June 1, 1895. Björnson’s First Manner. I see that the stories promised in Mr. Heinemann’s new series of translations of Björnson are Synnövé Solbakken, Arne, A Happy Boy, The Fisher Maiden, The Bridal March, Magnhild, and Captain Mansana. The first, Synnövé Solbakken, appeared in 1857. The others are dated thus:–Arne in 1858, A Happy Boy […]

March 31, 1894. “Esther Waters.” It is good, after all, to come across a novel written by a man who can write a novel. We have been much in the company of the Amateur of late, and I for one am very weary of him–weary of his preposterous goings-out and comings-in, of his smart ineptitudes, […]

I. PROLOGUE. Beside a winding creek of the Lynher River, and not far from the Cornish borough of Saltash, you may find a roofless building so closely backed with cherry-orchards that the trees seem by their slow pressure to be thrusting the mud-walls down to the river’s brink, there to topple and fall into the […]

I. Just outside the small country station of M—- in Cornwall, a viaduct carries the Great Western Railway line across a coombe, or narrow valley, through which a tributary trout-stream runs southward to meet the tides of the L—- River. From the carriage-window as you pass you look down the coombe for half a mile […]

Sept. 21, 1895. Stevenson’s Testimony. In his chapter of “Personal Memories,” printed in the Century Magazine of July last, Mr. Gosse speaks of the peculiar esteem in which Mr. Frank R. Stockton’s stories were held by Robert Louis Stevenson. “When I was going to America to lecture, he was particularly anxious that I should lay […]

August 26, 1893. Dauntless Anthology. It is really very difficult to know what to say to Mr. Maynard Leonard, editor of The Dog in British Poetry (London: David Nutt). His case is something the same as Archdeacon Farrar’s. The critic who desires amendment in the Archdeacon’s prose, and suggests that something might be done by […]

A Baconian Essay Dec. 26, 1891. That was a Wittie Invective made by Montaigny upon the Antipodean, Who said they must be Thieves that pulled on their breeches when Honest Folk were scarce abed. So is it Obnoxious to them that purvey Christmas Numbers, Annuals, and the like, that they commonly write under Sirius his […]

I. In Ardevora, a fishing-town on the Cornish coast not far from the Land’s End, lived a merchant whom everybody called ‘Elder’ Penno, or ‘The Elder’–not because he had any right, or laid any claim, to that title. His father and grandfather had worn it as office-bearers in a local religious sect known as the […]

My grand-uncle pushed the decanter of brown sherry: a stout old-fashioned decanter, with shoulders almost as square as his own, and a silver chain about them bearing a silver label–not unlike the badge and collar which he himself wore on full ceremonial occasions. “Three times round the world,” he said, “and as yet only twice […]

I. My mother’s grandfather, Dan’l Leggo, was the piousest man that ever went smuggling, and one of the peaceablest, and scrupulous to an extent you wouldn’t believe. He learnt his business among the Cove boys at Porthleah–or Prussia Cove as it came to be called, after John Carter, the head of the gang, that was […]

“So you reckon I’ve got to die?” The room was mean, but not without distinction. The meanness lay in lime-washed walls, scant fittings, and uncovered boards; the distinction came of ample proportions and something of durability in the furniture. Rooms, like human faces, reflect their histories; and that generation after generation of the same family […]

AN EPISODE IN THE HISTORY OF THE LOOE DIE-HARDS. Maybe you have never heard of the East and West Looe Volunteer Artillery– the famous Looe Die-hards? “The iniquity of oblivion,” says Sir Thomas Browne, “blindly scattereth her poppy, and deals with the memory of men without distinction to merit of perpetuity.” “Time,” writes Dr. Isaac […]

Extract from the Memoirs of Gabriel Foot, Highwayman. I will say this–speaking as accurately as a man may, so long afterwards–that when first I spied the house it put no desire in me but just to give thanks. For conceive my case. It was near mid-night, and ever since dusk I had been tramping the […]

Beside the Plymouth road, as it plunges down-hill past Ruan Lanihale church towards Ruan Cove, and ten paces beyond the lych-gate–where the graves lie level with the coping, and the horseman can decipher their inscriptions in passing, at the risk of a twisted neck–the base of the churchyard wall is pierced with a low archway, […]

I. HOW I DINED AT THE “INDIAN QUEENS.” The sensation was odd; for I could have made affidavit I had never visited the place in my life, nor come within fifty miles of it. Yet every furlong of the drive was earmarked for me, as it were, by some detail perfectly familiar. The high-road ran […]

He who has not seen Ambialet, in the Albigeois, has missed a wonder of the world. The village rests in a saddle of crystalline rock between two rushing streams, which are yet one and the same river; for the Tarn (as it is called), pouring down from the Cevennes, is met and turned by this […]

Chapters from the Memoirs of Manuel (or Manus) McNeill, an agent in the Secret Service of Great Britain during the campaigns of the Peninsula (1808-1813). A Spanish subject by birth, and a Spaniard in all his upbringing, he traces in the first chapter of his Memoirs his descent from an old Highland family through one […]

I In the course of an eventful life John Penaluna did three very rash things. To begin with, at seventeen, he ran away to sea. He had asked his father’s permission. But for fifty years the small estate had been going from bad to worse. John’s grandfather in the piping days of agriculture had drunk […]

I You enter the village of Gantick between two round-houses set one on each side of the high road where it dips steeply towards the valley bottom. On the west of the opposite hill the road passes out between another pair of round-houses. And down in the heart of the village among the elms facing […]

“God! of whom musicAnd song and blood are pure,The day is never darkenedThat had thee here obscure.” Early in 1897 a landslip on the tall cliffs of Halzaphron–which face upon Mount’s Bay, Cornwall, and the Gulf Stream of the Atlantic–brought to light a curiosity. The slip occurred during the night of January 7th to 8th, […]