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THE Morte D’Arthur was finished, as the epilogue tells us, in the ninth year of Edward IV., i.e. between March 4, 1469 and the same date in 1470. It is thus, fitly enough, the last important English book written before the introduction of printing into this country, and since no manuscript of it has come down to us it is also the first English classic for our knowledge of which we are entirely dependent on a printed text. Caxton’s story of how the book was brought to him and he was induced to print it may be read farther on in his own preface. From this we learn also that he was not only the printer of the book, but to some extent its editor also, dividing Malory’s work into twenty-one books, splitting up the books into chapters, by no means skilfully, and supplying the “Rubrish” or chapter-headings. It may be added that Caxton’s preface contains, moreover, a brief criticism which, on the points on which it touches, is still the soundest and most sympathetic that has been written.

Permettez-moi, monsieur, d’inscrire en tête de ce petit livre le nom cher et honoré d’un homme qui a consacré toute sa vie à la cause du progrès, d’un père qui a offert ses deux fils à la délivrance de l’Italie, d’un ami qui est venu entre les premiers me donner une preuve de sympathie le lendemain de «Gaëtana».

TABLE DES MATIÈRES
1. LE NEZ D’UN NOTAIRE
2. A M. ALEXANDRE BIXIO
3. I L’ORIENT ET L’OCCIDENT SONT AUX PRISES: LE SANG COULE
4. II LA CHASSE AU CHAT
5. III OÙ LE NOTAIRE DÉFEND SA PEAU AVEC PLUS DE SUCCÈS
6. IV CHÉBACHTIEN ROMAGNÉ
7. V GRANDEUR ET DÉCADENCE
8. VI HISTOIRE D’UNE PAIRE DE LUNETTES ET CONSÉQUENCES D’UN RHUME DE CERVEAU

Invention is the fountain source of material progress. It would indeed be a fruitless effort to try to express in adequate language its wondrous possiblities and practical worth to mankind. Its field of action surpasses all others.

First published in the year 1914, Margaret Bird Steinmetz’s book ‘Leaves of Life, for Daily Inspiration’ offers wisdom and insight for applying Biblical truths to the ups and downs of everyday life.

After his memorable work in the West, Swami Vivekananda landed at Colombo on the afternoon of January 15, 1897, and was given a right royal reception by the Hindu community there.

I was reading, yesterday, a poem called the “Light of Asia,” and I read in that how a Boodh seeing a tigress perishing of thirst, with her mouth upon the dry stone of a stream, with her two cubs sucking at her dry and empty dugs, this Boodh took pity upon this wild and famishing beast, and, throwing from himself the Yellowrobe of his order, and stepping naked before this tigress, said: “Here is meat for you and your cubs.” In one moment the crooked daggers of her claws ran riot in his flesh, and in another he was devoured. Such, during nearly all the history of this world, has been the history of every man who has stood in front of superstition.

This book is a collection of a series of lectures delivered at Oxford and London, In April and May, 1884 published in book form in the same year. The author was a distinguished French Protestant theologian and a prolific writer on the comparative history of world religions.

This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts. We have not used OCR, as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc. We have endeavored to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. We feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.

There is a long, low, flat-topped, and prettily wooded eminence, that rises out of the middle of the bonny haughs of Kilmaichly, at some distance below the junction of the rivers Aven and Livat. I don’t remember that it has any particular name, but it looks, for all the world, like the fragment of some ancient plain, that must have been of much higher level than that from which it now rises, which fragment had been left, after the ground on each side of it had been worn down to its present level, by the changeful operations of the neighbouring streams. But whatever you geology gentlemen might say, as to what its origin might have been, every lover of nature must agree, that it is a very beautiful little hill, covered as its slopes are with graceful weeping birches, and other trees. The bushes that still remain, show that, in earlier times, it must have been thickly wooded with great oaks, which probably gave shelter to the ould auncient Druids, when engaged in their superstitious mysteries. At the period to which the greater part of my story belongs—that is, in and about that of the reign of King James the III.—the blue smoke that curled up from among the trees betrayed the existence of a cottage, that sat perched upon the brow of its western extremity, looking towards the Castle of Drummin. This little dwelling was much better built, and, in every respect, much neater than any of those in the surrounding district; and its interior exhibited more comforts as to furniture and plenishing of all sorts, and those too of a description, superior to any thing of the kind which a mere cottager might have been reasonably expected to have possessed.

First published in the year 1910, ‘Leonardo da Vinci: A Psychosexual Study of an Infantile Reminiscence’ is an essay by famous psychologist and father of psychoanalysis theories, Sigmund Freud. This essay is psychoanalytical study of Leonardo da Vinci’s childhood through his paintings.

First published in the year 1862, the present book ‘Les Miserables’ by Victor Hugo is a French historical novel. Beginning in 1815 and culminating in the 1832 June Rebellion in Paris, the novel follows the lives and interactions of several characters, particularly the struggles of ex-convict Jean Valjean and his experience of redemption.

This book is intended for those who have felt the need of a varied collection of alphabets of standard forms, arranged for convenient use.

The alphabets illustrated, while primarily intended to exhibit the letter shapes, have in most cases been so arranged as to show also how the letters compose into words, except in those instances where they are intended to be used only as initials. The application of classic and medieval letters to modern usages has been, as far as possible, suggested by showing modern designs in which similar forms are employed.

An epistolary novel written by renowned French novelist Balzac, who is regarded as one of the founders of realism and a significant influence to later novelists, the novel focuses on two young women who preserve their friendship through regular correspondence. Originally published in the French newspaper La Presse in 1841 as a serial, the piece later became a part of Balzac’s distinguished novel sequence La Comédie Humaine, or The Human Comedy. Furthermore, Letters of Two Brides surrounds intriguing topics including love, romance, confusion, duty, and the complexity of relationships.

Since the first publication of these Letters, in 1840, the work has passed through numerous editions, and received many tokens of public favor, both as a class-book for schools and as a reading-book for the family circle. The valuable discoveries made in the science within a few years have suggested an additional Letter, which is accordingly annexed to the series in the present revised form, giving a brief but comprehensive notice of all the leading contributions with which Astronomy has of late been enriched.

How these letters came to be written is told by their recipient in his introduction, and to this there would be nothing to add were it not for the close of the eighth letter: Do not believe that he who seeks to comfort you lives untroubled among the simple and quiet words that sometimes do you good. His life has much difficulty and sadness. . . . Were it otherwise he would never have been able to find those words.” It is evident that a great artist, whatever the immediate conditions disturbing his own life, may be able to clarify for the benefit of another those fundamental truths the conviction of which lies too deep in his consciousness to be reached by external agitations. Though Rilke expresses himself with a wisdom and a kindness that seem to reflect the calm of self-possession, his spirit may have been speaking out of its own need rather than from the security of ends achieved, so that his words indeed reflect desire rather than fulfillment. In what sort this was the case becomes apparent on perusal of the several volumes of his correspondence. From these, for the most part, the accompanying chronicle of the years 1903-1908 has been prepared. It shows what Rilke was going through in his own relationship to life and work at the period in question (he turned twenty-eight in December, 1903). Perhaps such a record may in a measure explain, too, why sympathy was always so responsive an element of his nature. Certainly—despite low physical vitality that often reduced him to actual ill-health, despite lack of funds and homeless wandering in search of the right places and circumstances for his work, despite all the subjective fret and hindrance because of which some think to see in him a morbidly conditioned fantasy—the legend of the weary poet is dispelled, and in the end we find him always young, always constructive, the eminently positive philosopher of these letters.

Leviathan, or the Matter Forme and Power of a Common Wealth Ecclesiasticall and Civil’ is a book written by Thomas Hobbes and published in 1651. The work concerns the structure of society and legitimate government, and is regarded as one of the earliest and most influential examples of social contract theory.

She was one of those pretty and charming girls who are sometimes, as if by a mistake of destiny, born in a family of clerks. She had no dowry, no expectations, no means of being known, understood, loved, wedded, by any rich and distinguished man; and she let herself be married to a little clerk at the Ministry of Public Instruction.

The present volume lays no claim to literary merit. Two young men, led to engage in the whale-fisheries, and spending five years in the employment, have compiled from their log-books and their recollection a plain, unvarnished narrative of this period. The work is placed before the public as an account of localities few have visited, and the detail of an employment of which little is generally known. The chief effort in the way of style has been to give vivid descriptions, and make the reader the companion of the traveler. Aside from the information of the volume, it is enlivened by “life on shipboard.”

First published in the year 1680, the present book ‘Life and Death of Mr. Badman’ by John Bunyan was designed as a companion to The Pilgrim’s Progress. In this work, the two characters – Mr. Wiseman and Mr. Attentive have a dialogue about sin and redemption over the course of a long day.

In this volume connected excerpts bearing on the more intimate side of life, as apprehended by the author, are offered to the reader. Here{viii} Dr. Adler reveals himself not only as some one who has explored the deeper recesses of the human heart, but his words prove him to be of the long line of poets and prophets who have contributed to purify and elevate humanity.

Since Samuel Butler published “Life and Habit” thirty-three years have elapsed—years fruitful in change and discovery, during which many of the mighty have been put down from their seat and many of the humble have been exalted. I do not know that Butler can truthfully be called humble, indeed, I think he had very few misgivings as to his ultimate triumph, but he has certainly been exalted with a rapidity that he himself can scarcely have foreseen. During his lifetime he was a literary pariah, the victim of an organized conspiracy of silence. He is now, I think it may be said without exaggeration, universally accepted as one of the most remarkable English writers of the latter part of the nineteenth century.

Frederic Chopin, a Polish virtuoso pianist and piano composer of the Romantic period, is widely regarded as the greatest Polish composer, and one of the most influential composers for piano in the 19th century. Franz Liszt was a Hungarian composer and virtuoso pianist of the 19th century. This book is not so much a biography of Chopin as it is a way of better understanding Liszt and the circumstances of his time. Though critics of Liszt’s book have assailed it for various literary infractions, it is not without merit. There is much to be learned within its pages about both Chopin and Liszt.

Marryat’s time aboard the Imperieuse included action off the Gironde, the rescue of a fellow midshipman who had fallen overboard, captures of many ships off the Mediterranean coast of Spain, and the capture of the castle of Montgat. The Imperieuse shifted to operations in the Scheldt in 1809, where Marryat contracted malaria; he returned to England on the 74-gun HMS Victorious.

His grandfather, Frederick George Goethe, who sprang from a family belonging to the working class, and was himself a tailor, made his way, in the latter part of the seventeenth century, from Artern on the Unstrut to Frankfort. Here he settled, and, early in the eighteenth century, took as his second wife a handsome widow of thirty-seven, Cornelia Schelhorn, the owner of the inn, “Zum Weidenhof.” Frederick George is said to have been a man of pleasant manners and a skilful musician. His second wife was in every way worthy of him, an energetic and kindly woman, with all the gracious qualities evoked in generous natures by prosperous circumstances. They had three children, of whom Johann Kaspar, Goethe’s father, born on the 27th of July, 1710, was the youngest.

Life With Mother’ is a humorous autobiographical book of stories compiled in 1935 by American author and cartoonist Clarence Day Jr. He wrote humorously about his family and life. “Most of the chapters of this book were published before Clarence’s death, but some were still in manuscript. These had to be sorted carefully because he had a habit of writing on whatever scrap of paper was handy–backs of envelopes, tax memoranda, or small pads of paper which he could hold in his hands on days when they were too lame for the big ones.” -Editor’s Note

If a man walk in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer; but if he spends his whole day as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making earth bald before her time, he is esteemed an industrious and enterprising citizen. As if a town had no interest in its forests but to cut them down! — From the Book

An eminent German geologist has characterized the discovery of fossils in the Laurentian rocks of Canada as “the opening of a new era in geological science.” Believing this to be no exaggeration, I have felt it to be a duty incumbent on those who have been the apostles of this new era, to make its significance as widely known as possible to all who take any interest in scientific subjects, as well as to those naturalists and geologists who may not have had their attention turned to this special topic.

Lightfoot stamped his hoofs on the hard rocks, shook his horns, wiggled the little bunch of whiskers that hung beneath his chin, and called to another goat who was not far away:
“I’m going up on the high rocks!”
“Oh, you’d better not,” said Blackie. “If you go up there you may slip and fall down here and hurt yourself, or some of the big goats may chase you back.”
“Well, if they do I’ll just jump down again,” went on Lightfoot, as he stood on his hind legs.
“You can’t jump that far,” said Blackie, looking up toward the high rocks which were far above the heads of herself and Lightfoot.

The river is so fine, that before going to Bayonne I have come down as far as Royan. Ships heavy with white sails ascend slowly on both sides of the boat. At each gust of wind they incline like idle birds, lifting their long wing and showing their black belly. They run slantwise, then come back; one would say that they felt the better for being in this great fresh-water harbor; they loiter in it and enjoy its peace after leaving the wrath and inclemency of the ocean.

An engaging but sad and tragic story of a girl committing suicide at the begining of the novel, and reviving her life then on, Arnold Bennett’s novel ‘Lilian’ was first published in the year 1922 and was much appreciated by the readers.