwithstanding, however, the general admission of the truth under consideration, not a few persons who think the improvement of their minds a matter of little importance, under...

There was no lesson in that mighty pyre-- Or, if it rose, it faded with the flame; And crime, relentless, from that smouldering fire Would lift, at night, its stealthy arm the s...

'_Who_ views with equal eye as God of all, A hero perish, or a sparrow fall? Atoms and systems into ruin hurled, And now a bubble burst, and now a world?'

And when the Jew Adonijah, now more a Jew than ever, and more fully satisfied than ever, with the sublime, and awful, and unchangeable faith of his old Hebrew Fathers, came full...

Let us, then, attempt this adventurous flight. Let us follow the path by which our blessed Savior ascended to heaven, and soar upward to the great capital of the universe; to th...

The soft warm air scarcely stirred the leaves of the vine, that clustered about the bower of Eve, as she lay with pale cheek and languid limbs, her first born daughter resting u...

Ant Sally had been married two or three years before and moved to Portland, and I inquired round till I found out where she lived, and went there and put the old horse up and ea...

"You are well arrived, young gentlemen," said Mrs. Ilfrington; "we press you into our service for a botanical ramble, Mr. Slingsby is at leisure, and will be delighted I am sure...

But it was otherwise in the republics of Athens and Rome. There the power of the system was nothing, and the genius of the individual every thing. In the agitations of these pop...

Religion, as introduced to us by our Saviour, attracts our attention and enlists our affections, not by any solemn pomp or formal parade, but by her beautiful and interesting si...

On the next day the Earl of Bothwell left Sterling, and it was whispered that he had been banished from court through the influence of the English ambassador; but conjecture was...