Long ago, visiting the monastery of La Trappe, I was struck with the very discontented appearance of its inmates. In some of their faces, indeed, I detected no expression whatever, but on none could I perceive the slightest gleam of satisfaction with their lot. No wonder: few men are of the stuff that makes a good recluse. The human animal is naturally gregarious, like the solan goose, the buffalo, the monkey, or the mackerel. Put him by himself, he pines for lack of mental aliment, just a...

Dark and stern, in their weird beauty, lower the sad brows of the Queen of Hell. Dear to her are the pomp and power, the shadowy vastness, and the terrible splendour of the nether world. Dear to her the pride of her unbending consort; and doubly dear the wide imperial sway, that rules the immortal destinies of souls. But dearer far than these—dearer than flashing crown and fiery sceptre, and throne of blazing gold—are the memories that glimmer bright as sunbeams athwart those vistas of glo...

Weight loss for grownups! Drawing on the NIH/AARP Diet and Health Study, the largest-ever survey of American diet and lifestyleComplete with three prescriptive weight-loss plans, the AARP New American Diet helps you lose up to 10 pounds in 2 weeks while staying vital, happy, and healthy for a lifetime. Author John Whyte, MD, Chief Medical Expert for the Discovery Channel, reveals surprising new research insights, such as the fact that drinking diet soda an...

On the last day of April, 1763, John Wilkes, refusing to enter into his recognisances to appear before the Court of Queen's Bench, was committed to the Tower by warrant of my Lords Egremont and Halifax, His Majesty's two principal Secretaries of State. Defiance of constituted authority has never wanted sympathy from that British public which entertains, nevertheless, a profound respect for law. Mr. Wilkes became a hero in consequence; and while many a jug of beer was thereafter emptied, an...

A wild wet night in the Channel, the white waves leaping, lashing, and tumbling together in that confusion of troubled waters, which nautical men call a "cross-sea." A dreary, dismal night on Calais sands: faint moonshine struggling through a low driving scud, the harbour-lights quenched and blurred in mist. Such a night as bids the trim French sentry hug himself in his watch-coat, calmly cursing the weather, while he hums the chorus of a comic opera, driving his thoughts by force of contr...

Many a smiling plain, many a wooded slope and sequestered valley adorns the fair province of Picardy. Nor is it without reason that her Norman-looking sons and handsome daughters are proud of their birth-place; but the most prejudiced of them will hardly be found to affirm that her seaboard is either picturesque or interesting; and perhaps the strictest search would fail to discover a duller town than Calais in the whole bounds of France. With the gloom of night settling down upon the long...

It is time to explain how the young black mare became linked with the fate of certain persons, whose fortunes and doings, good or bad, are related in this story. To that end the scene must be shifted, and laid in London—London, on a mild February morning, when even South Audley Street and its tributaries seemed to exhale a balmy fragrance from the breath of spring. In one of these, a window stood open on the drawing-room floor—so wide open that the baker, resting his burden on the area rai...

In our dealings with the brute creation, it cannot be too much insisted on that mutual confidence is only to be established by mutual good-will. The perceptions of the beast must be raised to their highest standard, and there is no such enemy to intelligence as fear. Reward should be as the daily food it eats, punishment as the medicine administered on rare occasions, unwillingly, and but when absolute necessity demands. The horse is of all domestic animals most susceptible to anything lik...

Most men have a sunny spot to which they look back in their existence, as most have an impossible future, to attain which all their energies are exerted, and their resources employed. The difference between these visionary scenes is this, that they think a good deal of the latter, but talk a good deal of the former. With some fellows the golden age seems to have been passed at Eton, with others at the Universities. Here a quiet, mild clergyman gloats over the roistering days he spent as a ...

Much as we think of ourselves, and with all our boasted civilisation, we Anglo-Saxons are but a half-barbarian race after all. Nomadic, decidedly nomadic in our tastes, feelings, and pursuits, it is but the moisture of our climate that keeps us in our own houses at all, and like our Scandinavian ancestors (for in turf parlance we have several crosses of the old Norse blood in our veins), we delight periodically—that is, whenever we have a fortnight’s dry weather—to migrate from our dwellin...

Dying in the desert—stretched, limp and helpless, in the darkening waste—poured out like water on the tawny sand—two specks poised high above him in the deeper orange of the upper sky—a wide-winged vulture hovering and wheeling between the stricken lion and the setting sun. Dying in the desert—grim, dignified, unyielding, like a monarch slain in battle. So formidable in the morning—the herdsman's terror, the archer's dread, the savage wrestler in whose grasp horse and rider went down crush...

In confidence, Mrs. Lascelles, of course. I think you can depend upon me. And Sir Henry, as directed by a weather-beaten guide-post, turned into a narrow lane on his homeward way, while the lady with whom he had been riding, jogged her tired horse gently along the high road, absorbed in thoughts, pleasant, suggestive, engrossing—not precisely in "maiden meditation," for she was a widow—nor yet, although she was nearer thirty than twenty, wholly "fancy free." Mrs. Lascelles loved her horse ...