Category: Essays, Letters & Speeches
Five of the twelve essays in this volume, “To Counsel the Doubtful,” “The Happiness of Writing an Autobiography,” “The Divineness of Discontent,” “Strayed Sympathies,” and “The Battlefield of Education,” are reprinted through the courtesy of _The Atlantic Monthly_; four of the...
Five of the twelve essays in this volume, “To Counsel the Doubtful,” “The Happiness of Writing an Autobiography,” “The Divineness of Discontent,” “Strayed Sympathies,” and “The...
2. Part 2The New England settlers were not indifferent to the Indians’ souls. They forbade them, when they could, to hunt or fish on the Lord’s day. John Eliot, Jonathan Edwards, and oth...
3. Part 3“Causes are the proper subject of history,” says Mr. Brownell, “and characteristics are the proper subject of criticism.” It may be that much of our criticism is beside the mark...
4. Part 4The nastiest bit of hypocrisy ever put forward by wrong-doers was the cant of the early slave-dealers about Christianity and the negroes’ souls. The slaves were Christianized by...
5. Part 5Miss Martineau’s life was in the main a successful one. It is natural that she should have liked to think about it, and write about it. But Mrs. Oliphant, a far more brilliant w...
6. Part 6There is a wide assortment of unpopular characters whose company it would be very instructive to keep. They belong to all ages, countries and creeds. Spain alone offers us three...
7. Part 7The Renaissance gave itself unreservedly to all the pleasures that could be extracted from the business of living, though there was no lack of troubles to damp its zeal. It is i...
8. Part 8Mr. Edward Martin, writing very lucidly and very sympathetically of the French, admits that their conception of their duty to the world “is to defend France, keep her functionin...
9. Part 9quality associated in our minds with clinking glasses, and loud-spoken loyalty to Stuart or to Hanoverian. She has always caught the fancy of men, and has been likened in her da...
10. Part 10Charles the Second was wont to recall with bitter mirth a certain Sunday in Edinburgh when he was forced by his loyal Scotch subjects to hear six sermons, a heavy price to pay e...
11. Part 11A cultivated American poet has said that men of his craft “should know history inside out, and take as much interest in the days of Nebuchadnezzar as in the days of Pierpont Mor...
12. Part 12A source of superlative merriment in the United States is the two-reel comic of our motion-picture halls. Countless thousands of Americans look at it, and presumably laugh at it...
13. Part 13Of all writers who have sung the praises of the dog, and who have justified our love for him, Maeterlinck has given the fullest expression to the profound and absorbing egotism...