EXTRACTS. I. Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army If we retrench the wages of the schoolmaster, we must raise those of the recruiting sergeant. II. No arch nor column, in courtly English or courtlier Latin, sets forth the deeds and the worth of the Father of his Country; he needs them not; the unwritten benedictions of millions cover all the walls.* No gilded dome swells from the lowly roof to catch the morning or evening beam; but the love and gratitude of united America settle upon it in one eternal sunshine. Eulogy on Washington. WEBSTER. 1782-1852. Daniel Webster, the great Senator from Massachusetts, was born at Salisbury, N. H., in 1782, and died at Marshfield, Mass., in 1852. He was one of the intellectual giants of the age. While lacking Everett's rare culture and universal learning, he was in natural endowments Everett's superior. His fame rests upon his orations and speeches. Probably his master-pièces are his Plymouth Rock and Bunker Hill orations, his Eulogy on Adams and Jefferson, and his great speech in reply to Hayne. Some passages in these have never been surpassed by any orator of any age or country. EXTRACTS. Liberty and union, now and forever, one and inseparable. II. One may live as a conqueror, a king, or a magistrate; but he n ust die as a man. III. 'There is no evil which we cannot face or fly from, but the consciousness of duty disregarded. IV. Heaven's gates are not so highly arched as kings' palaces; they that enter there must go upon their knees. *Referring to Mt. Vernon. A brief extract torn from its connection can give no adequate idea of the splendid eloquence of a great orator like Everett. AGASSIZ. 1807-1873. Louis J. R. Agassiz, one of the most eminent naturalists of modern times, was a Swiss by birth, but an adopted citizen of this country. He came to America in 1847, and from that time until his death was a professor in Harvard University. His scientific writings attained great popularity, on account of their excellence, both of matter and style. The principal of these are Methods of Study in Natural History, Geological Sketches, and A Journey in Brazil (by himself and his wife). EXTRACT. There was a time when our earth was in a state of igneous fusion; when no ocean bathed it, and no atmosphere surrounded it; when no wind blew over it, and no rain fell upon it; but an intense heat held all its materials in solution. In those days the rocks which are now the very bones and sinews of our mother Earth-her_granites, her porphyries, her basalts, her sienites— were melted into a liquid mass. Geological Sketches. EMERSON. 1803-1882. Ralph Waldo Emerson, "the sage of Concord," was born in Boston in 1803, graduated at Harvard, preached for a time, and then retired to Concord, Mass., where he died in 1882. He was the head of what is called the "transcendental school of philosophy" in this country; was a profound and original thinker, an idiomatic and vigorous writer, and made a more deep and lasting impression on the thought and literature of his age than any contemporary author. His principal works are Representative Men, English Traits, and several volumes of Essays, the last of which is entitled Letters and Social Aims. EXTRACTS. Self-trust is the essence of heroism. II. Fear God, and where you go, men shall think they walk in hallowed cathedrals. III. Hope never spreads her golden wings but in unfathomable seas. IV. Beauty is the mark God sets on virtue. Every natural action is graceful. Every heroic action is also decent, and causes the place and the bystanders to shine. V. One of the illusions is that the present hour is not the critical, decisive hour. Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year. Edwin P. Whipple is one of the most popular and excellent of our critics and essayists. He is less learned than Lowell and less rhetorical than Macaulay; but he has good taste, a sound judgment, and an agreeable style, and is, on the whole, as reliable as either. He died in 1886. His chief works are-Literature of the Age of Elizabeth, Literature and Life, Character and Characteristic Men, Success and its Conditions, and Essays and Reviews. EXTRACTS. Books-lighthouses erected in the great sea of time. II. Felicity, not fluency, of language is a merit. III. The contemplation of beauty, in nature, in art, in literature, in human character, diffuses through our being a soothing and subtle joy, by which the heart's anxious and aching cares are softly smiled away. WHITE. 1822-1885. Richard Grant White, of New York, was an eminent Shakspearian scholar and critic. His chief works are an Edition of Shakspeare, in 12 vols., a Life of Shakspeare, and Words and Their Uses. EXTRACT. Whoever would learn to think naturally, clearly, logically, and to express himself intelligibly and earnestly, let him give his days and nights to William Shakspeare. SIMMS. 1806-1870. William Gilmore Simms, one of the most prolific and versa. tile authors that this country has produced, was born in Charleston, S. C., in 1806, and died in 1870. Among the best of his works are the following: poems—Atalantis and King's Mo»ntain; novels-Guy Rivers, The Yemassee, The Partisan, Millichampe, and Eutaw; historical and biographical-—History of South Carolina, Life of Marion, Life of Captain John Smith, Life of the Chevalier Bayard, and Life of General Greene. Several of his tales are based upon colonial and Revolutionary history. Simms has been called the Cooper of the South, his tales, like Cooper's, being characterized by lively descriptions, thrilling adventures, and graphic delineation of characters. He was a man of wealth and refinement, and his career was such as to reflect honor upon the literature of his country. EXTRACT. Our distinctions do not lie in the places which we occupy, but in the grace and dignity with which we fill them. PARKMAN. 1823 Francis Parkman, born in Boston in 1823, has won a place in the foremost rank of American historians. After graduating at Harvard and making a visit to Europe, he travelled in the far West, where he studied the habits, character, and some of the languages of the Indian tribes, and made himself familiar with everything relating to the settlement of the North-west. His works are entitled-The California and Oregon Trail, The Conspiracy of Pontiac, The Jesuits in North America, The Pioneers of France in the New World, and The Old Régime in Canada. These works abound in thrilling adventures, romantic episodes, and brilliant descriptions, and are no less distinguished for their fairness and accuracy. EXTRACT. The fireside stories of every primitive people are faithful re flections of the form and coloring of the national mind; and it is no proof of sound philosophy to turn with contempt from the study of a fairy-tale.—Conspiracy of Pontiac. HOWELLS. 1837 Wm. D. Howells, long known as a writer of pleasing poems and graceful sketches, has lately won a great reputation as an able and discriminating critic, and a novelist unsurpassed among living writers for freshness and sparkle of dialogue, subtle and refined discrimination of characters (especially female characters), and skilful picturing of the humorous and sentimental phases of modern society. He was born at Martinsville, Ohio, in 1837, and now lives at Boston, Mass. Among his best works are the following: poems-No Love Lost, Caprice, The Pilot's Story; miscellaneous prose sketches - Venetian Life, Italian Journeys, Suburban Sketches; novels-Their Wedding Journey, A Chance Acquaintance, The Lady of the Aroostook, The Undiscovered Country, Dr. Breen's Practice, A Modern Instance, and A Woman's Reason. EXTRACT. Once on my mother's breast a child I crept, There, safe and sad, lay shuddering, and wept Weary and weak, and worn with all unrest, O mother, let me weep upon thy breast At the sad mystery of Life.-The Mysteries. MARK TWAIN. 1835 Samuel L. Clemens ("Mark Twain") was born in Missouri in 1835. After an adventurous career in California and elsewhere he "set the continent in a roar "" by the publication, in 1869, of Innocents Abroad, which was followed not long after by Roughing It. Mr. Clemens is probably the most successful and popular prose humorist of modern times. His humor is broad, bu: rarely coarse and never immoral. Much of its effect seems to be due to the most outrageous exaggerations made in the most serious way. Besides the works above mentioned he has written two stories-Tom Sawyer's Adventures and The Prince and the Page-and several volumes of Sketches. |