United States or Namibia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Meanwhile the English nurse who, in spite of all that could render her abode odious to her, had, from strong love to her charge, stoutly maintained her post died, a few weeks after Ramouna's mother; and no healthful influence remained to counteract those baneful ones to which the heir of the honest old Caxtons was subject. But Roland returned home in a humor to be pleased with all things.
The Caxtons were an eccentric family, and never did anything like other people. When I had ended, I lifted up my eyes and said pleadingly, "Now tell me, is there no hope none?" "Why should there be none?" cried Captain Roland, hastily "the De Caxtons are as good a family as the Trevanions; and as for yourself, all I will say is, that the young lady might choose worse for her own happiness."
The earliest brilliant affair seems to have come off when Lord Spencer bought two Caxtons for £245, a feat of which the closing scene is recorded, with a touching simplicity, in these terms: "His Lordship put each volume under his coat, and walked home with them in all the flush of victory and consciousness of triumph."
Largely, however, they were fiction, and I read all the novels of Bulwer, for whom I had already a great liking from 'The Caxtons' and 'My Novel. I was dazzled by them, and I thought him a great writer, if not so great a one as he thought himself.
As both were perfectly daft on the subject, they must have kept me lying there an hour, while they fussed about from one glass-protected book-case to another, murmuring admiration of Caxtons, or discussing the value of a Mazarin Bible, with their noses in a lot of old volumes which ought to have been eaten up by moths long ago. As for me, I should have been delighted to set fire to the whole lot.
Of his own books, by far the best are the really charming comedies about The Caxtons and Kenelm Chillingly; none of his other works have a high literary importance now, with the possible exception of A Strange Story; but his Coming Race is historically interesting as foreshadowing those novels of the future which were afterwards such a weapon of the Socialists.
In the novel of society with Pelham ; the novel of crime with Eugene Aram and Zanoni ; the novel of passion and a sort of mystery with Ernest Maltravers and Alice; the historic romance with The Last Days of Pompeii , The Last of the Barons , and Harold , he made marks deep and early. When the purely domestic kind came in he made them, earlier and deeper still, with The Caxtons , My Novel , etc.
"Public employment, sir," said I, boldly; "the service of my country." "If that be the case," quoth Roland, "have not a word to say. But I should have thought that for a lad of spirit, a descendant of the old De Caxtons, the army would have " "The army!" exclaimed my mother, clasping her hands, and looking involuntarily at my uncle's cork leg. "The army!" repeated my father, peevishly.
There are now over 5000 volumes, including seven MSS., of which one of the most notable is the Ripon Psalter , containing the special offices for St. Wilfrid, and many printed books of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, among them two fine Caxtons. Many of the books have beautiful old bindings in stamped leather.
Does the veteran, from whose flowing pen we had the books which delighted our young days, "Darnley," and "Richelieu," and "Delorme,"* relish the works of Alexandre the Great, and thrill over the "Three Musqueteers?" Does the accomplished author of the "Caxtons" read the other tales in Blackwood? Dear youth of ingenuous countenance and ingenuous pudor!
Word Of The Day