Selections from the Writings of James Russell Lowell

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1890 edition. Excerpt: ...those of your neighbors. It is a rule rather of private than public obligation--for indeed it is the doing of right that keeps the heavens from falling. Don Quixote. 29. St. Peter. What men call luck Is the prerogative of valiant souls, The fealty life pays its rightful kings. A Glance Behind The Cuetain. 30. Leopardi, 1798. The robin has a bad reputation among people who do not value themselves less for being fond of cherries. There is, I admit, a spice of vulgarity in him, and his song is rather of the Bloomfleld sort, too largely ballasted with prose.... But for a' that and twice as muckle 's a' that, I would not exchange him for all the cherries that ever came out of Asia Minor. With whatever faults, he has not wholly forfeited that superiority which belongs to the children of nature. My Gaeden Acquaintance. 1. First Day of Gettysburg, 1863. And for associations, if one have not the wit to make them for himself out of his native earth, no ready-made ones of other men will avail him much. Lexington is none the worse to me for not heing in Greece, nor Gettysburg that its name is not Marathon. ON A Ceetain Condescension In Foeeignees. 2. C. W. von Gluck, 1714. Like to a mighty heart the music seemed, That yearns with melodies it cannot speak, Until, in grand despair of what it dreamed, In the agony of effort it doth break, Yet triumphs breaking; on it rushed and streamed And wantoned in its might, as when a lake, Long pent among the mountains, bursts its walls And in one crowding gush leaps forth and falls. A Legend Of Beittany. 3. Josiak Quincy died, 1864. We are glad to have the biography of one who, beginning as a gentleman, kept himself such to the end, --who, with no necessity of labor, left behind him an amount of thoroughly done work such...