I. WHAT! NO CHILDREN? Once upon a time, so long ago that I have quite forgotten the date, there lived a king and queen who had no children. And the king said to himself, “All the queens of my acquaintance have children, some three, some seven, and some as many as twelve; and my queen […]

There was once a giant who lived on the borders of Giantland where it touched on the country of common people. Everything in Giantland was so big that the common people saw only a mass of awful mountains and clouds; and no living man had ever come from it, as far as anybody knew, to […]

There was a boy who used to sit in the twilight and listen to his great-aunt’s stories. She told him that if he could reach the place where the end of the rainbow stands he would find there a golden key. “And what is the key for?” the boy would ask. “What is it the […]

“Papa,” said my sister Effie, one evening as we all sat about the drawing-room fire. One after another, as nothing followed, we turned our eves upon her. There she sat, still silent, embroidering the corner of a cambric hand-kerchief, apparently unaware that she had spoken. It was a very cold night in the beginning of […]

Stephen Archer was a stationer, bookseller, and newsmonger in one of the suburbs of London. The newspapers hung in a sort of rack at his door, as if for the convenience of the public to help themselves in passing. On his counter lay penny weeklies and books coming out in parts, amongst which the Family […]

CHAPTER I. “My hearers, we grow old,” said the preacher. “Be it summer or be it spring with us now, autumn will soon settle down into winter, that winter whose snow melts only in the grave. The wind of the world sets for the tomb. Some of us rejoice to be swept along on its […]

A DAY AND NIGHT M�HRCHEN. CHAPTER I. WATHO. There was once a witch who desired to know everything. But the wiser a witch is, the harder she knocks her head against the wall when she comes to it. Her name was Watho, and she had a wolf in her mind. She cared for nothing in […]

CHAPTER I. HUSBAND AND WIFE. I am going to tell a story of married life. My title will prepare the reader for something hardly heroic; but I trust it will not be found lacking in the one genuine and worthy interest a tale ought to have–namely, that it presents a door through which we may […]

[Footnote: By J. Rutherfurd Russell, M.D.] In this volume, Dr. Russell has not merely aimed at the production of a book that might be serviceable to the Faculty, by which the history of its own art is not at all sufficiently studied, but has aspired to the far more difficult success of writing a history […]

[Footnote: Read in the Unitarian chapel, Essex-street, London, 1879.] PHILIPPIANS iii. 15, 16.–Let us therefore, as many as be perfect, be thus minded; and if in anything ye be otherwise minded, God shall reveal even this unto you. Nevertheless, whereto we have already attained, let us walk by that same. This is the reading of […]

MATT. xx. 25–28–But Jesus called them unto him and said, Ye know that the princes of the Gentiles exercise dominion over them, and they that are great exercise authority upon them. But it should not be so among you: but whosoever will be great among you, let him be your minister; and whosoever will be […]

[Footnote: 1863.] Who taught you this?I learn’d it out of women’s faces. Winter’s Tale, Act ii. scene 1. One occasionally hears the remark, that the commentators upon Shakspere find far more in Shakspere than Shakspere ever intended to express. Taking this assertion as it stands, it may be freely granted, not only of Shakspere, but […]

[Footnote: 1875] ‘Tis bitter cold,And I am sick at heart. The ghost in “Hamlet” is as faithfully treated as any character in the play. Next to Hamlet himself, he is to me the most interesting person of the drama. The rumour of his appearance is wrapped in the larger rumour of war. Loud preparations for […]

[Footnote: 1865] By Polish I mean a certain well-known and immediately recognizable condition of surface. But I must request my reader to consider well what this condition really is. For the definition of it appears to us to be, that condition of surface which allows the inner structure of the material to manifest itself. Polish […]

[Footnote: 1853.] Goethe says:– “Poems are painted window panes.If one looks from the square into the church,Dusk and dimness are his gains–Sir Philistine is left in the lurch!The sight, so seen, may well enrage him,Nor anything henceforth assuage him. “But come just inside what conceals;Cross the holy threshold quite–All at once ’tis rainbow-bright,Device and story […]

[Footnote: “Essays on some of the Forms of Literature.” By T.T. Lynch, Author of “Theophilus Trinal.” Longmans.] Schoppe, the satiric chorus of Jean Paul’s romance of Titan, makes his appearance at a certain masked ball, carrying in front of him a glass case, in which the ball is remasked, repeated, and again reflected in a […]

[Footnote: 1867.] There are in whose notion education would seem to consist in the production of a certain repose through the development of this and that faculty, and the depression, if not eradication, of this and that other faculty. But if mere repose were the end in view, an unsparing depression of all the faculties […]

[Footnote: 1880.] “I wish I had thought to watch when God was making me!” said a child once to his mother. “Only,” he added, “I was not made till I was finished, so I couldn’t.” We cannot recall whence we came, nor tell how we began to be. We know approximately how far back we […]

[Footnote: 1864.] All England knows that this year (1864) is the three hundredth since Shakspere was born. The strong probability is likewise that this month of April is that in which he first saw the earthly light. On the twenty-sixth of April he was baptized. Whether he was born on the twenty-third, to which effect […]

Long ago, there lived far to the west a very young man, good, but extremely odd. He tormented himself continually about this nothing and that nothing, always walked in silence and straight before him, sat down alone when the others were at their sports and merry-makings, and brooded over strange things. Caves and woods were […]