Prince Florizel walked with Mr. Rolles to the door of a small hotel where the latter resided. They spoke much together, and the clergyman was more than once affected to tears by the mingled severity and tenderness of Florizel’s reproaches. “I have made ruin of my life,” he said at last. “Help me; tell me […]

Denis de Beaulieu was not yet two-and-twenty, but he counted himself a grown man, and a very accomplished cavalier into the bargain. Lads were early formed in that rough, warfaring epoch; and when one has been in a pitched battle and a dozen raids, has killed one’s man in an honourable fashion, and knows a […]

CHAPTER I Monsieur Leon Berthelini had a great care of his appearance, and sedulously suited his deportment to the costume of the hour. He affected something Spanish in his air, and something of the bandit, with a flavour of Rembrandt at home. In person he was decidedly small and inclined to be stout; his face […]

It was late in November 1456. The snow fell over Paris with rigorous, relentless persistence; sometimes the wind made a sally and scattered it in flying vortices; sometimes there was a lull, and flake after flake descended out of the black night air, silent, circuitous, interminable. To poor people, looking up under moist eyebrows, it […]

THE world in which we live has been variously said and sung by the most ingenious poets and philosophers: these reducing it to formulae and chemical ingredients, those striking the lyre in high-sounding measures for the handiwork of God. What experience supplies is of a mingled tissue, and the choosing mind has much to reject […]

CITIES given, the problem was to light them. How to conduct individual citizens about the burgess-warren, when once heaven had withdrawn its leading luminary? or – since we live in a scientific age – when once our spinning planet has turned its back upon the sun? The moon, from time to time, was doubtless very […]

Originally intended to serve as the opening chapter of “Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes” Le Monastier is the chief place of a hilly canton in Haute Loire, the ancient Velay. As the name betokens, the town is of monastic origin; and it still contains a towered bulk of monastery and a church of […]

‘Now,’ said the doctor, ‘my part is done, and, I may say, with some vanity, well done. It remains only to get you out of this cold and poisonous city, and to give you two months of a pure air and an easy conscience. The last is your affair. To the first I think I […]

CHAPTER I. THE PLAIN AND THE STARS. The Mill here Will lived with his adopted parents stood in a falling valley between pinewoods and great mountains. Above, hill after hill, soared upwards until they soared out of the depth of the hardiest timber, and stood naked against the sky. Some way up, a long grey […]

Keola was married with Lehua, daughter of Kalamake, the wise man of Molokai, and he kept his dwelling with the father of his wife. There was no man more cunning than that prophet; he read the stars, he could divine by the bodies of the dead, and by the means of evil creatures: he could […]

Poem: I See how the children in the print Bound on the book to see what’s in ‘t! O, like these pretty babes, may you Seize and APPLY this volume too! And while your eye upon the cuts With harmless ardour opes and shuts, Reader, may your immortal mind To their sage lessons not be […]

To the heart of youth the world is a highwayside. Passing for ever, he fares; and on either hand, Deep in the gardens golden pavilions hide, Nestle in orchard bloom, and far on the level land Call him with lighted lamp in the eventide. Thick as the stars at night when the moon is down, […]

ONCE only by the garden gate Our lips we joined and parted. I must fulfil an empty fate And travel the uncharted. Hail and farewell! I must arise, Leave here the fatted cattle, And paint on foreign lands and skies My Odyssey of battle. The untented Kosmos my abode, I pass, a wilful stranger: My […]

IN dreams, unhappy, I behold you stand As heretofore: The unremembered tokens in your hand Avail no more. No more the morning glow, no more the grace, Enshrines, endears. Cold beats the light of time upon your face And shows your tears. He came and went. Perchance you wept a while And then forgot. Ah […]

SHE rested by the Broken Brook, She drank of Weary Well, She moved beyond my lingering look, Ah, whither none can tell! She came, she went. In other lands, Perchance in fairer skies, Her hands shall cling with other hands, Her eyes to other eyes. She vanished. In the sounding town, Will she remember too? […]

THE infinite shining heavens Rose and I saw in the night Uncountable angel stars Showering sorrow and light. I saw them distant as heaven, Dumb and shining and dead, And the idle stars of the night Were dearer to me than bread. Night after night in my sorrow The stars stood over the sea, Till […]

PLAIN as the glistering planets shine When winds have cleaned the skies, Her love appeared, appealed for mine, And wantoned in her eyes. Clear as the shining tapers burned On Cytherea’s shrine, Those brimming, lustrous beauties turned, And called and conquered mine. The beacon-lamp that Hero lit No fairer shone on sea, No plainlier summoned […]

TO you, let snow and roses And golden locks belong. These are the world’s enslavers, Let these delight the throng. For her of duskier lustre Whose favour still I wear, The snow be in her kirtle, The rose be in her hair! The hue of highland rivers Careering, full and cool, From sable on to […]

LET Beauty awake in the morn from beautiful dreams, Beauty awake from rest! Let Beauty awake For Beauty’s sake In the hour when the birds awake in the brake And the stars are bright in the west! Let Beauty awake in the eve from the slumber of day, Awake in the crimson eve! In the […]

I KNOW not how it is with you – I love the first and last, The whole field of the present view, The whole flow of the past. One tittle of the things that are, Nor you should change nor I – One pebble in our path – one star In all our heaven of […]